blob: 9f80274a16fd25404fc1663456b2da3555a797ff [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Skip Montanaro4a385832002-09-20 17:08:52 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00007What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
8=================================
9
10*Release date: XX-XXX-2004*
11
12Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
15Extension modules
16-----------------
17
18Library
19-------
20
21Tools/Demos
22-----------
23
24Build
25-----
26
27C API
28-----
29
30Documentation
31-------------
32
33New platforms
34-------------
35
36Tests
37-----
38
39Windows
40-------
41
42Mac
43---
44
45
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +000046What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
47=================================
48
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +000049*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +000050
51Core and builtins
52-----------------
53
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +000054- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
55 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
56 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
57 sensitive code.
58
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +000059- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
60 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so:
61 @staticmethod
62 def foo(bar):
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +000063 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +000064
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +000065- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
66 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
67 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
68 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
69 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
70 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
71 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
72 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
73 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
74 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
75 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
76
77 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
78 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
79 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
80 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
81 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
82 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
83 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
84
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +000085- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
86 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
87
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +000088- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +000089 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +000090
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +000091- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +000092 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +000093 which was missing for no apparent reason.
94
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +000095- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +000096 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
97 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
98
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +000099- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
100 types that support garbage collection.
101
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +0000102- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
103
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +0000104- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
105 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
106 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
107 Jython.
108
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000109- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
110
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +0000111- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
112 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
113
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +0000114- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
115 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
116 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +0000117
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +0000118- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
119 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
120 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
121
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000122Extension modules
123-----------------
124
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +0000125- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
126
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000127Library
128-------
129
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +0000130- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
131 TIS-620
132
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +0000133- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
134 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
135 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
136 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
137 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
138 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
139 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
140 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
141 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
142 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
143
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +0000144- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
145
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +0000146- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
147 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
148 same as when the argument is omitted).
149 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
150
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +0000151- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
152
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +0000153- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
154 schemes are offered.
155
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +0000156- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
157
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +0000158- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
159 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
160 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
161
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +0000162- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
163
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +0000164- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
165 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
166
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +0000167- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
168 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
169 when dummy_threading is being used.
170
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +0000171- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
172 from a tarfile.
173
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000174- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000175 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000176
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +0000177- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
178 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
179 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
180 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
181
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +0000182- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
183 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
184
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +0000185- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
186 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
187 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
188 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
189 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
190 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
191 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
192 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
193 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
194 by some other method in progress).
195
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000196- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
197 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
198 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +0000199
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +0000200- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
201
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +0000202- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
203 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
204 AM Kuchling.
205
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +0000206- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
207 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
208 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
209
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +0000210- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
211 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
212 instead of unsigned.
213
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000214- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +0000215 no longer part of the public API.
216
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +0000217- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
218 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
219 string methods of the same name).
220
Andrew M. Kuchling64ed2982004-07-10 18:43:32 +0000221- asyncore's dispatcher.set_reuse_addr() now works correctly on Windows.
222 SF patch 982681.
223
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000224- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +0000225 SF patch 945642.
226
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000227- doctest unittest integration improvements:
228
229 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
230
231 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
232 DocTestSuites.
233
234- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
235 that provide thread-local data.
236
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000237- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
238 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
239
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000240- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
241
242- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
243 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
244 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
245
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000246- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
247
248 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
249 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
250 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000251
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000252 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
253 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
254 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
255 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
256
257 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
258 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
259
260 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
261 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
262 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
263 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
264
265 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
266 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
267 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
268 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
269 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
270
271 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
272 wrapping help output.
273
274 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
275 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
276 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000277
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000278C API
279-----
280
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000281- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
282 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
283 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
284 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
285 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
286 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
287 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
288 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
289 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
290 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
291 its visible semantics have not changed.
292
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000293- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
294 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
295
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000296Documentation
297-------------
298
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000299- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000300
301 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +0000302 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000303
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +0000304 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000305
306 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
307
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000308- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000309
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000310Tests
311-----
312
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000313- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +0000314 platforms that use the Makefile.
315
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000316- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
317 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
318 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
319
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000320
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000321What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
322=================================
323
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +0000324*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000325
326Core and builtins
327-----------------
328
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +0000329- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
330 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
331 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
332 objects now (one object instead of three).
333
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +0000334- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
335 Windows DLLs.
336
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +0000337- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
338 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +0000339
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +0000340- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
341 a new .pyc magic.
342
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +0000343- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
344 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
345 be there.
346
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +0000347- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
348 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
349 the LC_NUMERIC category.
350
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +0000351- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
352 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
353 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
354
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +0000355- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
356
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +0000357- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
358 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
359 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +0000360
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +0000361- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
362 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
363
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +0000364- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
365
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000366- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000367 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000368
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +0000369- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
370
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +0000371- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
372
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +0000373- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
374 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
375
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +0000376- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
377 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
378 Fixes bug #858016 .
379
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +0000380- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
381 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
382 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
383
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +0000384- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
385 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
386 improves their performance (about 35%).
387
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +0000388- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
389 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
390 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
391
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +0000392- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
393 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
394 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
395 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
396
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000397- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
398 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
399 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
400 length is not known).
401
402- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
403 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +0000404 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
405 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000406 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
407
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +0000408- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
409 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
410
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +0000411- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
412 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
413 keyword arguments.
414
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +0000415- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
416 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
417 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
418
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +0000419- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
420 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
421 cases.
422
423- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
424 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
425 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
426 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
427 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
428 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
429 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
430 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
431 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
432 a release build.
433
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +0000434- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
435 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
436
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +0000437- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +0000438 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +0000439
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +0000440- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
441 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
442 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
443 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
444 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
445 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
446 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
447 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
448 destroyed.
449
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +0000450- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
451 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
452 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
453 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
454 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
455 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
456 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
457 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
458
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +0000459- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
460 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
461 character other than a space.
462
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +0000463- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
464 by the function object or by the method object, the function
465 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
466 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
467 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
468 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
469 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
470 attributes with the same name.
471
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000472- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
473 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
474 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
475 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
476 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
477 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
478 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
479 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
480 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
481 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
482 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
483 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
484 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
485 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +0000486
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +0000487- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
488 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
489 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
490 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
491 This has been repaired.
492
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000493- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
494
495- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
496
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +0000497- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
498 over a sequence.
499
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +0000500- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000501 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +0000502
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +0000503- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
504
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +0000505- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
506 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
507 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
508 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
509 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
510 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
511 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
512 records with equal keys is unchanged).
513
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +0000514- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
515 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
516 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
517
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +0000518- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
519 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
520 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
521 freelist.
522
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +0000523- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
524 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
525
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +0000526- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
527 number.
528
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +0000529- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
530 a TypeError exception.
531
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +0000532- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
533 820195.
534
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +0000535- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
536 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
537 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
538
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000539- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +0000540 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
541 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +0000542
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +0000543- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
544 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
545 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
546
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000547- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
548 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000549 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000550
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000551- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +0000552 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
553 the first call.
554
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000555
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000556Extension modules
557-----------------
558
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +0000559- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
560 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
561
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +0000562- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
563 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
564 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
565 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
566 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
567 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
568 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +0000569
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +0000570- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
571
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +0000572- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
573
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +0000574- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
575 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
576
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +0000577- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
578 fewer false positives.
579
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +0000580- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
581 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
582
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000583- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +0000584 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
585
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +0000586- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000587 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +0000588 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
589 Also, array.extend() now accepts any iterable argument for repeated
590 appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +0000591
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +0000592- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
593 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
594 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
595 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
596
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +0000597- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
598 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
599 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
600 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
601 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
602 #897625.
603
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +0000604- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
605 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
606
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +0000607- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
608 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
609 and pops on either side of the deque.
610
611- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
612 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
613
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +0000614- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
615 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
616 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
617 other functions that expect a function argument.
618
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +0000619- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
620
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +0000621- os.getsid was added.
622
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +0000623- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
624 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
625 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
626
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +0000627- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
628
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +0000629- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
630
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +0000631- readline.clear_history was added.
632
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +0000633- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
634
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +0000635- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
636
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +0000637- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
638
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +0000639- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
640
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +0000641- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
642
643- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
644
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +0000645- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
646
647- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
648
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +0000649- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
650 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
651 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
652
653- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
654 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
655 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
656 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
657 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
658 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
659 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
660
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +0000661- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
662 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
663 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
664 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +0000665
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000666- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +0000667 iterators from a single iterable.
668
669- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
670 of raising a TypeError exception.
671
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +0000672- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
673 as parameter.
674
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000675Library
676-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000677
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +0000678- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
679 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
680 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000681
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +0000682- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
683 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
684 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +0000685
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +0000686- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +0000687
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +0000688- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
689 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +0000690
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +0000691- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
692 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
693
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +0000694- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
695
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +0000696- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +0000697 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +0000698
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +0000699- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
700 that generate a *-debuginfo.rpm.
701
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +0000702- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
703
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +0000704- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
705 on cygwin and mingw32.
706
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +0000707- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
708
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +0000709- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
710 module.
711
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +0000712- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
713 installation scheme for all platforms.
714
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +0000715- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +0000716 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +0000717
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000718- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
719 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
720 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
721
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +0000722- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
723 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
724 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
725
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +0000726- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
727
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +0000728- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
729
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +0000730- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
731 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
732
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +0000733- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
734 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
735 type pattern with the same value exists.
736
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +0000737- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
738 when run from the command prompt).
739
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +0000740- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
741 not taken into consideration when caching value.
742
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +0000743- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
744 default sort).
745
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +0000746- Added global runctx function to profile module
747
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +0000748- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
749
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +0000750- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
751
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +0000752- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
753
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000754- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +0000755 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
756 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
757 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
758 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
759 accordingly.
760
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +0000761- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
762 decoding standards.
763
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +0000764- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
765 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
766 called for all requests.
767
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +0000768- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
769 they are passed to the compiler.
770
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +0000771- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
772 indent, width and depth.
773
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +0000774- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
775 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
776
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +0000777- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
778 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
779
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +0000780- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
781
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +0000782- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
783
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +0000784- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
785
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +0000786- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
787 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
788
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +0000789- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +0000790 for better performance.
791
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +0000792- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +0000793
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +0000794- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
795 a string).
796
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +0000797- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
798
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +0000799- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
800
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +0000801- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
802
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +0000803- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
804
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +0000805- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
806 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
807 list of fieldnames.
808
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +0000809- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
810 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
811
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +0000812- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
813
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +0000814- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
815 empty lists.
816
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +0000817- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
818 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
819 and shelves.
820
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +0000821- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
822 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
823
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +0000824- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +0000825 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
826 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +0000827
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +0000828- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
829 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +0000830 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +0000831
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +0000832- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +0000833 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
834 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
835
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +0000836- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
837 and removed in Py2.4.
838
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +0000839- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
840
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +0000841- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
842
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000843Tools/Demos
844-----------
845
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +0000846- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
847 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
848
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +0000849- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
850
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +0000851- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
852 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
853 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
854 destination in situations where both files are given.
855
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +0000856- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
857 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
858 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
859 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
860
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +0000861- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
862
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +0000863- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
864 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
865 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
866 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
867 now.
868
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000869- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
870 in effect
871
872- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
873 C-c C-h
874
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +0000875- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
876 -d option was given.
877
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000878Build
879-----
880
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +0000881- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
882 build under OS X.
883
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +0000884- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
885 --enable-profiling.
886
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +0000887- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
888 is configured --with-tsc.
889
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +0000890- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
891 on AMD64.
892
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +0000893- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
894 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
895
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +0000896- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
897 removed.
898
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +0000899- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
900 supported (see PEP 11).
901
902- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
903
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +0000904- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
905
906- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
907 (see PEP 11).
908
909- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
910 sizeof(char) must be 1.
911
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000912C API
913-----
914
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +0000915- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
916 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
917 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
918
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +0000919- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
920 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
921 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
922 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
923
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +0000924- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
925 generator objects.
926
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +0000927- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
928 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +0000929 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
930 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +0000931
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +0000932- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
933 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
934
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +0000935- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
936 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
937 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
938 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
939 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
940
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +0000941- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
942 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
943 about 10% faster.
944
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +0000945- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
946 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
947
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +0000948- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
949 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
950 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
951 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
952
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000953Windows
954-------
955
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +0000956- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
957 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
958 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
959 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
960
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +0000961- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
962 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
963 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
964
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000965
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000966What's New in Python 2.3 final?
967===============================
968
969*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
970
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000971IDLE
972----
973
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +0000974- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
975 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
976 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
977 context-menu actions.
978
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000979- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
980 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
981 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
982 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
983 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
984 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
985 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
986 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
987 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
988
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000989
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000990What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
991=============================================
992
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +0000993*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000994
995Core and builtins
996-----------------
997
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +0000998- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000999 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001000 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1001
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001002Extension modules
1003-----------------
1004
1005- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1006 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1007 than once. This has been fixed.
1008
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001009- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1010 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1011 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1012 call.
1013
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001014- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1015
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001016Library
1017-------
1018
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001019- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1020 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1021
1022- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1023 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1024 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1025 restored.
1026
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001027IDLE
1028----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001029
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001030- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001031
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001032Build
1033-----
1034
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001035- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1036 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1037
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001038C API
1039-----
1040
1041Windows
1042-------
1043
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001044- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1045 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1046
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001047- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1048
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001049Mac
1050---
1051
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001052- Various fixes to pimp.
1053
1054- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1055
1056- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1057 more problems than it solves.
1058
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001059
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001060What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1061=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001062
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001063*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1064
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001065Core and builtins
1066-----------------
1067
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001068- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1069 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1070
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001071- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
1072 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001073 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001074
1075- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
1076 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
1077 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001078 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001079
1080- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
1081 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001082
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001083- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
1084 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
1085 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
1086
1087- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001088 770247.
1089
1090- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001091
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001092Extension modules
1093-----------------
1094
1095- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
1096 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
1097
1098- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
1099
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001100- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
1101
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00001102- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
1103 contained within the _strptime module.
1104
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001105- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
1106 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
1107
1108- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001109 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
1110
1111- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
1112 the find_class attribute, if present.
1113
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001114- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001115
1116 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
1117 (SF bug 763298).
1118
1119 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00001120 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
1121 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
1122 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001123
1124 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
1125
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001126Library
1127-------
1128
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001129- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
1130
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00001131- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
1132 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
1133 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
1134 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
1135 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
1136 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
1137 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
1138 or Tester().
1139
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001140- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
1141 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
1142 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
1143 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
1144 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
1145 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
1146 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
1147 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
1148 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00001149
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001150 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00001151
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00001152- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
1153 weren't before was an oversight.
1154
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001155- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
1156 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
1157
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00001158- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
1159 when there are no lines.
1160
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00001161- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
1162 which could occur with Tk 8.4
1163
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001164- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
1165 to child processes.
1166
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001167- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
1168
1169- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
1170
1171- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
1172 xmlrpclib.
1173
1174- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
1175 responses.
1176
1177- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
1178 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
1179
1180- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
1181 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
1182 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
1183
1184- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
1185 used as patterns.
1186
1187- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
1188 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
1189 than Tk 8.3.
1190
1191- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
1192
1193- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001194
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001195Tools/Demos
1196-----------
1197
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001198- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
1199
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00001200- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
1201
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001202- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001203
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001204Build
1205-----
1206
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001207- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
1208
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001209- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
1210
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001211- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
1212 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001213
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001214- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
1215 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
1216 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001217
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001218C API
1219-----
1220
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001221- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
1222 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
1223
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001224Windows
1225-------
1226
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001227- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
1228 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
1229 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
1230 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
1231 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
1232 Python exception ::
1233
1234 thread.error: can't start new thread
1235
1236 is raised now.
1237
1238- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
1239 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
1240 instead of from DLL teardown.
1241
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001242Mac
1243---
1244
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001245- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00001246 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001247 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
1248 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
1249 the executable in the bundle.
1250
1251- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001252
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00001253- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
1254
1255- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
1256 on Panther.
1257
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001258What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
1259================================
1260
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001261*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001262
1263Core and builtins
1264-----------------
1265
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00001266- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
1267 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
1268 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
1269 with the -i option.
1270
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00001271- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
1272 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
1273
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001274- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
1275 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
1276
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00001277- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
1278 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
1279 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
1280 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
1281 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
1282 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
1283 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
1284 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
1285 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
1286 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
1287 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
1288 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
1289 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00001290
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001291- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
1292 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
1293 embedded in a lambda expression.
1294
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00001295- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
1296 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
1297 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
1298 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
1299 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
1300
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001301- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
1302 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
1303 matches the restriction on classic classes.
1304
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00001305- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
1306 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
1307
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00001308- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
1309 It's writable again.
1310
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001311- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
1312 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
1313 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001314 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001315
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001316- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
1317 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
1318 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
1319
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001320Extension modules
1321-----------------
1322
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00001323- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
1324 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
1325
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001326- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
1327 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
1328 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
1329 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
1330
1331- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
1332 collection.
1333
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00001334- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
1335 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
1336 unique within a single program run.
1337
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00001338- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
1339 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
1340
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00001341- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
1342 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
1343
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00001344- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
1345 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00001346
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00001347- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
1348
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00001349- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
1350 Fixes SF bug #730685.
1351
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00001352- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
1353 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
1354 for many BSD-derived systems.
1355
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001356
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001357Library
1358-------
1359
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00001360- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
1361 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
1362 primary ones:
1363
1364 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
1365 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
1366 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
1367
1368 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
1369 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
1370 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
1371 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
1372 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
1373 framework features (which doctest lacks).
1374
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00001375- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
1376 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
1377 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
1378 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
1379 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
1380 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
1381 argument.
1382
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001383- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
1384 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
1385 in the archive.
1386
1387- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
1388 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
1389
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00001390- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
1391 569574).
1392
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001393- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
1394 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
1395 no more.
1396
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001397- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
1398 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
1399 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
1400 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
1401 code coverage.
1402
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001403- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
1404 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
1405 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001406 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
1407 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001408
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001409- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
1410 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
1411 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00001412 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001413
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00001414- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
1415
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00001416- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
1417 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
1418 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
1419 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
1420
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00001421- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
1422 handling.
1423
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00001424- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
1425 __doc__ of data descriptors.
1426
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00001427- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
1428 in socket.py.
1429
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00001430- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
1431
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00001432- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
1433 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
1434 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
1435 opener with proxy support.
1436
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001437- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
1438
1439- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
1440
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001441Tools/Demos
1442-----------
1443
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00001444- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
1445
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001446- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
1447
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001448- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
1449 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00001450
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00001451- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
1452 files.
1453
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001454Build
1455-----
1456
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001457- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00001458 different root directory.
1459
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001460C API
1461-----
1462
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00001463- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
1464 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
1465 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
1466 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
1467 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
1468 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
1469 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
1470 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
1471 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
1472 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
1473
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001474- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
1475 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
1476 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
1477 from Python.
1478
1479
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001480New platforms
1481-------------
1482
1483None this time.
1484
1485Tests
1486-----
1487
1488- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
1489 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
1490
1491Windows
1492-------
1493
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00001494- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
1495
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00001496- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
1497 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
1498 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
1499 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
1500 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
1501 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
1502 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
1503 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
1504 that's what it's for.
1505
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001506Mac
1507---
1508
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00001509- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
1510 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
1511 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
1512 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00001513- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
1514 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
1515- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001516
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001517SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
1518------------------------------------
1519
1520430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
1521598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
1522622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
1523661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
1524683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
1525697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
1526713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
1527724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
1528727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
1529729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
1530730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
1531731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
1532732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
1533733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
1534735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
1535740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
1536744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
1537745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
1538747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
1539749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
1540751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
1541753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
1542755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
1543757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
1544760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
1545
1546
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001547What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
1548================================
1549
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00001550*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001551
1552Core and builtins
1553-----------------
1554
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00001555- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
1556 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
1557
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00001558- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
1559 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
1560 and cannot be strings).
1561
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00001562- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
1563 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
1564 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
1565 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
1566
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00001567- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
1568 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
1569 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
1570 Python itself.
1571
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00001572- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
1573 the referenced object, if it has one.
1574
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00001575- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
1576 the thread started at
1577 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
1578
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00001579- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
1580 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
1581 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
1582 placed on a list index.
1583
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00001584- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
1585 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
1586 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
1587 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
1588
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001589- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
1590 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
1591 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
1592 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
1593 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
1594 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
1595 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
1596
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00001597- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
1598 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
1599 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
1600 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
1601 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
1602
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00001603- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
1604 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00001605
1606- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
1607 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
1608 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
1609 #693195.)
1610
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00001611- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
1612 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001613
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00001614- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00001615 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00001616 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
1617 interpreter executions, would fail.
1618
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00001619- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00001620 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00001621 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00001622
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001623Extension modules
1624-----------------
1625
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00001626- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
1627 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
1628 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
1629 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
1630
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00001631- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
1632 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
1633
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00001634- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
1635 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
1636 and Greg Chapman.)
1637
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00001638- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
1639 recursively.
1640
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00001641- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00001642 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
1643 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
1644 leaks.
1645
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00001646- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
1647
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00001648- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
1649 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
1650 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
1651 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
1652 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
1653 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
1654 #705836.
1655
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001656- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00001657 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
1658
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00001659- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
1660 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
1661 See SF bug #692416.
1662
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00001663- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
1664 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
1665
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00001666- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
1667 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
1668 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001669
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00001670- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00001671 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
1672 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
1673
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00001674- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
1675 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
1676 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
1677 timeouts to work properly.
1678
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001679Library
1680-------
1681
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00001682- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
1683 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
1684 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
1685 future release.
1686
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00001687- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
1688 for querying platform dependent features.
1689
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00001690- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00001691
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00001692- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
1693 pickle protocol versions.
1694
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00001695- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
1696 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
1697 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
1698
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00001699- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
1700
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00001701- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
1702 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
1703 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
1704 modules.
1705
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00001706- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
1707 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
1708 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
1709
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00001710- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
1711 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
1712
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00001713- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
1714 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
1715 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
1716
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001717- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00001718 MS Office extensions.
1719
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00001720- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
1721 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
1722
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00001723- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
1724 execution speed of expressions and statements.
1725
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001726- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
1727 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
1728 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
1729 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
1730 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
1731 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
1732
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00001733- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
1734 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
1735 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001736
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00001737- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
1738 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
1739 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
1740
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00001741- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
1742
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00001743- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
1744 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
1745 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
1746
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001747Tools/Demos
1748-----------
1749
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00001750- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
1751 See the module docstring for details.
1752
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001753Build
1754-----
1755
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00001756- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
1757 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001758
1759C API
1760-----
1761
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001762- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
1763
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00001764- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
1765 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
1766 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
1767
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001768- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
1769 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00001770
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001771 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
1772 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
1773 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00001774
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00001775- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00001776 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
1777
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00001778- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
1779 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
1780 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001781
1782New platforms
1783-------------
1784
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00001785None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001786
1787Tests
1788-----
1789
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00001790- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
1791 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001792
1793Windows
1794-------
1795
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00001796- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
1797 function.
1798
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00001799- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
1800 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001801
1802Mac
1803---
1804
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00001805- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
1806 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00001807
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00001808- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
1809 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001810
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00001811- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
1812 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
1813 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001814
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00001815- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00001816 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
1817 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001818
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00001819- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
1820 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001821
1822
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001823What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
1824=================================
1825
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00001826*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001827
1828Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00001829-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001830
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00001831- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
1832 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
1833 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
1834
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00001835- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
1836 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
1837 (SF patch #664376.)
1838
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00001839- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
1840 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
1841 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
1842 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
1843 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
1844 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00001845 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00001846
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00001847- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
1848 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
1849 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
1850 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001851 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00001852
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00001853- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
1854 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
1855 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
1856 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
1857 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
1858 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
1859 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
1860 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
1861 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
1862 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
1863 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
1864
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00001865- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
1866 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
1867 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
1868 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
1869 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
1870 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
1871
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00001872- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
1873 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
1874
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00001875- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
1876 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
1877 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
1878 case.)
1879
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00001880- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
1881 passed as unicode strings.
1882
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00001883- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
1884 See SF bug #683467.
1885
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00001886- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
1887 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
1888
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00001889- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
1890
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00001891- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
1892
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00001893- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
1894 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
1895 arguments.
1896
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00001897- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
1898 See SF bug #667147.
1899
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00001900- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001901 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00001902 See SF bug #676155.
1903
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00001904- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00001905 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00001906 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
1907 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
1908 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
1909 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
1910 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
1911 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00001912
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001913Extension modules
1914-----------------
1915
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00001916- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
1917 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
1918 tp_as_number pointer.
1919
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00001920- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
1921 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
1922 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
1923 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
1924 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
1925
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001926- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
1927
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00001928- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
1929
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00001930- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00001931 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00001932 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
1933 patch #678531.)
1934
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00001935- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
1936 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
1937
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00001938- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
1939 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
1940
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00001941- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
1942
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00001943- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
1944 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
1945 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
1946
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001947- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
1948
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00001949- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
1950 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
1951
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001952- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001953
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001954- datetime changes:
1955
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00001956 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
1957
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00001958 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
1959 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
1960 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
1961 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
1962 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
1963 now.
1964
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001965 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001966 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
1967 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001968
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001969 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001970 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001971 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
1972 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
1973 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
1974 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001975
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00001976 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
1977 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
1978 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001979 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
1980
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00001981 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
1982 by a later example coded by Guido.
1983
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001984 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001985 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
1986 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
1987 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001988 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
1989 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
1990
1991 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
1992 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
1993 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
1994 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
1995 tzinfo subclass instance.
1996
1997 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
1998 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
1999 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2000 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2001 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2002 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2003 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2004 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002005
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002006 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2007 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2008 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2009 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2010 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002011 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2012
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002013 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002014
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002015 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2016 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2017 as a naive datetime object.
2018
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002019 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2020 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2021 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2022
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002023 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2024 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2025 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2026 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2027 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2028 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2029 comparison.
2030
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002031 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2032 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2033 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2034 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002035 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002036
2037 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002038
2039 and ::
2040
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002041 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2042
2043 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2044 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2045 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2046 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2047
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002048 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2049 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2050 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2051 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2052 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2053
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002054 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2055 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002056 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2057 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002058
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002059Library
2060-------
2061
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002062- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2063 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2064
2065- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2066 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2067 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2068 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2069 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2070 See PEP 307 for details.
2071
2072- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
2073 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
2074
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002075- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
2076 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002077 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002078 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
2079 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002080 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002081
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00002082- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
2083 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
2084
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002085- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
2086 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
2087 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
2088
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00002089- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
2090
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00002091- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
2092 exception.
2093
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00002094- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
2095 class.
2096
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00002097- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
2098 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
2099 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
2100
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00002101- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
2102 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
2103
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002104- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00002105 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
2106 See SF bug #659228.
2107
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00002108- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
2109 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
2110 See SF patch #651082.
2111
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00002112- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002113
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00002114- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
2115 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
2116
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002117- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002118 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002119
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00002120- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
2121 DOS paths from other platforms.
2122
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002123Tools/Demos
2124-----------
2125
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002126- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
2127 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
2128 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
2129 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
2130 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
2131 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
2132 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
2133 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
2134 example:
2135
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00002136 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
2137 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002138
2139 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
2140
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002141
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002142Build
2143-----
2144
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002145- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
2146 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
2147 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002148 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
2149
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002150 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
2151
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00002152- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
2153 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
2154 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
2155 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
2156 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
2157 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
2158 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
2159 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
2160 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
2161
2162- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
2163 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
2164 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
2165 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
2166
2167- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
2168 from the Tools/scripts directory.
2169
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002170C API
2171-----
2172
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002173- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
2174 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00002175
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002176- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
2177 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2178 tp_as_number pointer.
2179
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00002180- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
2181 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
2182 (SF #681367)
2183
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00002184- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
2185 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
2186 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
2187 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00002188
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002189Tests
2190-----
2191
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00002192- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002193 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
2194 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
2195 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
2196 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
2197 pydoc.)
2198
2199- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
2200
2201- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002202
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002203Windows
2204-------
2205
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002206- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
2207 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
2208 time).
2209
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00002210- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
2211 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
2212
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002213- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
2214 release without strong cryptography.
2215
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002216- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002217 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002218
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002219- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
2220 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
2221
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002222Mac
2223---
2224
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002225- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
2226 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002227
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00002228- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
2229 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
2230 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002231
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002232- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
2233 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002234
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002235- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
2236 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
2237 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
2238 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002239
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002240- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00002241 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
2242 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
2243 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002244
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002245
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002246What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002247=================================
2248
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00002249*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002250
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002251Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002252--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002253
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00002254- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
2255
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002256- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
2257 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002258 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002259 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002260 a different meaning than before.
2261
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002262- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002263 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002264 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002265
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002266- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002267 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002268 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002269
2270- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
2271 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
2272 and deallocation.
2273
2274- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
2275 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
2276
2277- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
2278 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
2279 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
2280 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
2281 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
2282
2283- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
2284 now detected by the garbage collector.
2285
2286- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
2287 [SF bug 519621]
2288
2289- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
2290 identifier.
2291
2292- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
2293 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
2294 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
2295 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
2296 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
2297 [SF bug 563060]
2298
2299- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
2300 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
2301 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
2302 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
2303 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
2304
2305- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
2306 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
2307 not called. [SF bug #537450]
2308
2309- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
2310
2311- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
2312 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
2313 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
2314 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
2315 state of the slots would be lost.)
2316
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002317Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002318-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002319
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002320- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002321 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
2322 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
2323 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
2324 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002325 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
2326 Jython 2.1.
2327
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002328- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002329 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002330 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
2331 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
2332 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
2333 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
2334 these, see PEP 302.
2335
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002336- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
2337 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
2338 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
2339
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00002340- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
2341 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
2342 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
2343
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00002344- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
2345 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
2346 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
2347
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002348- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
2349 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
2350 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
2351 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
2352 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
2353 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
2354 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
2355 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
2356 releases or implementations.
2357
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002358- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002359 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
2360 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002361
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00002362- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
2363 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
2364
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002365- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
2366 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
2367 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
2368
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00002369- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
2370 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
2371
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002372- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
2373 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002374 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
2375 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002376
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00002377- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
2378 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
2379 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
2380 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
2381 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
2382
2383 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
2384 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
2385 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
2386 pattern.
2387
2388 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
2389 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
2390 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
2391 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
2392
2393 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
2394 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
2395 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
2396 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
2397 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
2398 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
2399
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00002400- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
2401 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
2402 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
2403 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
2404 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
2405 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
2406 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
2407 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00002408
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00002409- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
2410 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
2411 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
2412 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
2413 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002414 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
2415 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
2416 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
2417 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
2418 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
2419 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
2420 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002421
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00002422- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
2423 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
2424
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00002425- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
2426 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
2427 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
2428 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
2429 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
2430 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
2431 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
2432 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
2433 to Zack Weinberg!
2434
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00002435- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
2436 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
2437 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
2438 type. This has been fixed now.
2439
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00002440- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
2441 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
2442 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
2443
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002444- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
2445 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
2446 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
2447 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
2448 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
2449 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
2450 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
2451 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00002452 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002453
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00002454- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
2455 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
2456 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00002457
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002458- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
2459 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
2460 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
2461 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
2462 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
2463 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
2464 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
2465 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00002466 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002467 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
2468 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
2469
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00002470- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
2471 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
2472 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
2473 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
2474 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
2475 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
2476 this.)
2477
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002478- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
2479 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002480 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002481 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002482 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
2483 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00002484 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
2485 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002486
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002487- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
2488 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
2489 currently running.
2490
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00002491- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
2492 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
2493 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
2494 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
2495
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00002496- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
2497 as directory names.
2498
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00002499- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
2500 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
2501
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00002502- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
2503 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
2504
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00002505- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00002506 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
2507 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00002508
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00002509- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
2510 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
2511 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
2512 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
2513 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
2514
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00002515- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
2516 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
2517 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
2518 removed.
2519
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00002520- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
2521 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
2522 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
2523
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00002524- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
2525 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
2526 to __debug__.
2527
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00002528- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
2529 string to the left with zeros. For example,
2530 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
2531
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00002532- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
2533 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
2534 deprecated now.
2535
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00002536- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
2537 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
2538 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00002539
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00002540- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
2541 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
2542 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
2543 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
2544 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00002545
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00002546- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
2547 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
2548
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00002549- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
2550 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
2551 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002552 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00002553 is backward compatible.
2554
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00002555- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
2556 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
2557 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
2558 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
2559 could access a pointer to freed memory.
2560
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00002561- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
2562 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
2563 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
2564 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
2565 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
2566 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00002567
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00002568- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
2569 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
2570
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00002571- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
2572 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
2573
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00002574- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
2575 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
2576 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
2577 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
2578 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
2579
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00002580- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
2581 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
2582 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
2583
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002584- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00002585 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
2586
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00002587- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
2588 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
2589 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00002590
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00002591- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
2592 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
2593
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00002594- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
2595 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
2596 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
2597
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00002598- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
2599
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002600Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002601-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002602
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00002603- Added three operators to the operator module:
2604 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
2605 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
2606 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
2607
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00002608- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
2609
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002610- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
2611 archives.
2612
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00002613- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
2614 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
2615 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
2616
2617 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
2618
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00002619- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
2620 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
2621 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00002622 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00002623
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00002624- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
2625 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
2626 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
2627 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002628 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
2629 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
2630 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
2631 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00002632
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00002633- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
2634 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00002635
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00002636- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
2637
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00002638- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
2639 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
2640
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00002641- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
2642 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
2643 supported.
2644
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00002645- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
2646
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00002647- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
2648 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00002649
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00002650- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
2651 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
2652
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002653- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
2654
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00002655- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
2656 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
2657
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00002658- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
2659 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
2660 functions but callable type objects.
2661
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002662- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00002663 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002664 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00002665
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00002666- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
2667 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00002668
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00002669- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
2670 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00002671
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00002672- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
2673 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
2674 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
2675 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
2676
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00002677- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
2678 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00002679
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00002680- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
2681 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
2682 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
2683 and __imul__.
2684
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00002685- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00002686 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
2687 is called.
2688
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00002689- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
2690 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
2691 interpreter was compiled.
2692
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00002693- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
2694 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
2695 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00002696 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00002697 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
2698 1, not 2.
2699
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00002700- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
2701 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
2702 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
2703 limit.
2704
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00002705- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
2706 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
2707 bug #623464.
2708
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00002709- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
2710 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
2711 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
2712 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
2713
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002714Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002715-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002716
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00002717- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
2718
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00002719- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
2720 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
2721 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
2722 with Python 2.3a2.
2723
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00002724- os.path exposes getctime.
2725
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002726- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002727 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002728 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002729 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002730 unit tests of floating point results.
2731
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00002732- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
2733 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
2734 has been increased.
2735
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002736- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
2737 executed.
2738
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00002739- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
2740 postinstallation script.
2741
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00002742- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
2743 test the current module.
2744
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002745- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00002746 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
2747 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
2748 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
2749 this behavior needs to be controlled.
2750
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00002751- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002752 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00002753 Ward's Optik package.
2754
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00002755- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
2756 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
2757 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
2758 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
2759
2760- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
2761 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002762 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00002763
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00002764- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
2765 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
2766 shelf are binary pickles.
2767
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00002768- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
2769 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
2770
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00002771- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
2772 modules are iterators now.
2773
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00002774- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
2775 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
2776 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
2777 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
2778 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
2779 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00002780
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00002781- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
2782 with their entity value.
2783
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00002784- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
2785
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00002786- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
2787 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00002788
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00002789- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
2790 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00002791 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00002792
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00002793- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
2794 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
2795 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
2796 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
2797 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
2798 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
2799 main():
2800
2801 import locale
2802 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
2803
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00002804- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
2805 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
2806
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00002807- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
2808 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
2809 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
2810 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
2811 to the new standard.
2812
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00002813- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
2814 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
2815 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
2816 an extension to the database.
2817
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00002818- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
2819 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
2820 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
2821 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00002822 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00002823
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00002824- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002825 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00002826
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002827- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
2828 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
2829 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
2830 bounded integers.
2831
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00002832- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
2833 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
2834 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
2835 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
2836 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
2837 in existence.
2838
2839 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
2840 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
2841 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
2842 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
2843 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
2844 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
2845
2846 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
2847 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
2848 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
2849 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
2850
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00002851- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
2852 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
2853 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
2854
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00002855- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
2856
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00002857- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
2858 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
2859 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
2860 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
2861
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00002862- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
2863 argument.
2864
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00002865- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
2866 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
2867 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
2868 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
2869 [SF patch 560794].
2870
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00002871- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
2872 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
2873 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00002874 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
2875 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
2876 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00002877
2878- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
2879 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00002880
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00002881- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
2882 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
2883 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
2884 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00002885
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00002886- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
2887 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
2888 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
2889 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
2890 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
2891
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00002892- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00002893
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00002894- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
2895
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00002896- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
2897 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
2898 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
2899 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
2900 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
2901 identical to None.
2902
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00002903- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
2904 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
2905 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
2906 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
2907 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
2908 results now.
2909
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00002910- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
2911 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
2912
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002913- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
2914 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
2915 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
2916 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
2917 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
2918 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
2919 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
2920 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
2921
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00002922- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
2923
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00002924- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
2925 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
2926
2927- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
2928 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
2929 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
2930 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
2931 and other systems.
2932
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00002933- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
2934 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
2935 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
2936 UTF-16 is a 2-byte encoding and the C lib's line reading APIs don't
Marc-André Lemburg4179a012002-04-05 12:15:05 +00002937 work well with these.
2938
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00002939- compileall now supports quiet operation.
2940
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002941- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00002942 connections.
2943
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00002944- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
2945 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
2946 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
2947
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00002948- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
2949 sets
2950
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00002951- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
2952 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
2953 name.
2954
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00002955- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
2956 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
2957 passed in.
2958
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002959- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00002960 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00002961 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
2962 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00002963
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00002964- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
2965
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00002966- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
2967
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00002968- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
2969 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
2970 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
2971
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00002972- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
2973 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
2974 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
2975 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00002976 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00002977
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002978- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00002979 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002980 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00002981
2982- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
2983 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
2984 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
2985
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002986- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00002987 the value of its expression argument.
2988
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00002989- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
2990 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
2991 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
2992
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00002993- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
2994 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
2995 skipstone browser was included.
2996
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00002997- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
2998 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
2999
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003000Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003001-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003002
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003003- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3004 names in addition to accepting file names.
3005
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003006- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3007 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3008 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3009 still used and useful.)
3010
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003011- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3012 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3013 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3014 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003015
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003016- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3017 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3018 the generated binary.
3019
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003020Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003021-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003022
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003023- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3024
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003025- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3026 except in the hands of experts.
3027
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003028- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003029 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3030 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3031 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003032
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003033- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3034 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3035 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3036 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3037 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3038 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3039 builds.
3040
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003041- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3042 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3043 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3044 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3045 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3046 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3047 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3048 new type.
3049
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003050- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003051
3052 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3053 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3054 positive infinities.
3055
3056 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3057 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3058 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3059 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3060 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3061 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3062 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3063
3064 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3065
3066 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3067
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003068- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3069 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3070 size of the executable.
3071
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003072- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
3073 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
3074 configure script. On other platforms, remove
3075 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00003076
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00003077- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
3078
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00003079- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
3080 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
3081 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00003082
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00003083- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
3084 well as Unix.
3085
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00003086- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
3087 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
3088 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
3089 modules in the README file for details.
3090
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003091C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003092-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003093
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003094- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
3095 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003096 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00003097 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003098 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003099
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003100- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
3101 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
3102 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
3103 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
3104 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
3105 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003106 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003107 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
3108 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
3109 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
3110 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
3111 aligned.)
3112
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00003113- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
3114 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
3115 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
3116
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003117- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
3118 level.
3119
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00003120- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
3121 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
3122 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
3123 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
3124 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
3125
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00003126- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
3127 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
3128 code.
3129
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00003130- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
3131 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
3132 adjusting for negative indices.
3133
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003134- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
3135 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
3136 object.
3137
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00003138- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
3139 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
3140 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
3141
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003142- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
3143 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00003144
3145- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
3146
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00003147- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
3148 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
3149 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
3150 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
3151
3152- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
3153
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00003154- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003155
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003156- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00003157 without going through the buffer API.
3158
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003159- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00003160
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00003161- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
3162 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
3163 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
3164 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
3165
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003166- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
3167 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
3168
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003169- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003170 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
3171
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003172New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003173-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003174
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00003175- OpenVMS is now supported.
3176
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00003177- AtheOS is now supported.
3178
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00003179- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
3180
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00003181- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
3182
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003183Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003184-----
3185
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00003186- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
3187 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
3188 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003189
3190Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003191-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003192
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003193- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
3194 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
3195 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
3196 bugs.
3197 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003198 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00003199 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
3200 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003201 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003202
3203- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00003204 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003205
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00003206- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
3207 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
3208
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003209- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
3210 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003211 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003212 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
3213
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00003214- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
3215 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
3216 use files" uninstall option).
3217
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00003218- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
3219
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003220- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
3221 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
3222
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003223- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
3224 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
3225 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
3226
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003227- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
3228 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
3229 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
3230 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
3231 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003232 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
3233 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
3234 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003235
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003236- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003237 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003238 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
3239 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
3240 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
3241 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
3242 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
3243 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
3244 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
3245 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
3246 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
3247 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
3248 work around.
3249
3250- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
3251 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
3252 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
3253 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
3254 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
3255 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
3256 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
3257 specified with O_CREAT too).
3258
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003259Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003260----
3261
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003262- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003263
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00003264- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
3265 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
3266 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
3267
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003268- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
3269 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
3270 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
3271
3272- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
3273 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
3274 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
3275 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
3276 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
3277 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
3278 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
3279 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003280
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00003281- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
3282 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
3283 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003284
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003285- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
3286 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
3287 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
3288 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
3289 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003290
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003291- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
3292 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
3293 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003294
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003295- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
3296 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003297
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003298- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
3299 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
3300 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
3301 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
3302 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003303
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003304- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
3305 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
3306 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
3307
3308- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
3309 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
3310 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003311
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003312- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
3313 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
3314 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
3315 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003316 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003317
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003318- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
3319 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003320
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003321- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
3322 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003323
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003324- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00003325 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003326 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
3327 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003328
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003329
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003330What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003331===============================
3332
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003333*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
3334
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003335Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003336--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003337
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003338- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
3339 with a custom metaclass.
3340
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003341Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003342-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003343
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003344- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
3345 are proxies.
3346
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003347Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003348-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003349
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003350- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
3351 very short strings.
3352
3353- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
3354 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
3355 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
3356 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
3357 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
3358
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003359Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003360-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003361
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003362- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
3363 close or delete time).
3364
3365- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
3366 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
3367
3368- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
3369
3370- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003371 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003372
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003373Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003374-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003375
3376Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003377-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003378
3379C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003380-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003381
3382New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003383-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003384
3385Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003386-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003387
3388Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003389-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003390
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003391- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
3392
3393- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
3394 instances are deleted at process exit time.
3395
3396- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
3397 deleted at process exit time.
3398
3399- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
3400 in backslash.
3401
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003402Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003403----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003404
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003405- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
3406 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
3407 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
3408
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003409
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00003410What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003411===========================
3412
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003413*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
3414
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003415Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003416--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003417
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003418- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
3419 been extensively updated. See
3420
3421 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
3422
3423 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
3424
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00003425- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
3426 deleted!
3427
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00003428- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
3429 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
3430 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
3431 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
3432 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
3433
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003434- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
3435
3436 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
3437 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
3438
3439 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
3440 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
3441 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
3442 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
3443 supported anyway.
3444
3445 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
3446 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
3447
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00003448- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
3449 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
3450 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
3451 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
3452 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003453
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00003454- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
3455 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
3456 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
3457
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003458Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003459-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003460
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003461- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
3462 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
3463 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
3464 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
3465 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
3466 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00003467 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
3468 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
3469 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
3470 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003471
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00003472- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
3473 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
3474 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
3475
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003476Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003477-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003478
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00003479- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
3480
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003481Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003482-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003483
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00003484- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
3485 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
3486 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
3487 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
3488 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
3489 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
3490
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00003491- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
3492
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00003493- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
3494
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00003495- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
3496
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003497- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
3498 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
3499 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
3500
3501- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
3502
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003503Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003504-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003505
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003506- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
3507 off a search on Google.
3508
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003509Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003510-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003511
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003512- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
3513 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
3514 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
3515 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
3516 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
3517 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
3518 other platforms should do likewise.
3519
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00003520- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
3521 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
3522 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
3523
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003524C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003525-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003526
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00003527- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
3528 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
3529 producing key-value pairs.
3530
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00003531- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00003532 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00003533 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
3534 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
3535 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
3536 previously went unchallenged.
3537
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003538New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003539-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003540
3541Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003542-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003543
3544Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003545-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003546
3547Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003548----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003549
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00003550- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
3551 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003552
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003553- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
3554 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
3555 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
3556 home.
3557
3558
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003559What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003560===========================
3561
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003562*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
3563
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003564Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003565--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003566
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00003567- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
3568 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003569
3570 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00003571 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003572
3573 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
3574 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003575 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003576 This needs to be documented.
3577
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00003578- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
3579 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
3580
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00003581- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
3582 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
3583 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
3584
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00003585- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
3586 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
3587
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003588- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
3589 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
3590 class forbids it).
3591
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00003592- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
3593 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
3594 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
3595
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003596- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
3597
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003598Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003599-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003600
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00003601- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
3602 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003603 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00003604
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003605- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
3606 (like 1 + '').
3607
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003608Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003609-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003610
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003611- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
3612 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
3613 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
3614 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003615 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003616 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
3617
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00003618- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
3619 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
3620 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
3621 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
3622
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003623- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
3624 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003625 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
3626 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
3627 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003628
3629- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
3630 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00003631
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00003632- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
3633 bytes on its input.
3634
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003635Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003636-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003637
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003638- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00003639 convenience function.
3640
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00003641- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
3642 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
3643 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003644 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
3645 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
3646 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
3647 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
3648 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
3649 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00003650
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00003651- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
3652 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
3653 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
3654 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
3655
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00003656- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
3657 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
3658 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
3659
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00003660- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
3661 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
3662 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
3663 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
3664
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003665- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
3666 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003667 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003668 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
3669 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
3670 new -l and -e options.
3671
3672- statcache is now deprecated.
3673
3674- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
3675 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003676 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003677 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
3678 time properly taken into account.
3679
3680- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
3681 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
3682 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
3683 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
3684
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003685Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003686-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003687
3688Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003689-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003690
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003691- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
3692 is built with libdb3 if available.
3693
3694- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
3695
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003696C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003697-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003698
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00003699- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
3700 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
3701 PySequence_Size().
3702
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003703- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
3704
3705- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
3706 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
3707 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
3708
3709- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
3710 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
3711
3712- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
3713 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
3714
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003715New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003716-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003717
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003718- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
3719 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
3720
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00003721- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
3722 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
3723
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00003724- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
3725
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003726Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003727-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003728
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00003729- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
3730 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
3731
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003732Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003733-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003734
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003735Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003736----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003737
3738- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
3739 removed completely in the next release.
3740
3741- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
3742 OSX.
3743
3744- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
3745 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
3746
3747- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
3748
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003749
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003750What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003751===========================
3752
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003753*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
3754
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003755Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003756--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003757
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003758- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003759 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003760 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003761 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
3762 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003763 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
3764 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003765 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
3766 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00003767
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00003768- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
3769 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
3770
3771- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
3772 class methods, static methods, and properties.
3773
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003774Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003775-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003776
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00003777- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
3778 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
3779 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
3780 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
3781 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
3782 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
3783 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
3784 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
3785
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003786- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
3787 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
3788 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
3789 example).
3790
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003791- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00003792 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003793 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003794 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00003795
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003796- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
3797 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
3798 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00003799 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003800
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003801- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
3802 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
3803 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
3804 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
3805 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
3806 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
3807
3808 isinstance(x, (A, B))
3809
3810 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
3811
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003812Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003813-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003814
3815- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
3816
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00003817- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
3818
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00003819- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
3820 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00003821
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00003822- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
3823 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
3824 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
3825 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
3826 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
3827 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00003828 attributes.
3829
3830- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
3831 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
3832 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00003833
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003834- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
3835 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
3836 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003837
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00003838- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
3839 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
3840 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003841 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
3842 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
3843
3844- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
3845 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00003846
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003847Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003848-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00003849
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00003850- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
3851 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
3852
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003853- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
3854 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
3855 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
3856 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
3857
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00003858- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
3859 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
3860 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
3861 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
3862
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00003863 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
3864 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
3865 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
3866 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
3867 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
3868 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
3869 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
3870 without losing information).
3871
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00003872- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00003873 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
3874 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
3875 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
3876 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
3877 module).
3878
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003879 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00003880 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
3881 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
3882 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
3883 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00003884
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00003885- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00003886 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
3887 encoding.
3888
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00003889- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
3890 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
3891
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003892- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003893 to allow saving the message body to a file.
3894
3895- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
3896 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
3897 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
3898 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
3899
3900- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
3901
3902- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
3903 ON, and OFF.
3904
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003905- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
3906 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
3907
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00003908Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003909-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00003910
3911- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
3912 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
3913 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003914
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003915- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
3916 been added: -X and -E.
3917
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003918Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003919-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003920
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003921- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
3922 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
3923
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003924C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003925-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003926
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00003927- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
3928 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
3929 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
3930 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
3931 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
3932
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00003933- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
3934 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
3935 as long) arguments.
3936
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00003937- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
3938 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
3939 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
3940 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
3941 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
3942 report any bugs or strange behavior).
3943
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003944- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
3945 input.
3946
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003947New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003948-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003949
3950Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003951-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003952
3953Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003954-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003955
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00003956- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
3957 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
3958 is created for .py and .pyw files.
3959
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003960- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
3961 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
3962 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003963 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003964
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003965 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
3966 # (SIGINT) behavior.
3967 import signal
3968 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003969
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003970 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003971 while 1:
3972 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003973 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003974 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
3975 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
3976 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
3977 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003978
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003979
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003980What's New in Python 2.2a4?
3981===========================
3982
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003983*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
3984
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003985Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003986--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003987
3988- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
3989 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
3990 documentation for all operations on list objects.
3991
3992- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
3993 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
3994 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
3995 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
3996 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
3997 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
3998 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003999
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004000- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004001 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004002 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4003 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4004 associate a docstring with a property.
4005
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004006- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4007 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4008 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4009 other built-in object types.
4010
4011- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4012 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4013 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4014 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4015 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4016
4017- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4018 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4019
4020- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4021 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004022 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004023 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4024 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4025 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4026 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4027 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4028
4029- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4030 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4031 class.
4032
4033- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4034 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4035 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4036 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4037
4038- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4039 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4040 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4041 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4042
4043- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4044 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4045
4046- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4047 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4048 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4049 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4050 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004051 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004052 with the same value as s.
4053
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004054- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4055
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004056Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004057----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004058
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004059- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4060
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004061- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4062 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4063 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4064 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4065 objects.
4066
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004067- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4068 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004069 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4070 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
4071
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004072- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
4073 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
4074 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
4075
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004076Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004077-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004078
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00004079- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4080 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
4081 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
4082 by the instances.
4083
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00004084- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
4085 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
4086 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
4087
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004088- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
4089 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
4090 before the entire comparison is complete.
4091
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00004092- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4093 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
4094 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
4095
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00004096- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
4097 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
4098 getwriter().
4099
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004100- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
4101 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
4102
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00004103- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004104 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
4105 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
4106
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00004107- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
4108 iterable object.
4109
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004110- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
4111 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004112
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004113- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
4114 authentication.
4115
4116- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
4117 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004118
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004119- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00004120 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
4121 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
4122 a sample driver.)
4123
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004124Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004125-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004126
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004127- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
4128 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
4129 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
4130 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
4131 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
4132 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
4133 kernel has large file support.
4134
4135- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
4136 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
4137 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
4138 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
4139 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
4140
4141- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
4142 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
4143 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
4144
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004145C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004146-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004147
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004148- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
4149 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
4150
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004151New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004152-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004153
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004154- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
4155 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
4156
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004157Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004158-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004159
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004160- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
4161 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
4162 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
4163 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
4164 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
4165
4166- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
4167 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
4168 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
4169 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
4170
4171- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
4172 especially in regard to reporting errors.
4173
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004174Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004175-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004176
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004177- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004178 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
4179 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004180
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004181
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004182What's New in Python 2.2a3?
4183===========================
4184
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004185*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
4186
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004187Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004188----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004189
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004190- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
4191 big to represent as a C double.
4192
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00004193- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
4194 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
4195 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
4196 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
4197 restriction).
4198
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00004199- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
4200 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
4201 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
4202 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
4203 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
4204
4205 >>> dir([])
4206 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
4207 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
4208 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
4209 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
4210 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
4211 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
4212 'reverse', 'sort']
4213
4214 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
4215
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004216- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004217 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
4218 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
4219 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
4220 OverflowError exception.
4221
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00004222- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004223 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004224 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
4225 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
4226 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
4227 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
4228 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004229 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004230 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
4231 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
4232
4233 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
4234 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
4235 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
4236 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004237
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004238- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004239 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
4240 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
4241 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
4242 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
4243 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
4244 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
4245 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
4246 once it is created.
4247
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00004248- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
4249 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
4250 (key, value) pairs.
4251
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004252- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004253 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
4254 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
4255
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00004256- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
4257 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
4258 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
4259 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
4260 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004261
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004262- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004263 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
4264 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
4265
4266 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
4267
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004268- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00004269 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
4270
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004271Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004272-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004273
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004274- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00004275 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
4276 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004277
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00004278- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
4279 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
4280 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
4281 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
4282 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
4283 in this area anymore).
4284
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00004285- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
4286 threading.Timer.
4287
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00004288- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
4289 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
4290
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004291- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004292 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
4293
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004294- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00004295 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
4296 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
4297 converted to Python longs.
4298
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004299- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004300 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
4301
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00004302- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
4303 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
4304 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
4305
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004306Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004307-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004308
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004309- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
4310 division operators as per PEP 238.
4311
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004312Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004313-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004314
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004315- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
4316 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
4317 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
4318 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
4319
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004320C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004321-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004322
4323- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004324
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004325- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
4326 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004327 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004328
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004329 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
4330 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004331 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004332 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004333
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004334- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004335 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
4336 module:
4337
4338 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004339
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004340 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
4341 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004342
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004343 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
4344 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004345
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004346 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
4347
4348 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
4349
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004350- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004351 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
4352 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
4353 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004354
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004355New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004356-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004357
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00004358- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
4359 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
4360 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
4361 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
4362 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004363
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004364Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004365-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004366
4367Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004368-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004369
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004370- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
4371 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
4372 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
4373 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00004374 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
4375 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
4376 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
4377 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
4378 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004379
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004380- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00004381 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
4382
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004383
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004384What's New in Python 2.2a2?
4385===========================
4386
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004387*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
4388
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004389Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004390-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004391
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00004392- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
4393 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
4394
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004395- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
4396 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
4397 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004398
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00004399- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
4400 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
4401 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
4402 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004403
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004404- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
4405
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004406- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004407
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004408Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004409-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004410
4411- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00004412 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004413 the module docstring for details.
4414
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004415Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004416-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004417
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004418- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004419 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
4420 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
4421 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004422
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004423- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
4424 Nick Mathewson.
4425
4426Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004427----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004428
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004429- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
4430 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
4431 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
4432 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
4433 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
4434 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
4435 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
4436 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
4437
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00004438- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
4439 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
4440 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
4441 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
4442
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00004443- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
4444 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
4445 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
4446 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
4447 come a long way).
4448
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004449- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
4450 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
4451 write filters for these warnings).
4452
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00004453- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
4454 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
4455 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
4456 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
4457 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
4458
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00004459- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
4460 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
4461 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
4462 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
4463 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
4464 older distribution.
4465
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004466Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004467-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004468
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004469- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
4470 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004471 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004472
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004473- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
4474 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
4475 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
4476
4477- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
4478
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004479- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
4480
4481- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
4482
4483- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
4484
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004485- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004486
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004487- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
4488
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004489New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004490-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004491
4492C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004493-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004494
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004495- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
4496 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
4497 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
4498 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
4499 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
4500 against buffer overruns.
4501
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00004502- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004503 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
4504 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00004505 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
4506 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
4507 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
4508
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004509- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
4510 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
4511 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
4512 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
4513 deprecated.
4514
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004515Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004516-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004517
4518- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
4519 relevant is found.
4520
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004521
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004522What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004523===========================
4524
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004525*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
4526
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004527Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004528----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004529
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00004530- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
4531 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
4532 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
4533 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
4534 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
4535 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
4536 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
4537 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004538 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00004539 repaired.
4540
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004541- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00004542 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004543 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
4544 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
4545 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
4546 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
4547 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
4548 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
4549 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
4550 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
4551
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00004552- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
4553 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
4554 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
4555 leading BMO character).
4556
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004557- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
4558 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
4559 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
4560
4561 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
4562 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
4563 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004564
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004565 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
4566 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
4567 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
4568 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
4569 for various simple to use conversions.
4570
4571 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
4572 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
4573
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004574 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4575 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
4576 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
4577 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
4578 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4579 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
4580 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4581 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
4582 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4583 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
4584 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4585 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
4586 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4587 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
4588 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004589
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004590- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
4591 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
4592 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004593 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004594 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004595
4596 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004597 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
4598 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
4599 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
4600 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
4601 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004602 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
4603 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004604
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004605 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
4606 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
4607 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004608 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004609
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00004610- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
4611 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
4612 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
4613 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
4614 floating arithmetic,
4615
4616 x = 9007199254740992.0
4617 print long(x)
4618
4619 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
4620 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
4621 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
4622 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
4623 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
4624 functions are of good quality).
4625
4626 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
4627 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
4628 algorithms to break.
4629
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00004630- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
4631 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
4632 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
4633 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
4634 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
4635 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
4636 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
4637 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
4638 order.
4639
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004640- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
4641 operation along the most common code paths.
4642
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00004643- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
4644 the same as dict.has_key(x).
4645
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00004646- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
4647 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
4648 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
4649 {}.update(UserDict())
4650
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00004651- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
4652 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
4653 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
4654 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
4655 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
4656 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
4657 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
4658 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
4659
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004660- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004661 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004662
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00004663 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00004664 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
4665 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00004666 join() method of strings
4667 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00004668 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
4669 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004670 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00004671 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00004672
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00004673- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
4674 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
4675
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00004676- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
4677 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
4678
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00004679- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
4680 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
4681 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
4682 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
4683
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004684- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
4685 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004686 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004687 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
4688 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00004689
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00004690- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
4691
4692
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004693Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004694-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004695
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00004696- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004697 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00004698 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
4699 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
4700
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00004701- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
4702 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
4703
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00004704- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
4705 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
4706 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
4707 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
4708
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00004709- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
4710 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
4711 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
4712
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00004713- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
4714
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00004715- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
4716
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00004717- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
4718 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
4719 that are still imported into string.py).
4720
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004721- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
4722
4723- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
4724 Now it does.
4725
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00004726- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
4727
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00004728- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
4729 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
4730 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
4731 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
4732 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004733 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
4734 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00004735
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00004736- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
4737 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
4738 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
4739 'help(object)'.
4740
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004741Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004742-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004743
4744- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004745 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004746 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
4747 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
4748
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004749- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00004750 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
4751 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004752
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00004753C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004754-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00004755
4756- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
4757 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004758
4759----
4760
4761**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**