blob: d2dfbec7d1b32ac1eda522ecb0bcda3e3e709c71 [file] [log] [blame]
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00001What's New in Python 2.1 alpha 1?
2=================================
3
4Core language, builtins, and interpreter
5
Martin v. Löwisbe4c0f52001-01-04 20:30:56 +00006- The interpreter accepts now bytecode files on the command line even
7 if they do not have a .pyc or .pyo extension. On Linux, after executing
8
9 echo ':pyc:M::\x87\xc6\x0d\x0a::/usr/local/bin/python:' > /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register
10
11 any byte code file can be used as an executable (i.e. as an argument
12 to execve(2)).
13
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +000014- %[xXo] formats of negative Python longs now produce a sign
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +000015 character. In 1.6 and earlier, they never produced a sign,
16 and raised an error if the value of the long was too large
17 to fit in a Python int. In 2.0, they produced a sign if and
18 only if too large to fit in an int. This was inconsistent
19 across platforms (because the size of an int varies across
20 platforms), and inconsistent with hex() and oct(). Example:
21
22 >>> "%x" % -0x42L
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +000023 '-42' # in 2.1
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +000024 'ffffffbe' # in 2.0 and before, on 32-bit machines
25 >>> hex(-0x42L)
26 '-0x42L' # in all versions of Python
27
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +000028 The behavior of %d formats for negative Python longs remains
29 the same as in 2.0 (although in 1.6 and before, they raised
30 an error if the long didn't fit in a Python int).
31
32 %u formats don't make sense for Python longs, but are allowed
33 and treated the same as %d in 2.1. In 2.0, a negative long
34 formatted via %u produced a sign if and only if too large to
35 fit in an int. In 1.6 and earlier, a negative long formatted
36 via %u raised an error if it was too big to fit in an int.
37
Guido van Rossum3661d392000-12-12 22:10:31 +000038- Dictionary objects have an odd new method, popitem(). This removes
39 an arbitrary item from the dictionary and returns it (in the form of
40 a (key, value) pair). This can be useful for algorithms that use a
41 dictionary as a bag of "to do" items and repeatedly need to pick one
42 item. Such algorithms normally end up running in quadratic time;
43 using popitem() they can usually be made to run in linear time.
44
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +000045
46Standard library
47
48- The bisect module has new functions bisect_left, insort_left,
49 bisect_right and insort_right. The old names bisect and insort
50 are now aliases for bisect_right and insort_right. XXX_right
51 and XXX_left methods differ in what happens when the new element
52 compares equal to one or more elements already in the list: the
53 XXX_left methods insert to the left, the XXX_right methods to the
54 right.
55
56
Tim Petersd92dfe02000-12-12 01:18:41 +000057Windows changes
58
59- select module: By default under Windows, a select() call
60 can specify no more than 64 sockets. Python now boosts
61 this Microsoft default to 512. If you need even more than
62 that, see the MS docs (you'll need to #define FD_SETSIZE
63 and recompile Python from source).
64
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +000065
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +000066What's New in Python 2.0?
Fred Drake1a640502000-10-16 20:27:25 +000067=========================
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +000068
Guido van Rossum8ed602b2000-09-01 22:34:33 +000069Below is a list of all relevant changes since release 1.6. Older
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +000070changes are in the file HISTORY. If you are making the jump directly
71from Python 1.5.2 to 2.0, make sure to read the section for 1.6 in the
72HISTORY file! Many important changes listed there.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +000073
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +000074Alternatively, a good overview of the changes between 1.5.2 and 2.0 is
75the document "What's New in Python 2.0" by Kuchling and Moshe Zadka:
76http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/python/writing/new-python/.
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +000077
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +000078--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)
Guido van Rossum437cfe81999-04-08 20:17:57 +000079
80======================================================================
81
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +000082What's new in 2.0 (since release candidate 1)?
83==============================================
84
85Standard library
86
87- The copy_reg module was modified to clarify its intended use: to
88 register pickle support for extension types, not for classes.
89 pickle() will raise a TypeError if it is passed a class.
90
91- Fixed a bug in gettext's "normalize and expand" code that prevented
92 it from finding an existing .mo file.
93
94- Restored support for HTTP/0.9 servers in httplib.
95
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +000096- The math module was changed to stop raising OverflowError in case of
97 underflow, and return 0 instead in underflow cases. Whether Python
98 used to raise OverflowError in case of underflow was platform-
99 dependent (it did when the platform math library set errno to ERANGE
100 on underflow).
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000101
102- Fixed a bug in StringIO that occurred when the file position was not
103 at the end of the file and write() was called with enough data to
104 extend past the end of the file.
105
106- Fixed a bug that caused Tkinter error messages to get lost on
107 Windows. The bug was fixed by replacing direct use of
108 interp->result with Tcl_GetStringResult(interp).
109
110- Fixed bug in urllib2 that caused it to fail when it received an HTTP
111 redirect response.
112
113- Several changes were made to distutils: Some debugging code was
114 removed from util. Fixed the installer used when an external zip
115 program (like WinZip) is not found; the source code for this
116 installer is in Misc/distutils. check_lib() was modified to behave
117 more like AC_CHECK_LIB by add other_libraries() as a parameter. The
118 test for whether installed modules are on sys.path was changed to
119 use both normcase() and normpath().
120
Jeremy Hyltond867a2c2000-10-16 20:41:38 +0000121- Several minor bugs were fixed in the xml package (the minidom,
122 pulldom, expatreader, and saxutils modules).
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000123
124- The regression test driver (regrtest.py) behavior when invoked with
125 -l changed: It now reports a count of objects that are recognized as
126 garbage but not freed by the garbage collector.
127
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +0000128- The regression test for the math module was changed to test
129 exceptional behavior when the test is run in verbose mode. Python
130 cannot yet guarantee consistent exception behavior across platforms,
131 so the exception part of test_math is run only in verbose mode, and
132 may fail on your platform.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000133
134Internals
135
136- PyOS_CheckStack() has been disabled on Win64, where it caused
137 test_sre to fail.
138
139Build issues
140
141- Changed compiler flags, so that gcc is always invoked with -Wall and
142 -Wstrict-prototypes. Users compiling Python with GCC should see
143 exactly one warning, except if they have passed configure the
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +0000144 --with-pydebug flag. The expected warning is for getopt() in
Tim Petersadfb94f2000-10-16 20:51:33 +0000145 Modules/main.c. This warning will be fixed for Python 2.1.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000146
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000147- Fixed configure to add -threads argument during linking on OSF1.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000148
149Tools and other miscellany
150
151- The compiler in Tools/compiler was updated to support the new
152 language features introduced in 2.0: extended print statement, list
153 comprehensions, and augmented assignments. The new compiler should
154 also be backwards compatible with Python 1.5.2; the compiler will
155 always generate code for the version of the interpreter it runs
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000156 under.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000157
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000158What's new in 2.0 release candidate 1 (since beta 2)?
159=====================================================
160
Jeremy Hylton6040aaa2000-10-09 21:27:22 +0000161What is release candidate 1?
162
163We believe that release candidate 1 will fix all known bugs that we
164intend to fix for the 2.0 final release. This release should be a bit
165more stable than the previous betas. We would like to see even more
166widespread testing before the final release, so we are producing this
167release candidate. The final release will be exactly the same unless
168any show-stopping (or brown bag) bugs are found by testers of the
169release candidate.
170
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000171All the changes since the last beta release are bug fixes or changes
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000172to support building Python for specific platforms.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000173
174Core language, builtins, and interpreter
175
176- A bug that caused crashes when __coerce__ was used with augmented
177 assignment, e.g. +=, was fixed.
178
179- Raise ZeroDivisionError when raising zero to a negative number,
180 e.g. 0.0 ** -2.0. Note that math.pow is unrelated to the builtin
181 power operator and the result of math.pow(0.0, -2.0) will vary by
182 platform. On Linux, it raises a ValueError.
183
184- A bug in Unicode string interpolation was fixed that occasionally
185 caused errors with formats including "%%". For example, the
186 following expression "%% %s" % u"abc" no longer raises a TypeError.
187
188- Compilation of deeply nested expressions raises MemoryError instead
189 of SyntaxError, e.g. eval("[" * 50 + "]" * 50).
190
191- In 2.0b2 on Windows, the interpreter wrote .pyc files in text mode,
192 rendering them useless. They are now written in binary mode again.
193
194Standard library
195
196- Keyword arguments are now accepted for most pattern and match object
197 methods in SRE, the standard regular expression engine.
198
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000199- In SRE, fixed error with negative lookahead and lookbehind that
Jeremy Hylton32e20ff2000-10-09 19:48:11 +0000200 manifested itself as a runtime error in patterns like "(?<!abc)(def)".
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000201
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000202- Several bugs in the Unicode handling and error handling in _tkinter
203 were fixed.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000204
205- Fix memory management errors in Merge() and Tkapp_Call() routines.
206
207- Several changes were made to cStringIO to make it compatible with
208 the file-like object interface and with StringIO. If operations are
209 performed on a closed object, an exception is raised. The truncate
210 method now accepts a position argument and readline accepts a size
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000211 argument.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000212
213- There were many changes made to the linuxaudiodev module and its
214 test suite; as a result, a short, unexpected audio sample should now
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000215 play when the regression test is run.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000216
217 Note that this module is named poorly, because it should work
218 correctly on any platform that supports the Open Sound System
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000219 (OSS).
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000220
221 The module now raises exceptions when errors occur instead of
222 crashing. It also defines the AFMT_A_LAW format (logarithmic A-law
223 audio) and defines a getptr() method that calls the
224 SNDCTL_DSP_GETxPTR ioctl defined in the OSS Programmer's Guide.
225
226- The library_version attribute, introduced in an earlier beta, was
227 removed because it can not be supported with early versions of the C
228 readline library, which provides no way to determine the version at
229 compile-time.
230
231- The binascii module is now enabled on Win64.
232
Tim Peters46446d62000-10-09 21:19:31 +0000233- tokenize.py no longer suffers "recursion depth" errors when parsing
234 programs with very long string literals.
235
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000236Internals
237
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000238- Fixed several buffer overflow vulnerabilities in calculate_path(),
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000239 which is called when the interpreter starts up to determine where
240 the standard library is installed. These vulnerabilities affect all
241 previous versions of Python and can be exploited by setting very
242 long values for PYTHONHOME or argv[0]. The risk is greatest for a
243 setuid Python script, although use of the wrapper in
244 Misc/setuid-prog.c will eliminate the vulnerability.
245
246- Fixed garbage collection bugs in instance creation that were
247 triggered when errors occurred during initialization. The solution,
248 applied in cPickle and in PyInstance_New(), is to call
249 PyObject_GC_Init() after the initialization of the object's
250 container attributes is complete.
251
252- pyexpat adds definitions of PyModule_AddStringConstant and
253 PyModule_AddObject if the Python version is less than 2.0, which
254 provides compatibility with PyXML on Python 1.5.2.
255
256- If the platform has a bogus definition for LONG_BIT (the number of
257 bits in a long), an error will be reported at compile time.
258
259- Fix bugs in _PyTuple_Resize() which caused hard-to-interpret garbage
260 collection crashes and possibly other, unreported crashes.
261
262- Fixed a memory leak in _PyUnicode_Fini().
263
264Build issues
265
266- configure now accepts a --with-suffix option that specifies the
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000267 executable suffix. This is useful for builds on Cygwin and Mac OS
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000268 X, for example.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000269
270- The mmap.PAGESIZE constant is now initialized using sysconf when
271 possible, which eliminates a dependency on -lucb for Reliant UNIX.
272
273- The md5 file should now compile on all platforms.
274
275- The select module now compiles on platforms that do not define
276 POLLRDNORM and related constants.
277
278- Darwin (Mac OS X): Initial support for static builds on this
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000279 platform.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000280
Jeremy Hylton10921202000-10-09 18:34:12 +0000281- BeOS: A number of changes were made to the build and installation
282 process. ar-fake now operates on a directory of object files.
283 dl_export.h is gone, and its macros now appear on the mwcc command
284 line during build on PPC BeOS.
285
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000286- Platform directory in lib/python2.0 is "plat-beos5" (or
Jeremy Hylton10921202000-10-09 18:34:12 +0000287 "plat-beos4", if building on BeOS 4.5), rather than "plat-beos".
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000288
289- Cygwin: Support for shared libraries, Tkinter, and sockets.
290
291- SunOS 4.1.4_JL: Fix test for directory existence in configure.
292
293Tools and other miscellany
294
295- Removed debugging prints from main used with freeze.
296
Tim Peters46446d62000-10-09 21:19:31 +0000297- IDLE auto-indent no longer crashes when it encounters Unicode
298 characters.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000299
300What's new in 2.0 beta 2 (since beta 1)?
301========================================
302
303Core language, builtins, and interpreter
304
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000305- Add support for unbounded ints in %d,i,u,x,X,o formats; for example
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000306 "%d" % 2L**64 == "18446744073709551616".
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000307
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000308- Add -h and -V command line options to print the usage message and
309 Python version number and exit immediately.
310
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000311- eval() and exec accept Unicode objects as code parameters.
312
313- getattr() and setattr() now also accept Unicode objects for the
314 attribute name, which are converted to strings using the default
315 encoding before lookup.
316
317- Multiplication on string and Unicode now does proper bounds
318 checking; e.g. 'a' * 65536 * 65536 will raise ValueError, "repeated
319 string is too long."
320
321- Better error message when continue is found in try statement in a
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000322 loop.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000323
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000324
325Standard library and extensions
326
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000327- array: reverse() method of array now works. buffer_info() now does
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000328 argument checking; it still takes no arguments.
329
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000330- asyncore/asynchat: Included most recent version from Sam Rushing.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000331
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000332- cgi: Accept '&' or ';' as separator characters when parsing form data.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000333
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000334- CGIHTTPServer: Now works on Windows (and perhaps even Mac).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000335
336- ConfigParser: When reading the file, options spelled in upper case
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000337 letters are now correctly converted to lowercase.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000338
339- copy: Copy Unicode objects atomically.
340
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000341- cPickle: Fail gracefully when copy_reg can't be imported.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000342
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000343- cStringIO: Implemented readlines() method.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000344
Fred Drake67233bc2000-09-26 16:40:27 +0000345- dbm: Add get() and setdefault() methods to dbm object. Add constant
346 `library' to module that names the library used. Added doc strings
347 and method names to error messages. Uses configure to determine
348 which ndbm.h file to include; Berkeley DB's nbdm and GDBM's ndbm is
349 now available options.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000350
351- distutils: Update to version 0.9.3.
352
353- dl: Add several dl.RTLD_ constants.
354
355- fpectl: Now supported on FreeBSD.
356
357- gc: Add DEBUG_SAVEALL option. When enabled all garbage objects
358 found by the collector will be saved in gc.garbage. This is useful
359 for debugging a program that creates reference cycles.
360
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000361- httplib: Three changes: Restore support for set_debuglevel feature
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000362 of HTTP class. Do not close socket on zero-length response. Do not
363 crash when server sends invalid content-length header.
364
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000365- mailbox: Mailbox class conforms better to qmail specifications.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000366
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000367- marshal: When reading a short, sign-extend on platforms where shorts
368 are bigger than 16 bits. When reading a long, repair the unportable
369 sign extension that was being done for 64-bit machines. (It assumed
370 that signed right shift sign-extends.)
371
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000372- operator: Add contains(), invert(), __invert__() as aliases for
373 __contains__(), inv(), and __inv__() respectively.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000374
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000375- os: Add support for popen2() and popen3() on all platforms where
376 fork() exists. (popen4() is still in the works.)
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000377
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000378- os: (Windows only:) Add startfile() function that acts like double-
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000379 clicking on a file in Explorer (or passing the file name to the
380 DOS "start" command).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000381
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000382- os.path: (Windows, DOS:) Treat trailing colon correctly in
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000383 os.path.join. os.path.join("a:", "b") yields "a:b".
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000384
385- pickle: Now raises ValueError when an invalid pickle that contains
386 a non-string repr where a string repr was expected. This behavior
387 matches cPickle.
388
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000389- posixfile: Remove broken __del__() method.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000390
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000391- py_compile: support CR+LF line terminators in source file.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000392
393- readline: Does not immediately exit when ^C is hit when readline and
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000394 threads are configured. Adds definition of rl_library_version. (The
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000395 latter addition requires GNU readline 2.2 or later.)
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000396
397- rfc822: Domain literals returned by AddrlistClass method
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000398 getdomainliteral() are now properly wrapped in brackets.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000399
400- site: sys.setdefaultencoding() should only be called in case the
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000401 standard default encoding ("ascii") is changed. This saves quite a
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000402 few cycles during startup since the first call to
403 setdefaultencoding() will initialize the codec registry and the
404 encodings package.
405
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000406- socket: Support for size hint in readlines() method of object returned
407 by makefile().
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000408
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000409- sre: Added experimental expand() method to match objects. Does not
Jeremy Hylton625915e2000-10-02 13:43:33 +0000410 use buffer interface on Unicode strings. Does not hang if group id
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000411 is followed by whitespace.
412
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000413- StringIO: Size hint in readlines() is now supported as documented.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000414
415- struct: Check ranges for bytes and shorts.
416
417- urllib: Improved handling of win32 proxy settings. Fixed quote and
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000418 quote_plus functions so that the always encode a comma.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000419
420- Tkinter: Image objects are now guaranteed to have unique ids. Set
421 event.delta to zero if Tk version doesn't support mousewheel.
422 Removed some debugging prints.
423
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000424- UserList: now implements __contains__().
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000425
Fred Drake67233bc2000-09-26 16:40:27 +0000426- webbrowser: On Windows, use os.startfile() instead of os.popen(),
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000427 which works around a bug in Norton AntiVirus 2000 that leads directly
428 to a Blue Screen freeze.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000429
430- xml: New version detection code allows PyXML to override standard
431 XML package if PyXML version is greater than 0.6.1.
432
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000433- xml.dom: DOM level 1 support for basic XML. Includes xml.dom.minidom
434 (conventional DOM), and xml.dom.pulldom, which allows building the DOM
435 tree only for nodes which are sufficiently interesting to a specific
436 application. Does not provide the HTML-specific extensions. Still
437 undocumented.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000438
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000439- xml.sax: SAX 2 support for Python, including all the handler
440 interfaces needed to process XML 1.0 compliant XML. Some
441 documentation is already available.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000442
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000443- pyexpat: Renamed to xml.parsers.expat since this is part of the new,
444 packagized XML support.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000445
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000446
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000447C API
448
449- Add three new convenience functions for module initialization --
450 PyModule_AddObject(), PyModule_AddIntConstant(), and
451 PyModule_AddStringConstant().
452
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000453- Cleaned up definition of NULL in C source code; all definitions were
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000454 removed and add #error to Python.h if NULL isn't defined after
455 #include of stdio.h.
456
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000457- Py_PROTO() macros that were removed in 2.0b1 have been restored for
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000458 backwards compatibility (at the source level) with old extensions.
459
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000460- A wrapper API was added for signal() and sigaction(). Instead of
461 either function, always use PyOS_getsig() to get a signal handler
462 and PyOS_setsig() to set one. A new convenience typedef
463 PyOS_sighandler_t is defined for the type of signal handlers.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000464
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000465- Add PyString_AsStringAndSize() function that provides access to the
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000466 internal data buffer and size of a string object -- or the default
467 encoded version of a Unicode object.
468
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000469- PyString_Size() and PyString_AsString() accept Unicode objects.
470
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000471- The standard header <limits.h> is now included by Python.h (if it
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000472 exists). INT_MAX and LONG_MAX will always be defined, even if
473 <limits.h> is not available.
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000474
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000475- PyFloat_FromString takes a second argument, pend, that was
476 effectively useless. It is now officially useless but preserved for
477 backwards compatibility. If the pend argument is not NULL, *pend is
478 set to NULL.
479
480- PyObject_GetAttr() and PyObject_SetAttr() now accept Unicode objects
481 for the attribute name. See note on getattr() above.
482
483- A few bug fixes to argument processing for Unicode.
484 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() now accepts "es#" and "es".
485 PyArg_Parse() special cases "s#" for Unicode objects; it returns a
486 pointer to the default encoded string data instead of to the raw
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000487 UTF-16.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000488
489- Py_BuildValue accepts B format (for bgen-generated code).
490
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000491
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000492Internals
493
494- On Unix, fix code for finding Python installation directory so that
495 it works when argv[0] is a relative path.
496
Andrew M. Kuchlinga1099be2000-12-15 01:16:43 +0000497- Added a true unicode_internal_encode() function and fixed the
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000498 unicode_internal_decode function() to support Unicode objects directly
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000499 rather than by generating a copy of the object.
500
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000501- Several of the internal Unicode tables are much smaller now, and
502 the source code should be much friendlier to weaker compilers.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000503
Jeremy Hylton97693b02000-09-26 17:42:51 +0000504- In the garbage collector: Fixed bug in collection of tuples. Fixed
505 bug that caused some instances to be removed from the container set
506 while they were still live. Fixed parsing in gc.set_debug() for
507 platforms where sizeof(long) > sizeof(int).
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000508
509- Fixed refcount problem in instance deallocation that only occurred
510 when Py_REF_DEBUG was defined and Py_TRACE_REFS was not.
511
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000512- On Windows, getpythonregpath is now protected against null data in
513 registry key.
514
515- On Unix, create .pyc/.pyo files with O_EXCL flag to avoid a race
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000516 condition.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000517
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000518
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000519Build and platform-specific issues
520
521- Better support of GNU Pth via --with-pth configure option.
522
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000523- Python/C API now properly exposed to dynamically-loaded extension
524 modules on Reliant UNIX.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000525
526- Changes for the benefit of SunOS 4.1.4 (really!). mmapmodule.c:
527 Don't define MS_SYNC to be zero when it is undefined. Added missing
528 prototypes in posixmodule.c.
529
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000530- Improved support for HP-UX build. Threads should now be correctly
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000531 configured (on HP-UX 10.20 and 11.00).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000532
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000533- Fix largefile support on older NetBSD systems and OpenBSD by adding
534 define for TELL64.
535
536
537Tools and other miscellany
538
539- ftpmirror: Call to main() is wrapped in if __name__ == "__main__".
540
541- freeze: The modulefinder now works with 2.0 opcodes.
542
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000543- IDLE:
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000544 Move hackery of sys.argv until after the Tk instance has been
545 created, which allows the application-specific Tkinter
546 initialization to be executed if present; also pass an explicit
547 className parameter to the Tk() constructor.
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000548
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000549
550What's new in 2.0 beta 1?
551=========================
552
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000553Source Incompatibilities
554------------------------
555
556None. Note that 1.6 introduced several incompatibilities with 1.5.2,
557such as single-argument append(), connect() and bind(), and changes to
558str(long) and repr(float).
559
560
561Binary Incompatibilities
562------------------------
563
564- Third party extensions built for Python 1.5.x or 1.6 cannot be used
565with Python 2.0; these extensions will have to be rebuilt for Python
5662.0.
567
568- On Windows, attempting to import a third party extension built for
569Python 1.5.x or 1.6 results in an immediate crash; there's not much we
570can do about this. Check your PYTHONPATH environment variable!
571
572- Python bytecode files (*.pyc and *.pyo) are not compatible between
573releases.
574
575
576Overview of Changes Since 1.6
577-----------------------------
578
579There are many new modules (including brand new XML support through
580the xml package, and i18n support through the gettext module); a list
581of all new modules is included below. Lots of bugs have been fixed.
582
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000583The process for making major new changes to the language has changed
584since Python 1.6. Enhancements must now be documented by a Python
585Enhancement Proposal (PEP) before they can be accepted.
586
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000587There are several important syntax enhancements, described in more
588detail below:
589
590 - Augmented assignment, e.g. x += 1
591
592 - List comprehensions, e.g. [x**2 for x in range(10)]
593
594 - Extended import statement, e.g. import Module as Name
595
596 - Extended print statement, e.g. print >> file, "Hello"
597
598Other important changes:
599
600 - Optional collection of cyclical garbage
601
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000602Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP)
603---------------------------------
604
605PEP stands for Python Enhancement Proposal. A PEP is a design
606document providing information to the Python community, or describing
607a new feature for Python. The PEP should provide a concise technical
608specification of the feature and a rationale for the feature.
609
610We intend PEPs to be the primary mechanisms for proposing new
611features, for collecting community input on an issue, and for
612documenting the design decisions that have gone into Python. The PEP
613author is responsible for building consensus within the community and
614documenting dissenting opinions.
615
616The PEPs are available at http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000617
618Augmented Assignment
619--------------------
620
621This must have been the most-requested feature of the past years!
622Eleven new assignment operators were added:
623
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000624 += -= *= /= %= **= <<= >>= &= ^= |=
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000625
626For example,
627
628 A += B
629
630is similar to
631
632 A = A + B
633
634except that A is evaluated only once (relevant when A is something
635like dict[index].attr).
636
637However, if A is a mutable object, A may be modified in place. Thus,
638if A is a number or a string, A += B has the same effect as A = A+B
639(except A is only evaluated once); but if a is a list, A += B has the
640same effect as A.extend(B)!
641
642Classes and built-in object types can override the new operators in
643order to implement the in-place behavior; the not-in-place behavior is
644used automatically as a fallback when an object doesn't implement the
645in-place behavior. For classes, the method name is derived from the
646method name for the corresponding not-in-place operator by inserting
647an 'i' in front of the name, e.g. __iadd__ implements in-place
648__add__.
649
650Augmented assignment was implemented by Thomas Wouters.
651
652
653List Comprehensions
654-------------------
655
656This is a flexible new notation for lists whose elements are computed
657from another list (or lists). The simplest form is:
658
659 [<expression> for <variable> in <sequence>]
660
Guido van Rossum56db0952000-09-06 23:34:25 +0000661For example, [i**2 for i in range(4)] yields the list [0, 1, 4, 9].
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000662This is more efficient than a for loop with a list.append() call.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000663
664You can also add a condition:
665
666 [<expression> for <variable> in <sequence> if <condition>]
667
668For example, [w for w in words if w == w.lower()] would yield the list
669of words that contain no uppercase characters. This is more efficient
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000670than a for loop with an if statement and a list.append() call.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000671
672You can also have nested for loops and more than one 'if' clause. For
673example, here's a function that flattens a sequence of sequences::
674
675 def flatten(seq):
676 return [x for subseq in seq for x in subseq]
677
678 flatten([[0], [1,2,3], [4,5], [6,7,8,9], []])
679
680This prints
681
682 [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
683
684List comprehensions originated as a patch set from Greg Ewing; Skip
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000685Montanaro and Thomas Wouters also contributed. Described by PEP 202.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000686
687
688Extended Import Statement
689-------------------------
690
691Many people have asked for a way to import a module under a different
692name. This can be accomplished like this:
693
694 import foo
695 bar = foo
696 del foo
697
698but this common idiom gets old quickly. A simple extension of the
699import statement now allows this to be written as follows:
700
701 import foo as bar
702
703There's also a variant for 'from ... import':
704
705 from foo import bar as spam
706
707This also works with packages; e.g. you can write this:
708
709 import test.regrtest as regrtest
710
711Note that 'as' is not a new keyword -- it is recognized only in this
712context (this is only possible because the syntax for the import
713statement doesn't involve expressions).
714
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000715Implemented by Thomas Wouters. Described by PEP 221.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000716
717
718Extended Print Statement
719------------------------
720
721Easily the most controversial new feature, this extension to the print
722statement adds an option to make the output go to a different file
723than the default sys.stdout.
724
725For example, to write an error message to sys.stderr, you can now
726write:
727
728 print >> sys.stderr, "Error: bad dog!"
729
730As a special feature, if the expression used to indicate the file
Fred Drake45888ff2000-09-29 17:09:11 +0000731evaluates to None, the current value of sys.stdout is used. Thus:
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000732
733 print >> None, "Hello world"
734
735is equivalent to
736
737 print "Hello world"
738
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000739Design and implementation by Barry Warsaw. Described by PEP 214.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000740
741
742Optional Collection of Cyclical Garbage
743---------------------------------------
744
745Python is now equipped with a garbage collector that can hunt down
746cyclical references between Python objects. It's no replacement for
747reference counting; in fact, it depends on the reference counts being
748correct, and decides that a set of objects belong to a cycle if all
749their reference counts can be accounted for from their references to
750each other. This devious scheme was first proposed by Eric Tiedemann,
751and brought to implementation by Neil Schemenauer.
752
753There's a module "gc" that lets you control some parameters of the
754garbage collection. There's also an option to the configure script
755that lets you enable or disable the garbage collection. In 2.0b1,
756it's on by default, so that we (hopefully) can collect decent user
757experience with this new feature. There are some questions about its
Fred Drake9f11cf82000-09-29 17:54:40 +0000758performance. If it proves to be too much of a problem, we'll turn it
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000759off by default in the final 2.0 release.
760
761
762Smaller Changes
763---------------
764
765A new function zip() was added. zip(seq1, seq2, ...) is equivalent to
766map(None, seq1, seq2, ...) when the sequences have the same length;
767i.e. zip([1,2,3], [10,20,30]) returns [(1,10), (2,20), (3,30)]. When
768the lists are not all the same length, the shortest list wins:
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000769zip([1,2,3], [10,20]) returns [(1,10), (2,20)]. See PEP 201.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000770
771sys.version_info is a tuple (major, minor, micro, level, serial).
772
773Dictionaries have an odd new method, setdefault(key, default).
774dict.setdefault(key, default) returns dict[key] if it exists; if not,
775it sets dict[key] to default and returns that value. Thus:
776
777 dict.setdefault(key, []).append(item)
778
779does the same work as this common idiom:
780
781 if not dict.has_key(key):
782 dict[key] = []
783 dict[key].append(item)
784
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000785There are two new variants of SyntaxError that are raised for
786indentation-related errors: IndentationError and TabError.
787
788Changed \x to consume exactly two hex digits; see PEP 223. Added \U
789escape that consumes exactly eight hex digits.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000790
791The limits on the size of expressions and file in Python source code
792have been raised from 2**16 to 2**32. Previous versions of Python
793were limited because the maximum argument size the Python VM accepted
794was 2**16. This limited the size of object constructor expressions,
795e.g. [1,2,3] or {'a':1, 'b':2}, and the size of source files. This
796limit was raised thanks to a patch by Charles Waldman that effectively
797fixes the problem. It is now much more likely that you will be
798limited by available memory than by an arbitrary limit in Python.
799
800The interpreter's maximum recursion depth can be modified by Python
801programs using sys.getrecursionlimit and sys.setrecursionlimit. This
802limit is the maximum number of recursive calls that can be made by
803Python code. The limit exists to prevent infinite recursion from
804overflowing the C stack and causing a core dump. The default value is
8051000. The maximum safe value for a particular platform can be found
806by running Misc/find_recursionlimit.py.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000807
808New Modules and Packages
809------------------------
810
811atexit - for registering functions to be called when Python exits.
812
813imputil - Greg Stein's alternative API for writing custom import
814hooks.
815
816pyexpat - an interface to the Expat XML parser, contributed by Paul
817Prescod.
818
819xml - a new package with XML support code organized (so far) in three
820subpackages: xml.dom, xml.sax, and xml.parsers. Describing these
821would fill a volume. There's a special feature whereby a
822user-installed package named _xmlplus overrides the standard
823xmlpackage; this is intended to give the XML SIG a hook to distribute
824backwards-compatible updates to the standard xml package.
825
826webbrowser - a platform-independent API to launch a web browser.
827
828
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000829Changed Modules
830---------------
831
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000832array -- new methods for array objects: count, extend, index, pop, and
833remove
834
835binascii -- new functions b2a_hex and a2b_hex that convert between
836binary data and its hex representation
837
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000838calendar -- Many new functions that support features including control
839over which day of the week is the first day, returning strings instead
840of printing them. Also new symbolic constants for days of week,
841e.g. MONDAY, ..., SUNDAY.
842
843cgi -- FieldStorage objects have a getvalue method that works like a
844dictionary's get method and returns the value attribute of the object.
845
846ConfigParser -- The parser object has new methods has_option,
847remove_section, remove_option, set, and write. They allow the module
848to be used for writing config files as well as reading them.
849
850ftplib -- ntransfercmd(), transfercmd(), and retrbinary() all now
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000851optionally support the RFC 959 REST command.
852
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000853gzip -- readline and readlines now accept optional size arguments
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000854
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000855httplib -- New interfaces and support for HTTP/1.1 by Greg Stein. See
856the module doc strings for details.
Guido van Rossum830ca2a2000-09-05 15:34:16 +0000857
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000858locale -- implement getdefaultlocale for Win32 and Macintosh
859
860marshal -- no longer dumps core when marshaling deeply nested or
861recursive data structures
862
863os -- new functions isatty, seteuid, setegid, setreuid, setregid
864
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000865os/popen2 -- popen2/popen3/popen4 support under Windows. popen2/popen3
866support under Unix.
867
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000868os/pty -- support for openpty and forkpty
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000869
870os.path -- fix semantics of os.path.commonprefix
871
872smtplib -- support for sending very long messages
873
874socket -- new function getfqdn()
875
876readline -- new functions to read, write and truncate history files.
877The readline section of the library reference manual contains an
878example.
879
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000880select -- add interface to poll system call
881
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000882shutil -- new copyfileobj function
883
884SimpleHTTPServer, CGIHTTPServer -- Fix problems with buffering in the
885HTTP server.
886
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000887Tkinter -- optimization of function flatten
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000888
889urllib -- scans environment variables for proxy configuration,
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +0000890e.g. http_proxy.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000891
892whichdb -- recognizes dumbdbm format
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000893
894
895Obsolete Modules
896----------------
897
898None. However note that 1.6 made a whole slew of modules obsolete:
899stdwin, soundex, cml, cmpcache, dircache, dump, find, grep, packmail,
900poly, zmod, strop, util, whatsound.
901
902
903Changed, New, Obsolete Tools
904----------------------------
905
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +0000906None.
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000907
908
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000909C-level Changes
910---------------
911
912Several cleanup jobs were carried out throughout the source code.
913
914All C code was converted to ANSI C; we got rid of all uses of the
915Py_PROTO() macro, which makes the header files a lot more readable.
916
917Most of the portability hacks were moved to a new header file,
918pyport.h; several other new header files were added and some old
919header files were removed, in an attempt to create a more rational set
920of header files. (Few of these ever need to be included explicitly;
921they are all included by Python.h.)
922
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000923Trent Mick ensured portability to 64-bit platforms, under both Linux
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000924and Win64, especially for the new Intel Itanium processor. Mick also
925added large file support for Linux64 and Win64.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000926
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000927The C APIs to return an object's size have been update to consistently
928use the form PyXXX_Size, e.g. PySequence_Size and PyDict_Size. In
929previous versions, the abstract interfaces used PyXXX_Length and the
930concrete interfaces used PyXXX_Size. The old names,
931e.g. PyObject_Length, are still available for backwards compatibility
932at the API level, but are deprecated.
933
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000934The PyOS_CheckStack function has been implemented on Windows by
935Fredrik Lundh. It prevents Python from failing with a stack overflow
936on Windows.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000937
938The GC changes resulted in creation of two new slots on object,
939tp_traverse and tp_clear. The augmented assignment changes result in
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +0000940the creation of a new slot for each in-place operator.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000941
942The GC API creates new requirements for container types implemented in
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +0000943C extension modules. See Include/objimpl.h for details.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000944
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000945PyErr_Format has been updated to automatically calculate the size of
946the buffer needed to hold the formatted result string. This change
947prevents crashes caused by programmer error.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000948
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000949New C API calls: PyObject_AsFileDescriptor, PyErr_WriteUnraisable.
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000950
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000951PyRun_AnyFileEx, PyRun_SimpleFileEx, PyRun_FileEx -- New functions
952that are the same as their non-Ex counterparts except they take an
953extra flag argument that tells them to close the file when done.
954
955XXX There were other API changes that should be fleshed out here.
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000956
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +0000957
958Windows Changes
959---------------
960
961New popen2/popen3/peopen4 in os module (see Changed Modules above).
962
963os.popen is much more usable on Windows 95 and 98. See Microsoft
964Knowledge Base article Q150956. The Win9x workaround described there
965is implemented by the new w9xpopen.exe helper in the root of your
966Python installation. Note that Python uses this internally; it is not
967a standalone program.
968
969Administrator privileges are no longer required to install Python
970on Windows NT or Windows 2000. If you have administrator privileges,
971Python's registry info will be written under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
972Otherwise the installer backs off to writing Python's registry info
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +0000973under HKEY_CURRENT_USER. The latter is sufficient for all "normal"
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +0000974uses of Python, but will prevent some advanced uses from working
975(for example, running a Python script as an NT service, or possibly
976from CGI).
977
978[This was new in 1.6] The installer no longer runs a separate Tcl/Tk
979installer; instead, it installs the needed Tcl/Tk files directly in the
980Python directory. If you already have a Tcl/Tk installation, this
981wastes some disk space (about 4 Megs) but avoids problems with
982conflicting Tcl/Tk installations, and makes it much easier for Python
983to ensure that Tcl/Tk can find all its files.
984
985[This was new in 1.6] The Windows installer now installs by default in
986\Python20\ on the default volume, instead of \Program Files\Python-2.0\.
987
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000988
989Updates to the changes between 1.5.2 and 1.6
990--------------------------------------------
991
992The 1.6 NEWS file can't be changed after the release is done, so here
993is some late-breaking news:
994
995New APIs in locale.py: normalize(), getdefaultlocale(), resetlocale(),
996and changes to getlocale() and setlocale().
997
998The new module is now enabled per default.
999
1000It is not true that the encodings codecs cannot be used for normal
1001strings: the string.encode() (which is also present on 8-bit strings
1002!) allows using them for 8-bit strings too, e.g. to convert files from
1003cp1252 (Windows) to latin-1 or vice-versa.
1004
1005Japanese codecs are available from Tamito KAJIYAMA:
1006http://pseudo.grad.sccs.chukyo-u.ac.jp/~kajiyama/python/
1007
1008
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +00001009======================================================================