blob: 758fca625f4b53a43e77c5296557e2fd7032b108 [file] [log] [blame]
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00001What's New in Python 2.1 alpha 1?
2=================================
3
4Core language, builtins, and interpreter
5
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +00006- File objects have a new method, xreadlines(). This is the fastest
7 way to iterate over all lines in a file:
8
9 for line in file.xreadlines():
10 ...do something to line...
11
12 See the xreadlines module (mentioned below) for how to do this for
13 other file-like objects.
14
15- Even if you don't use file.xreadlines(), you may expect a speedup on
16 line-by-line input. The file.readline() method has been optimized
17 quite a bit in platform-specific ways, both on Windows (using an
18 incredibly complex, but nevertheless thread-safe), and on systems
19 (like Linux) that support flockfile(), getc_unlocked(), and
20 funlockfile(). In addition, the fileinput module, while still slow,
21 has been sped up too, by using file.readlines(sizehint).
22
23- Support for run-time warnings has been added, including a new
24 command line option (-W) to specify the disposition of warnings.
25 See the description of the warnings module below.
26
27- Extensive changes have been made to the coercion code. This mostly
28 affects extension modules (which can now implement mixed-type
29 numerical operators without having to use coercion), but
30 occasionally, in boundary cases the coercion semantics have changed
31 subtly. Since this was a terrible gray area of the language, this
Guido van Rossumae72d872001-01-11 15:00:14 +000032 is considered an improvement. Also note that __rcmp__ is no longer
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +000033 supported -- instead of calling __rcmp__, __cmp__ is called with
34 reversed arguments.
35
Martin v. Löwisbe4c0f52001-01-04 20:30:56 +000036- The interpreter accepts now bytecode files on the command line even
37 if they do not have a .pyc or .pyo extension. On Linux, after executing
38
39 echo ':pyc:M::\x87\xc6\x0d\x0a::/usr/local/bin/python:' > /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register
40
41 any byte code file can be used as an executable (i.e. as an argument
42 to execve(2)).
43
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +000044- %[xXo] formats of negative Python longs now produce a sign
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +000045 character. In 1.6 and earlier, they never produced a sign,
46 and raised an error if the value of the long was too large
47 to fit in a Python int. In 2.0, they produced a sign if and
48 only if too large to fit in an int. This was inconsistent
49 across platforms (because the size of an int varies across
50 platforms), and inconsistent with hex() and oct(). Example:
51
52 >>> "%x" % -0x42L
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +000053 '-42' # in 2.1
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +000054 'ffffffbe' # in 2.0 and before, on 32-bit machines
55 >>> hex(-0x42L)
56 '-0x42L' # in all versions of Python
57
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +000058 The behavior of %d formats for negative Python longs remains
59 the same as in 2.0 (although in 1.6 and before, they raised
60 an error if the long didn't fit in a Python int).
61
62 %u formats don't make sense for Python longs, but are allowed
63 and treated the same as %d in 2.1. In 2.0, a negative long
64 formatted via %u produced a sign if and only if too large to
65 fit in an int. In 1.6 and earlier, a negative long formatted
66 via %u raised an error if it was too big to fit in an int.
67
Guido van Rossum3661d392000-12-12 22:10:31 +000068- Dictionary objects have an odd new method, popitem(). This removes
69 an arbitrary item from the dictionary and returns it (in the form of
70 a (key, value) pair). This can be useful for algorithms that use a
71 dictionary as a bag of "to do" items and repeatedly need to pick one
72 item. Such algorithms normally end up running in quadratic time;
73 using popitem() they can usually be made to run in linear time.
74
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +000075Standard library
76
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +000077- There's a new module, warnings, which implements a mechanism for
78 issuing and filtering warnings. There are some new built-in
79 exceptions that serve as warning categories, and a new command line
80 option, -W, to control warnings (e.g. -Wi ignores all warnings, -We
81 turns warnings into errors). warnings.warn(message[, category])
82 issues a warning message; this can also be called from C as
83 PyErr_Warn(category, message).
84
85- A new module xreadlines was added. This exports a single factory
86 function, xreadlines(). The intention is that this code is the
87 absolutely fastest way to iterate over all lines in an open
88 file(-like) object:
89
90 import xreadlines
91 for line in xreadlines.xreadlines(file):
92 ...do something to line...
93
94 This is equivalent to the previous the speed record holder using
95 file.readlines(sizehint). Note that if file is a real file object
96 (as opposed to a file-like object), this is equivalent:
97
98 for line in file.xreadlines():
99 ...do something to line...
100
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +0000101- The bisect module has new functions bisect_left, insort_left,
102 bisect_right and insort_right. The old names bisect and insort
103 are now aliases for bisect_right and insort_right. XXX_right
104 and XXX_left methods differ in what happens when the new element
105 compares equal to one or more elements already in the list: the
106 XXX_left methods insert to the left, the XXX_right methods to the
Tim Peters742bb6f2001-01-05 08:05:32 +0000107 right. Code that doesn't care where equal elements end up should
108 continue to use the old, short names ("bisect" and "insort").
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +0000109
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000110- The SocketServer module now sets the allow_reuse_address flag by
111 default in the TCPServer class.
112
113- A new function, sys._getframe(), returns the stack frame pointer of
114 the caller. This is intended only as a building block for
115 higher-level mechanisms such as string interpolation.
116
117Build issues
118
119- On Linux (and possibly other Unix platforms), the readline and
120 _curses modules are automatically configured through
121 Modules/Setup.config. These, and the bsddb module (which was
122 already dynamically configured) are now built as shared libraries by
123 default.
124
125- Python now always uses its own (renamed) implementation of getopt()
126 -- there's too much variation among C library getopt()
127 implementations.
128
129- C++ compilers are better supported; the CXX macro is always set to a
130 C++ compiler if one is found.
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +0000131
Tim Petersd92dfe02000-12-12 01:18:41 +0000132Windows changes
133
134- select module: By default under Windows, a select() call
135 can specify no more than 64 sockets. Python now boosts
136 this Microsoft default to 512. If you need even more than
137 that, see the MS docs (you'll need to #define FD_SETSIZE
138 and recompile Python from source).
139
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000140- Support for Windows 3.1, DOS and OS/2 is gone. The Lib/dos-8x3
141 subdirectory is no more!
142
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000143
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000144What's New in Python 2.0?
Fred Drake1a640502000-10-16 20:27:25 +0000145=========================
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +0000146
Guido van Rossum8ed602b2000-09-01 22:34:33 +0000147Below is a list of all relevant changes since release 1.6. Older
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000148changes are in the file HISTORY. If you are making the jump directly
149from Python 1.5.2 to 2.0, make sure to read the section for 1.6 in the
150HISTORY file! Many important changes listed there.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +0000151
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000152Alternatively, a good overview of the changes between 1.5.2 and 2.0 is
153the document "What's New in Python 2.0" by Kuchling and Moshe Zadka:
154http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/python/writing/new-python/.
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +0000155
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000156--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)
Guido van Rossum437cfe81999-04-08 20:17:57 +0000157
158======================================================================
159
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000160What's new in 2.0 (since release candidate 1)?
161==============================================
162
163Standard library
164
165- The copy_reg module was modified to clarify its intended use: to
166 register pickle support for extension types, not for classes.
167 pickle() will raise a TypeError if it is passed a class.
168
169- Fixed a bug in gettext's "normalize and expand" code that prevented
170 it from finding an existing .mo file.
171
172- Restored support for HTTP/0.9 servers in httplib.
173
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +0000174- The math module was changed to stop raising OverflowError in case of
175 underflow, and return 0 instead in underflow cases. Whether Python
176 used to raise OverflowError in case of underflow was platform-
177 dependent (it did when the platform math library set errno to ERANGE
178 on underflow).
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000179
180- Fixed a bug in StringIO that occurred when the file position was not
181 at the end of the file and write() was called with enough data to
182 extend past the end of the file.
183
184- Fixed a bug that caused Tkinter error messages to get lost on
185 Windows. The bug was fixed by replacing direct use of
186 interp->result with Tcl_GetStringResult(interp).
187
188- Fixed bug in urllib2 that caused it to fail when it received an HTTP
189 redirect response.
190
191- Several changes were made to distutils: Some debugging code was
192 removed from util. Fixed the installer used when an external zip
193 program (like WinZip) is not found; the source code for this
194 installer is in Misc/distutils. check_lib() was modified to behave
195 more like AC_CHECK_LIB by add other_libraries() as a parameter. The
196 test for whether installed modules are on sys.path was changed to
197 use both normcase() and normpath().
198
Jeremy Hyltond867a2c2000-10-16 20:41:38 +0000199- Several minor bugs were fixed in the xml package (the minidom,
200 pulldom, expatreader, and saxutils modules).
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000201
202- The regression test driver (regrtest.py) behavior when invoked with
203 -l changed: It now reports a count of objects that are recognized as
204 garbage but not freed by the garbage collector.
205
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +0000206- The regression test for the math module was changed to test
207 exceptional behavior when the test is run in verbose mode. Python
208 cannot yet guarantee consistent exception behavior across platforms,
209 so the exception part of test_math is run only in verbose mode, and
210 may fail on your platform.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000211
212Internals
213
214- PyOS_CheckStack() has been disabled on Win64, where it caused
215 test_sre to fail.
216
217Build issues
218
219- Changed compiler flags, so that gcc is always invoked with -Wall and
220 -Wstrict-prototypes. Users compiling Python with GCC should see
221 exactly one warning, except if they have passed configure the
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +0000222 --with-pydebug flag. The expected warning is for getopt() in
Tim Petersadfb94f2000-10-16 20:51:33 +0000223 Modules/main.c. This warning will be fixed for Python 2.1.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000224
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000225- Fixed configure to add -threads argument during linking on OSF1.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000226
227Tools and other miscellany
228
229- The compiler in Tools/compiler was updated to support the new
230 language features introduced in 2.0: extended print statement, list
231 comprehensions, and augmented assignments. The new compiler should
232 also be backwards compatible with Python 1.5.2; the compiler will
233 always generate code for the version of the interpreter it runs
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000234 under.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000235
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000236What's new in 2.0 release candidate 1 (since beta 2)?
237=====================================================
238
Jeremy Hylton6040aaa2000-10-09 21:27:22 +0000239What is release candidate 1?
240
241We believe that release candidate 1 will fix all known bugs that we
242intend to fix for the 2.0 final release. This release should be a bit
243more stable than the previous betas. We would like to see even more
244widespread testing before the final release, so we are producing this
245release candidate. The final release will be exactly the same unless
246any show-stopping (or brown bag) bugs are found by testers of the
247release candidate.
248
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000249All the changes since the last beta release are bug fixes or changes
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000250to support building Python for specific platforms.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000251
252Core language, builtins, and interpreter
253
254- A bug that caused crashes when __coerce__ was used with augmented
255 assignment, e.g. +=, was fixed.
256
257- Raise ZeroDivisionError when raising zero to a negative number,
258 e.g. 0.0 ** -2.0. Note that math.pow is unrelated to the builtin
259 power operator and the result of math.pow(0.0, -2.0) will vary by
260 platform. On Linux, it raises a ValueError.
261
262- A bug in Unicode string interpolation was fixed that occasionally
263 caused errors with formats including "%%". For example, the
264 following expression "%% %s" % u"abc" no longer raises a TypeError.
265
266- Compilation of deeply nested expressions raises MemoryError instead
267 of SyntaxError, e.g. eval("[" * 50 + "]" * 50).
268
269- In 2.0b2 on Windows, the interpreter wrote .pyc files in text mode,
270 rendering them useless. They are now written in binary mode again.
271
272Standard library
273
274- Keyword arguments are now accepted for most pattern and match object
275 methods in SRE, the standard regular expression engine.
276
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000277- In SRE, fixed error with negative lookahead and lookbehind that
Jeremy Hylton32e20ff2000-10-09 19:48:11 +0000278 manifested itself as a runtime error in patterns like "(?<!abc)(def)".
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000279
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000280- Several bugs in the Unicode handling and error handling in _tkinter
281 were fixed.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000282
283- Fix memory management errors in Merge() and Tkapp_Call() routines.
284
285- Several changes were made to cStringIO to make it compatible with
286 the file-like object interface and with StringIO. If operations are
287 performed on a closed object, an exception is raised. The truncate
288 method now accepts a position argument and readline accepts a size
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000289 argument.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000290
291- There were many changes made to the linuxaudiodev module and its
292 test suite; as a result, a short, unexpected audio sample should now
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000293 play when the regression test is run.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000294
295 Note that this module is named poorly, because it should work
296 correctly on any platform that supports the Open Sound System
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000297 (OSS).
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000298
299 The module now raises exceptions when errors occur instead of
300 crashing. It also defines the AFMT_A_LAW format (logarithmic A-law
301 audio) and defines a getptr() method that calls the
302 SNDCTL_DSP_GETxPTR ioctl defined in the OSS Programmer's Guide.
303
304- The library_version attribute, introduced in an earlier beta, was
305 removed because it can not be supported with early versions of the C
306 readline library, which provides no way to determine the version at
307 compile-time.
308
309- The binascii module is now enabled on Win64.
310
Tim Peters46446d62000-10-09 21:19:31 +0000311- tokenize.py no longer suffers "recursion depth" errors when parsing
312 programs with very long string literals.
313
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000314Internals
315
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000316- Fixed several buffer overflow vulnerabilities in calculate_path(),
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000317 which is called when the interpreter starts up to determine where
318 the standard library is installed. These vulnerabilities affect all
319 previous versions of Python and can be exploited by setting very
320 long values for PYTHONHOME or argv[0]. The risk is greatest for a
321 setuid Python script, although use of the wrapper in
322 Misc/setuid-prog.c will eliminate the vulnerability.
323
324- Fixed garbage collection bugs in instance creation that were
325 triggered when errors occurred during initialization. The solution,
326 applied in cPickle and in PyInstance_New(), is to call
327 PyObject_GC_Init() after the initialization of the object's
328 container attributes is complete.
329
330- pyexpat adds definitions of PyModule_AddStringConstant and
331 PyModule_AddObject if the Python version is less than 2.0, which
332 provides compatibility with PyXML on Python 1.5.2.
333
334- If the platform has a bogus definition for LONG_BIT (the number of
335 bits in a long), an error will be reported at compile time.
336
337- Fix bugs in _PyTuple_Resize() which caused hard-to-interpret garbage
338 collection crashes and possibly other, unreported crashes.
339
340- Fixed a memory leak in _PyUnicode_Fini().
341
342Build issues
343
344- configure now accepts a --with-suffix option that specifies the
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000345 executable suffix. This is useful for builds on Cygwin and Mac OS
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000346 X, for example.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000347
348- The mmap.PAGESIZE constant is now initialized using sysconf when
349 possible, which eliminates a dependency on -lucb for Reliant UNIX.
350
351- The md5 file should now compile on all platforms.
352
353- The select module now compiles on platforms that do not define
354 POLLRDNORM and related constants.
355
356- Darwin (Mac OS X): Initial support for static builds on this
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000357 platform.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000358
Jeremy Hylton10921202000-10-09 18:34:12 +0000359- BeOS: A number of changes were made to the build and installation
360 process. ar-fake now operates on a directory of object files.
361 dl_export.h is gone, and its macros now appear on the mwcc command
362 line during build on PPC BeOS.
363
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000364- Platform directory in lib/python2.0 is "plat-beos5" (or
Jeremy Hylton10921202000-10-09 18:34:12 +0000365 "plat-beos4", if building on BeOS 4.5), rather than "plat-beos".
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000366
367- Cygwin: Support for shared libraries, Tkinter, and sockets.
368
369- SunOS 4.1.4_JL: Fix test for directory existence in configure.
370
371Tools and other miscellany
372
373- Removed debugging prints from main used with freeze.
374
Tim Peters46446d62000-10-09 21:19:31 +0000375- IDLE auto-indent no longer crashes when it encounters Unicode
376 characters.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000377
378What's new in 2.0 beta 2 (since beta 1)?
379========================================
380
381Core language, builtins, and interpreter
382
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000383- Add support for unbounded ints in %d,i,u,x,X,o formats; for example
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000384 "%d" % 2L**64 == "18446744073709551616".
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000385
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000386- Add -h and -V command line options to print the usage message and
387 Python version number and exit immediately.
388
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000389- eval() and exec accept Unicode objects as code parameters.
390
391- getattr() and setattr() now also accept Unicode objects for the
392 attribute name, which are converted to strings using the default
393 encoding before lookup.
394
395- Multiplication on string and Unicode now does proper bounds
396 checking; e.g. 'a' * 65536 * 65536 will raise ValueError, "repeated
397 string is too long."
398
399- Better error message when continue is found in try statement in a
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000400 loop.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000401
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000402
403Standard library and extensions
404
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000405- array: reverse() method of array now works. buffer_info() now does
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000406 argument checking; it still takes no arguments.
407
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000408- asyncore/asynchat: Included most recent version from Sam Rushing.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000409
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000410- cgi: Accept '&' or ';' as separator characters when parsing form data.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000411
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000412- CGIHTTPServer: Now works on Windows (and perhaps even Mac).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000413
414- ConfigParser: When reading the file, options spelled in upper case
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000415 letters are now correctly converted to lowercase.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000416
417- copy: Copy Unicode objects atomically.
418
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000419- cPickle: Fail gracefully when copy_reg can't be imported.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000420
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000421- cStringIO: Implemented readlines() method.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000422
Fred Drake67233bc2000-09-26 16:40:27 +0000423- dbm: Add get() and setdefault() methods to dbm object. Add constant
424 `library' to module that names the library used. Added doc strings
425 and method names to error messages. Uses configure to determine
426 which ndbm.h file to include; Berkeley DB's nbdm and GDBM's ndbm is
427 now available options.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000428
429- distutils: Update to version 0.9.3.
430
431- dl: Add several dl.RTLD_ constants.
432
433- fpectl: Now supported on FreeBSD.
434
435- gc: Add DEBUG_SAVEALL option. When enabled all garbage objects
436 found by the collector will be saved in gc.garbage. This is useful
437 for debugging a program that creates reference cycles.
438
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000439- httplib: Three changes: Restore support for set_debuglevel feature
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000440 of HTTP class. Do not close socket on zero-length response. Do not
441 crash when server sends invalid content-length header.
442
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000443- mailbox: Mailbox class conforms better to qmail specifications.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000444
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000445- marshal: When reading a short, sign-extend on platforms where shorts
446 are bigger than 16 bits. When reading a long, repair the unportable
447 sign extension that was being done for 64-bit machines. (It assumed
448 that signed right shift sign-extends.)
449
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000450- operator: Add contains(), invert(), __invert__() as aliases for
451 __contains__(), inv(), and __inv__() respectively.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000452
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000453- os: Add support for popen2() and popen3() on all platforms where
454 fork() exists. (popen4() is still in the works.)
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000455
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000456- os: (Windows only:) Add startfile() function that acts like double-
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000457 clicking on a file in Explorer (or passing the file name to the
458 DOS "start" command).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000459
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000460- os.path: (Windows, DOS:) Treat trailing colon correctly in
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000461 os.path.join. os.path.join("a:", "b") yields "a:b".
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000462
463- pickle: Now raises ValueError when an invalid pickle that contains
464 a non-string repr where a string repr was expected. This behavior
465 matches cPickle.
466
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000467- posixfile: Remove broken __del__() method.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000468
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000469- py_compile: support CR+LF line terminators in source file.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000470
471- readline: Does not immediately exit when ^C is hit when readline and
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000472 threads are configured. Adds definition of rl_library_version. (The
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000473 latter addition requires GNU readline 2.2 or later.)
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000474
475- rfc822: Domain literals returned by AddrlistClass method
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000476 getdomainliteral() are now properly wrapped in brackets.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000477
478- site: sys.setdefaultencoding() should only be called in case the
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000479 standard default encoding ("ascii") is changed. This saves quite a
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000480 few cycles during startup since the first call to
481 setdefaultencoding() will initialize the codec registry and the
482 encodings package.
483
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000484- socket: Support for size hint in readlines() method of object returned
485 by makefile().
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000486
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000487- sre: Added experimental expand() method to match objects. Does not
Jeremy Hylton625915e2000-10-02 13:43:33 +0000488 use buffer interface on Unicode strings. Does not hang if group id
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000489 is followed by whitespace.
490
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000491- StringIO: Size hint in readlines() is now supported as documented.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000492
493- struct: Check ranges for bytes and shorts.
494
495- urllib: Improved handling of win32 proxy settings. Fixed quote and
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000496 quote_plus functions so that the always encode a comma.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000497
498- Tkinter: Image objects are now guaranteed to have unique ids. Set
499 event.delta to zero if Tk version doesn't support mousewheel.
500 Removed some debugging prints.
501
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000502- UserList: now implements __contains__().
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000503
Fred Drake67233bc2000-09-26 16:40:27 +0000504- webbrowser: On Windows, use os.startfile() instead of os.popen(),
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000505 which works around a bug in Norton AntiVirus 2000 that leads directly
506 to a Blue Screen freeze.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000507
508- xml: New version detection code allows PyXML to override standard
509 XML package if PyXML version is greater than 0.6.1.
510
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000511- xml.dom: DOM level 1 support for basic XML. Includes xml.dom.minidom
512 (conventional DOM), and xml.dom.pulldom, which allows building the DOM
513 tree only for nodes which are sufficiently interesting to a specific
514 application. Does not provide the HTML-specific extensions. Still
515 undocumented.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000516
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000517- xml.sax: SAX 2 support for Python, including all the handler
518 interfaces needed to process XML 1.0 compliant XML. Some
519 documentation is already available.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000520
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000521- pyexpat: Renamed to xml.parsers.expat since this is part of the new,
522 packagized XML support.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000523
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000524
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000525C API
526
527- Add three new convenience functions for module initialization --
528 PyModule_AddObject(), PyModule_AddIntConstant(), and
529 PyModule_AddStringConstant().
530
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000531- Cleaned up definition of NULL in C source code; all definitions were
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000532 removed and add #error to Python.h if NULL isn't defined after
533 #include of stdio.h.
534
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000535- Py_PROTO() macros that were removed in 2.0b1 have been restored for
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000536 backwards compatibility (at the source level) with old extensions.
537
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000538- A wrapper API was added for signal() and sigaction(). Instead of
539 either function, always use PyOS_getsig() to get a signal handler
540 and PyOS_setsig() to set one. A new convenience typedef
541 PyOS_sighandler_t is defined for the type of signal handlers.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000542
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000543- Add PyString_AsStringAndSize() function that provides access to the
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000544 internal data buffer and size of a string object -- or the default
545 encoded version of a Unicode object.
546
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000547- PyString_Size() and PyString_AsString() accept Unicode objects.
548
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000549- The standard header <limits.h> is now included by Python.h (if it
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000550 exists). INT_MAX and LONG_MAX will always be defined, even if
551 <limits.h> is not available.
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000552
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000553- PyFloat_FromString takes a second argument, pend, that was
554 effectively useless. It is now officially useless but preserved for
555 backwards compatibility. If the pend argument is not NULL, *pend is
556 set to NULL.
557
558- PyObject_GetAttr() and PyObject_SetAttr() now accept Unicode objects
559 for the attribute name. See note on getattr() above.
560
561- A few bug fixes to argument processing for Unicode.
562 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() now accepts "es#" and "es".
563 PyArg_Parse() special cases "s#" for Unicode objects; it returns a
564 pointer to the default encoded string data instead of to the raw
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000565 UTF-16.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000566
567- Py_BuildValue accepts B format (for bgen-generated code).
568
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000569
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000570Internals
571
572- On Unix, fix code for finding Python installation directory so that
573 it works when argv[0] is a relative path.
574
Andrew M. Kuchlinga1099be2000-12-15 01:16:43 +0000575- Added a true unicode_internal_encode() function and fixed the
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000576 unicode_internal_decode function() to support Unicode objects directly
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000577 rather than by generating a copy of the object.
578
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000579- Several of the internal Unicode tables are much smaller now, and
580 the source code should be much friendlier to weaker compilers.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000581
Jeremy Hylton97693b02000-09-26 17:42:51 +0000582- In the garbage collector: Fixed bug in collection of tuples. Fixed
583 bug that caused some instances to be removed from the container set
584 while they were still live. Fixed parsing in gc.set_debug() for
585 platforms where sizeof(long) > sizeof(int).
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000586
587- Fixed refcount problem in instance deallocation that only occurred
588 when Py_REF_DEBUG was defined and Py_TRACE_REFS was not.
589
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000590- On Windows, getpythonregpath is now protected against null data in
591 registry key.
592
593- On Unix, create .pyc/.pyo files with O_EXCL flag to avoid a race
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000594 condition.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000595
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000596
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000597Build and platform-specific issues
598
599- Better support of GNU Pth via --with-pth configure option.
600
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000601- Python/C API now properly exposed to dynamically-loaded extension
602 modules on Reliant UNIX.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000603
604- Changes for the benefit of SunOS 4.1.4 (really!). mmapmodule.c:
605 Don't define MS_SYNC to be zero when it is undefined. Added missing
606 prototypes in posixmodule.c.
607
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000608- Improved support for HP-UX build. Threads should now be correctly
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000609 configured (on HP-UX 10.20 and 11.00).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000610
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000611- Fix largefile support on older NetBSD systems and OpenBSD by adding
612 define for TELL64.
613
614
615Tools and other miscellany
616
617- ftpmirror: Call to main() is wrapped in if __name__ == "__main__".
618
619- freeze: The modulefinder now works with 2.0 opcodes.
620
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000621- IDLE:
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000622 Move hackery of sys.argv until after the Tk instance has been
623 created, which allows the application-specific Tkinter
624 initialization to be executed if present; also pass an explicit
625 className parameter to the Tk() constructor.
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000626
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000627
628What's new in 2.0 beta 1?
629=========================
630
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000631Source Incompatibilities
632------------------------
633
634None. Note that 1.6 introduced several incompatibilities with 1.5.2,
635such as single-argument append(), connect() and bind(), and changes to
636str(long) and repr(float).
637
638
639Binary Incompatibilities
640------------------------
641
642- Third party extensions built for Python 1.5.x or 1.6 cannot be used
643with Python 2.0; these extensions will have to be rebuilt for Python
6442.0.
645
646- On Windows, attempting to import a third party extension built for
647Python 1.5.x or 1.6 results in an immediate crash; there's not much we
648can do about this. Check your PYTHONPATH environment variable!
649
650- Python bytecode files (*.pyc and *.pyo) are not compatible between
651releases.
652
653
654Overview of Changes Since 1.6
655-----------------------------
656
657There are many new modules (including brand new XML support through
658the xml package, and i18n support through the gettext module); a list
659of all new modules is included below. Lots of bugs have been fixed.
660
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000661The process for making major new changes to the language has changed
662since Python 1.6. Enhancements must now be documented by a Python
663Enhancement Proposal (PEP) before they can be accepted.
664
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000665There are several important syntax enhancements, described in more
666detail below:
667
668 - Augmented assignment, e.g. x += 1
669
670 - List comprehensions, e.g. [x**2 for x in range(10)]
671
672 - Extended import statement, e.g. import Module as Name
673
674 - Extended print statement, e.g. print >> file, "Hello"
675
676Other important changes:
677
678 - Optional collection of cyclical garbage
679
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000680Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP)
681---------------------------------
682
683PEP stands for Python Enhancement Proposal. A PEP is a design
684document providing information to the Python community, or describing
685a new feature for Python. The PEP should provide a concise technical
686specification of the feature and a rationale for the feature.
687
688We intend PEPs to be the primary mechanisms for proposing new
689features, for collecting community input on an issue, and for
690documenting the design decisions that have gone into Python. The PEP
691author is responsible for building consensus within the community and
692documenting dissenting opinions.
693
694The PEPs are available at http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000695
696Augmented Assignment
697--------------------
698
699This must have been the most-requested feature of the past years!
700Eleven new assignment operators were added:
701
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000702 += -= *= /= %= **= <<= >>= &= ^= |=
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000703
704For example,
705
706 A += B
707
708is similar to
709
710 A = A + B
711
712except that A is evaluated only once (relevant when A is something
713like dict[index].attr).
714
715However, if A is a mutable object, A may be modified in place. Thus,
716if A is a number or a string, A += B has the same effect as A = A+B
717(except A is only evaluated once); but if a is a list, A += B has the
718same effect as A.extend(B)!
719
720Classes and built-in object types can override the new operators in
721order to implement the in-place behavior; the not-in-place behavior is
722used automatically as a fallback when an object doesn't implement the
723in-place behavior. For classes, the method name is derived from the
724method name for the corresponding not-in-place operator by inserting
725an 'i' in front of the name, e.g. __iadd__ implements in-place
726__add__.
727
728Augmented assignment was implemented by Thomas Wouters.
729
730
731List Comprehensions
732-------------------
733
734This is a flexible new notation for lists whose elements are computed
735from another list (or lists). The simplest form is:
736
737 [<expression> for <variable> in <sequence>]
738
Guido van Rossum56db0952000-09-06 23:34:25 +0000739For example, [i**2 for i in range(4)] yields the list [0, 1, 4, 9].
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000740This is more efficient than a for loop with a list.append() call.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000741
742You can also add a condition:
743
744 [<expression> for <variable> in <sequence> if <condition>]
745
746For example, [w for w in words if w == w.lower()] would yield the list
747of words that contain no uppercase characters. This is more efficient
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000748than a for loop with an if statement and a list.append() call.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000749
750You can also have nested for loops and more than one 'if' clause. For
751example, here's a function that flattens a sequence of sequences::
752
753 def flatten(seq):
754 return [x for subseq in seq for x in subseq]
755
756 flatten([[0], [1,2,3], [4,5], [6,7,8,9], []])
757
758This prints
759
760 [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
761
762List comprehensions originated as a patch set from Greg Ewing; Skip
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000763Montanaro and Thomas Wouters also contributed. Described by PEP 202.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000764
765
766Extended Import Statement
767-------------------------
768
769Many people have asked for a way to import a module under a different
770name. This can be accomplished like this:
771
772 import foo
773 bar = foo
774 del foo
775
776but this common idiom gets old quickly. A simple extension of the
777import statement now allows this to be written as follows:
778
779 import foo as bar
780
781There's also a variant for 'from ... import':
782
783 from foo import bar as spam
784
785This also works with packages; e.g. you can write this:
786
787 import test.regrtest as regrtest
788
789Note that 'as' is not a new keyword -- it is recognized only in this
790context (this is only possible because the syntax for the import
791statement doesn't involve expressions).
792
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000793Implemented by Thomas Wouters. Described by PEP 221.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000794
795
796Extended Print Statement
797------------------------
798
799Easily the most controversial new feature, this extension to the print
800statement adds an option to make the output go to a different file
801than the default sys.stdout.
802
803For example, to write an error message to sys.stderr, you can now
804write:
805
806 print >> sys.stderr, "Error: bad dog!"
807
808As a special feature, if the expression used to indicate the file
Fred Drake45888ff2000-09-29 17:09:11 +0000809evaluates to None, the current value of sys.stdout is used. Thus:
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000810
811 print >> None, "Hello world"
812
813is equivalent to
814
815 print "Hello world"
816
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000817Design and implementation by Barry Warsaw. Described by PEP 214.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000818
819
820Optional Collection of Cyclical Garbage
821---------------------------------------
822
823Python is now equipped with a garbage collector that can hunt down
824cyclical references between Python objects. It's no replacement for
825reference counting; in fact, it depends on the reference counts being
826correct, and decides that a set of objects belong to a cycle if all
827their reference counts can be accounted for from their references to
828each other. This devious scheme was first proposed by Eric Tiedemann,
829and brought to implementation by Neil Schemenauer.
830
831There's a module "gc" that lets you control some parameters of the
832garbage collection. There's also an option to the configure script
833that lets you enable or disable the garbage collection. In 2.0b1,
834it's on by default, so that we (hopefully) can collect decent user
835experience with this new feature. There are some questions about its
Fred Drake9f11cf82000-09-29 17:54:40 +0000836performance. If it proves to be too much of a problem, we'll turn it
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000837off by default in the final 2.0 release.
838
839
840Smaller Changes
841---------------
842
843A new function zip() was added. zip(seq1, seq2, ...) is equivalent to
844map(None, seq1, seq2, ...) when the sequences have the same length;
845i.e. zip([1,2,3], [10,20,30]) returns [(1,10), (2,20), (3,30)]. When
846the lists are not all the same length, the shortest list wins:
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000847zip([1,2,3], [10,20]) returns [(1,10), (2,20)]. See PEP 201.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000848
849sys.version_info is a tuple (major, minor, micro, level, serial).
850
851Dictionaries have an odd new method, setdefault(key, default).
852dict.setdefault(key, default) returns dict[key] if it exists; if not,
853it sets dict[key] to default and returns that value. Thus:
854
855 dict.setdefault(key, []).append(item)
856
857does the same work as this common idiom:
858
859 if not dict.has_key(key):
860 dict[key] = []
861 dict[key].append(item)
862
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000863There are two new variants of SyntaxError that are raised for
864indentation-related errors: IndentationError and TabError.
865
866Changed \x to consume exactly two hex digits; see PEP 223. Added \U
867escape that consumes exactly eight hex digits.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000868
869The limits on the size of expressions and file in Python source code
870have been raised from 2**16 to 2**32. Previous versions of Python
871were limited because the maximum argument size the Python VM accepted
872was 2**16. This limited the size of object constructor expressions,
873e.g. [1,2,3] or {'a':1, 'b':2}, and the size of source files. This
874limit was raised thanks to a patch by Charles Waldman that effectively
875fixes the problem. It is now much more likely that you will be
876limited by available memory than by an arbitrary limit in Python.
877
878The interpreter's maximum recursion depth can be modified by Python
879programs using sys.getrecursionlimit and sys.setrecursionlimit. This
880limit is the maximum number of recursive calls that can be made by
881Python code. The limit exists to prevent infinite recursion from
882overflowing the C stack and causing a core dump. The default value is
8831000. The maximum safe value for a particular platform can be found
884by running Misc/find_recursionlimit.py.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000885
886New Modules and Packages
887------------------------
888
889atexit - for registering functions to be called when Python exits.
890
891imputil - Greg Stein's alternative API for writing custom import
892hooks.
893
894pyexpat - an interface to the Expat XML parser, contributed by Paul
895Prescod.
896
897xml - a new package with XML support code organized (so far) in three
898subpackages: xml.dom, xml.sax, and xml.parsers. Describing these
899would fill a volume. There's a special feature whereby a
900user-installed package named _xmlplus overrides the standard
901xmlpackage; this is intended to give the XML SIG a hook to distribute
902backwards-compatible updates to the standard xml package.
903
904webbrowser - a platform-independent API to launch a web browser.
905
906
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000907Changed Modules
908---------------
909
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000910array -- new methods for array objects: count, extend, index, pop, and
911remove
912
913binascii -- new functions b2a_hex and a2b_hex that convert between
914binary data and its hex representation
915
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000916calendar -- Many new functions that support features including control
917over which day of the week is the first day, returning strings instead
918of printing them. Also new symbolic constants for days of week,
919e.g. MONDAY, ..., SUNDAY.
920
921cgi -- FieldStorage objects have a getvalue method that works like a
922dictionary's get method and returns the value attribute of the object.
923
924ConfigParser -- The parser object has new methods has_option,
925remove_section, remove_option, set, and write. They allow the module
926to be used for writing config files as well as reading them.
927
928ftplib -- ntransfercmd(), transfercmd(), and retrbinary() all now
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000929optionally support the RFC 959 REST command.
930
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000931gzip -- readline and readlines now accept optional size arguments
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000932
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000933httplib -- New interfaces and support for HTTP/1.1 by Greg Stein. See
934the module doc strings for details.
Guido van Rossum830ca2a2000-09-05 15:34:16 +0000935
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000936locale -- implement getdefaultlocale for Win32 and Macintosh
937
938marshal -- no longer dumps core when marshaling deeply nested or
939recursive data structures
940
941os -- new functions isatty, seteuid, setegid, setreuid, setregid
942
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000943os/popen2 -- popen2/popen3/popen4 support under Windows. popen2/popen3
944support under Unix.
945
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000946os/pty -- support for openpty and forkpty
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000947
948os.path -- fix semantics of os.path.commonprefix
949
950smtplib -- support for sending very long messages
951
952socket -- new function getfqdn()
953
954readline -- new functions to read, write and truncate history files.
955The readline section of the library reference manual contains an
956example.
957
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000958select -- add interface to poll system call
959
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000960shutil -- new copyfileobj function
961
962SimpleHTTPServer, CGIHTTPServer -- Fix problems with buffering in the
963HTTP server.
964
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000965Tkinter -- optimization of function flatten
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000966
967urllib -- scans environment variables for proxy configuration,
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +0000968e.g. http_proxy.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000969
970whichdb -- recognizes dumbdbm format
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000971
972
973Obsolete Modules
974----------------
975
976None. However note that 1.6 made a whole slew of modules obsolete:
977stdwin, soundex, cml, cmpcache, dircache, dump, find, grep, packmail,
978poly, zmod, strop, util, whatsound.
979
980
981Changed, New, Obsolete Tools
982----------------------------
983
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +0000984None.
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000985
986
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000987C-level Changes
988---------------
989
990Several cleanup jobs were carried out throughout the source code.
991
992All C code was converted to ANSI C; we got rid of all uses of the
993Py_PROTO() macro, which makes the header files a lot more readable.
994
995Most of the portability hacks were moved to a new header file,
996pyport.h; several other new header files were added and some old
997header files were removed, in an attempt to create a more rational set
998of header files. (Few of these ever need to be included explicitly;
999they are all included by Python.h.)
1000
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001001Trent Mick ensured portability to 64-bit platforms, under both Linux
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001002and Win64, especially for the new Intel Itanium processor. Mick also
1003added large file support for Linux64 and Win64.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001004
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001005The C APIs to return an object's size have been update to consistently
1006use the form PyXXX_Size, e.g. PySequence_Size and PyDict_Size. In
1007previous versions, the abstract interfaces used PyXXX_Length and the
1008concrete interfaces used PyXXX_Size. The old names,
1009e.g. PyObject_Length, are still available for backwards compatibility
1010at the API level, but are deprecated.
1011
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001012The PyOS_CheckStack function has been implemented on Windows by
1013Fredrik Lundh. It prevents Python from failing with a stack overflow
1014on Windows.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001015
1016The GC changes resulted in creation of two new slots on object,
1017tp_traverse and tp_clear. The augmented assignment changes result in
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +00001018the creation of a new slot for each in-place operator.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001019
1020The GC API creates new requirements for container types implemented in
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +00001021C extension modules. See Include/objimpl.h for details.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001022
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001023PyErr_Format has been updated to automatically calculate the size of
1024the buffer needed to hold the formatted result string. This change
1025prevents crashes caused by programmer error.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001026
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001027New C API calls: PyObject_AsFileDescriptor, PyErr_WriteUnraisable.
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +00001028
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001029PyRun_AnyFileEx, PyRun_SimpleFileEx, PyRun_FileEx -- New functions
1030that are the same as their non-Ex counterparts except they take an
1031extra flag argument that tells them to close the file when done.
1032
1033XXX There were other API changes that should be fleshed out here.
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +00001034
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +00001035
1036Windows Changes
1037---------------
1038
1039New popen2/popen3/peopen4 in os module (see Changed Modules above).
1040
1041os.popen is much more usable on Windows 95 and 98. See Microsoft
1042Knowledge Base article Q150956. The Win9x workaround described there
1043is implemented by the new w9xpopen.exe helper in the root of your
1044Python installation. Note that Python uses this internally; it is not
1045a standalone program.
1046
1047Administrator privileges are no longer required to install Python
1048on Windows NT or Windows 2000. If you have administrator privileges,
1049Python's registry info will be written under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
1050Otherwise the installer backs off to writing Python's registry info
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +00001051under HKEY_CURRENT_USER. The latter is sufficient for all "normal"
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +00001052uses of Python, but will prevent some advanced uses from working
1053(for example, running a Python script as an NT service, or possibly
1054from CGI).
1055
1056[This was new in 1.6] The installer no longer runs a separate Tcl/Tk
1057installer; instead, it installs the needed Tcl/Tk files directly in the
1058Python directory. If you already have a Tcl/Tk installation, this
1059wastes some disk space (about 4 Megs) but avoids problems with
1060conflicting Tcl/Tk installations, and makes it much easier for Python
1061to ensure that Tcl/Tk can find all its files.
1062
1063[This was new in 1.6] The Windows installer now installs by default in
1064\Python20\ on the default volume, instead of \Program Files\Python-2.0\.
1065
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00001066
1067Updates to the changes between 1.5.2 and 1.6
1068--------------------------------------------
1069
1070The 1.6 NEWS file can't be changed after the release is done, so here
1071is some late-breaking news:
1072
1073New APIs in locale.py: normalize(), getdefaultlocale(), resetlocale(),
1074and changes to getlocale() and setlocale().
1075
1076The new module is now enabled per default.
1077
1078It is not true that the encodings codecs cannot be used for normal
1079strings: the string.encode() (which is also present on 8-bit strings
1080!) allows using them for 8-bit strings too, e.g. to convert files from
1081cp1252 (Windows) to latin-1 or vice-versa.
1082
1083Japanese codecs are available from Tamito KAJIYAMA:
1084http://pseudo.grad.sccs.chukyo-u.ac.jp/~kajiyama/python/
1085
1086
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +00001087======================================================================