blob: 784e782d40a2eb93a9d5fa481470b23033c63e1b [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
10Core and builtins
11-----------------
12
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +000013- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
14 list.sort().
15
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000016
17Extension Modules
18-----------------
19
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +000020- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
21 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
22 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
23
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000024
25Library
26-------
27
Raymond Hettingerc7979f12004-12-05 11:38:18 +000028- the deprecated tzparse module was removed.
29
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +000030- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
31
Raymond Hettinger4ebe3642004-12-05 04:55:14 +000032- the depecated statcache module was removed.
33
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +000034- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
35
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +000036- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
37
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +000038- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
39
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +000040- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
41 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
42 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
43
Raymond Hettinger784ab762004-12-04 10:50:51 +000044- the deprecated whrandom module was removed. Use the random module instead.
45
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000046- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +000047 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000048
49
50Build
51-----
52
53
54C API
55-----
56
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +000057- Removed PyRange_New().
58
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000059
60Tests
61-----
62
63
64Mac
65---
66
67
68
69Tools/Demos
70-----------
71
72
73
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +000074What's New in Python 2.4 final?
75===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +000076
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +000077*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +000078
79Core and builtins
80-----------------
81
82- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
83 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
84 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
85
86
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +000087What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
88==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +000089
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +000090*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +000091
92Core and builtins
93-----------------
94
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +000095- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
96 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
97 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
98
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +000099
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000100Library
101-------
102
103- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
104 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
105 raised is re-raised.
106
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000107- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
108 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
109
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000110- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
111 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
112 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
113 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
114 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
115 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
116 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
117 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
118 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
119 by the slice are recomputed now.
120
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000121- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000122
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000123Build
124-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000125
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000126- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
127 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
128 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000129
130C API
131-----
132
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000133- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
134
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000135
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000136What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
137================================
138
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000139*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000140
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000141License
142-------
143
144The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
145is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
146changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
147Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
148intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
149durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
150the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
151License::
152
153 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
154
155says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
156to Python 2.1.1.
157
158The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
159License Version 2.
160
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000161Core and builtins
162-----------------
163
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000164- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
165 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
166 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
167 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
168 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
169 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
170 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
171 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
172 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
173 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
174
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000175- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000176
177Extension Modules
178-----------------
179
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000180- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
181 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
182 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
183 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000184
185Library
186-------
187
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000188- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
189 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
190 returned.
191
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000192- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
193
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000194- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
195 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
196
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000197- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
198
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000199- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
200 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000201
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000202- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
203
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000204- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
205
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000206- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000207 the source code is updated and reloaded.
208
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000209Build
210-----
211
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000212- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000213
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000214What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
215================================
216
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000217*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000218
219Core and builtins
220-----------------
221
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000222- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000223 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
224
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000225- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
226 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
227 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
228 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
229
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000230- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
231 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
232
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000233- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
234 constant.
235
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000236- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
237 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
238 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
239 large), and to anomalies such as
240 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
241 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
242 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
243 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000244
245Extension modules
246-----------------
247
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000248- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
249 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000250 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
251 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
252 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000253
254Library
255-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000256
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000257- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000258 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000259 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
260 --swig-cpp.
261
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000262- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
263 it is set.
264
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000265- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000266
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000267- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
268 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
269 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
270 Closes bug #1039270.
271
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000272- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000273
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000274 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000275 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
276 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
277 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
278 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
279 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
280 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
281 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
282 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
283 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
284 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
285 + Updates to documentation.
286
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000287- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
288 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
289 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
290 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
291
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000292- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000293
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000294- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
295 applications should use the getmember function.
296
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000297- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
298
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000299- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
300 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
301 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
302 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
303 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
304 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
305 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
306 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
307 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
308
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000309- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
310 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000311 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000312
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000313- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
314 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
315 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
316 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
317 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
318 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
319 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
320 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000321
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000322- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
323 the new public features (of which there are many).
324
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000325- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000326 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
327 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
328 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
329 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000330 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000331
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000332- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
333
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000334- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
335 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
336 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
337 options.
338
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000339- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
340 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
341 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
342 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
343 conditions under which non-string values work.
344
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000345Build
346-----
347
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000348- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
349 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
350 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
351
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000352- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
353 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
354 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
355 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
356 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000357
358C API
359-----
360
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000361- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
362 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
363
364- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
365
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000366- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
367 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
368 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
369 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
370 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
371 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
372 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
373 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
374 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
375
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000376- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
377
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000378- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
379 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
380 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000381
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000382Tests
383-----
384
385- test__locale ported to unittest
386
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000387Mac
388---
389
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000390- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
391 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
392 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000393
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000394Tools/Demos
395-----------
396
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000397- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
398 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
399 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
400 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
401 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000402
403
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000404What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
405=================================
406
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000407*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000408
409Core and builtins
410-----------------
411
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000412- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000413 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
414
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000415- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
416 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
417 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
418 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
419 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
420 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
421 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
422 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000423 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
424 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
425 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
426 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
427 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000428
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000429- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
430 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
431 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
432 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
433 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
434
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000435- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
436
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000437- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
438 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
439
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000440- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
441 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
442 modified the list.
443
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000444- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
445 functions is now writable.
446
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000447- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
448 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
449 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
450 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
451
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000452- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
453 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
454 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
455 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
456 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000457
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000458- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
459 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
460
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000461Extension modules
462-----------------
463
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000464- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
465
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000466- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
467 data.
468
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000469- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
470 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
471 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
472 supposed to have been truncated away.
473
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000474- Added socket.socketpair().
475
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000476- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
477 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
478
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000479- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000480 versions of Python, have now been removed.
481
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000482Library
483-------
484
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000485- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000486 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000487
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000488- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
489 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
490
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000491- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
492 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
493
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000494- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
495
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000496- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
497 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000498
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000499- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
500 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
501
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000502- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
503
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000504- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
505
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000506- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
507
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000508- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
509 Percivall.
510
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000511- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
512 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
513
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000514- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
515 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
516 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000517 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000518
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000519- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
520 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
521 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
522 and exponent.
523
524- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
525
526- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
527 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatability and atexit
528 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
529
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000530- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
531 to the readline module.
532
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000533- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000534 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
535 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000536
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000537- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
538 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
539 contains symlinks.
540
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000541- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
542 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
543
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000544- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
545 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
546 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
547
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000548- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
549 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
550 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
551 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
552 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
553 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
554 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
555 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
556 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
557 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
558 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
559 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
560 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
561
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000562- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
563
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000564Tools/Demos
565-----------
566
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000567- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
568 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
569
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000570- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
571
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000572Build
573-----
574
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000575- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
576 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
577 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
578 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
579 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
580 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
581 plans to do so.
582
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +0000583- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
584 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
585
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +0000586- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
587 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
588
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000589- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
590 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
591
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +0000592- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
593 GNU/k*BSD systems.
594
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +0000595- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
596 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
597
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000598C API
599-----
600
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000601..
602
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000603Documentation
604-------------
605
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +0000606- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
607 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
608
609- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
610 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
611 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +0000612
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000613New platforms
614-------------
615
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +0000616- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
617
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000618Tests
619-----
620
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000621..
622
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000623Windows
624-------
625
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +0000626- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
627 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
628 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
629 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
630 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
631 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
632 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
633 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
634 the problem.
635
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000636Mac
637---
638
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000639..
640
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000641
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000642What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
643=================================
644
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000645*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000646
647Core and builtins
648-----------------
649
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +0000650- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
651 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
652 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
653 sensitive code.
654
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000655- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000656 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000657
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000658 @staticmethod
659 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000660
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000661 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000662
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000663- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
664 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
665 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
666 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
667 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
668 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
669 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
670 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
671 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
672 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
673 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
674
675 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
676 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
677 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
678 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
679 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
680 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
681 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
682
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +0000683- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
684 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
685
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000686- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000687 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000688
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000689- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000690 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000691 which was missing for no apparent reason.
692
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000693- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000694 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
695 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
696
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000697- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
698 types that support garbage collection.
699
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +0000700- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
701
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +0000702- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
703 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
704 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
705 Jython.
706
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000707- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
708
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +0000709- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
710 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
711
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +0000712- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
713 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
714 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +0000715
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +0000716- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
717 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
718 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
719
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000720Extension modules
721-----------------
722
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +0000723- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
724
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000725Library
726-------
727
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +0000728- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
729 TIS-620
730
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +0000731- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
732 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
733 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
734 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
735 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
736 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
737 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
738 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
739 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
740 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
741
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +0000742- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
743
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +0000744- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
745 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
746 same as when the argument is omitted).
747 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
748
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +0000749- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
750
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +0000751- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
752 schemes are offered.
753
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +0000754- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
755
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +0000756- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
757 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
758 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
759
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +0000760- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
761
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +0000762- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
763 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
764
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +0000765- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
766 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
767 when dummy_threading is being used.
768
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +0000769- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
770 from a tarfile.
771
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000772- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000773 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000774
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +0000775- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
776 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
777 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
778 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
779
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +0000780- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
781 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
782
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +0000783- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
784 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
785 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
786 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
787 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
788 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
789 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
790 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
791 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
792 by some other method in progress).
793
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000794- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
795 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
796 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +0000797
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +0000798- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
799
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +0000800- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
801 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
802 AM Kuchling.
803
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +0000804- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
805 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
806 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
807
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +0000808- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
809 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
810 instead of unsigned.
811
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000812- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +0000813 no longer part of the public API.
814
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +0000815- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
816 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
817 string methods of the same name).
818
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000819- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +0000820 SF patch 945642.
821
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000822- doctest unittest integration improvements:
823
824 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
825
826 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
827 DocTestSuites.
828
829- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
830 that provide thread-local data.
831
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000832- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
833 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
834
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000835- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
836
837- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
838 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
839 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
840
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000841- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
842
843 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
844 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
845 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000846
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000847 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
848 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
849 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
850 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
851
852 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
853 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
854
855 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
856 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
857 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
858 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
859
860 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
861 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
862 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
863 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
864 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
865
866 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
867 wrapping help output.
868
869 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
870 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
871 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000872
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000873C API
874-----
875
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000876- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
877 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
878 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
879 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
880 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
881 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
882 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
883 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
884 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
885 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
886 its visible semantics have not changed.
887
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000888- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
889 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
890
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000891Documentation
892-------------
893
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000894- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000895
896 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +0000897 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000898
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +0000899 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000900
901 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
902
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000903- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000904
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000905Tests
906-----
907
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000908- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +0000909 platforms that use the Makefile.
910
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000911- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
912 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
913 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
914
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000915
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000916What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
917=================================
918
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +0000919*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000920
921Core and builtins
922-----------------
923
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +0000924- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
925 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
926 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
927 objects now (one object instead of three).
928
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +0000929- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
930 Windows DLLs.
931
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +0000932- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
933 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +0000934
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +0000935- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
936 a new .pyc magic.
937
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +0000938- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
939 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
940 be there.
941
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +0000942- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
943 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
944 the LC_NUMERIC category.
945
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +0000946- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
947 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
948 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
949
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +0000950- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
951
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +0000952- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
953 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
954 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +0000955
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +0000956- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
957 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
958
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +0000959- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
960
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000961- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000962 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000963
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +0000964- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
965
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +0000966- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
967
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +0000968- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
969 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
970
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +0000971- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
972 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
973 Fixes bug #858016 .
974
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +0000975- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
976 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
977 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
978
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +0000979- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
980 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
981 improves their performance (about 35%).
982
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +0000983- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
984 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
985 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
986
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +0000987- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
988 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
989 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
990 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
991
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000992- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
993 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
994 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
995 length is not known).
996
997- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
998 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +0000999 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1000 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001001 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1002
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001003- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1004 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1005
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001006- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1007 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1008 keyword arguments.
1009
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001010- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1011 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1012 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1013
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001014- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1015 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1016 cases.
1017
1018- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1019 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1020 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1021 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1022 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1023 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1024 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1025 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1026 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1027 a release build.
1028
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001029- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1030 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1031
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001032- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001033 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001034
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001035- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1036 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1037 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1038 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1039 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1040 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1041 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1042 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1043 destroyed.
1044
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001045- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1046 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1047 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1048 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1049 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1050 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1051 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1052 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1053
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001054- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1055 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1056 character other than a space.
1057
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001058- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1059 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1060 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1061 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1062 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1063 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1064 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1065 attributes with the same name.
1066
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001067- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1068 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1069 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1070 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1071 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1072 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1073 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1074 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1075 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1076 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1077 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1078 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1079 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1080 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001081
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001082- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1083 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1084 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1085 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1086 This has been repaired.
1087
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001088- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1089
1090- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1091
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001092- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1093 over a sequence.
1094
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001095- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001096 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001097
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001098- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1099
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001100- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1101 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1102 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1103 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1104 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1105 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1106 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1107 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1108
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001109- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1110 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1111 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1112
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001113- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1114 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1115 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1116 freelist.
1117
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001118- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1119 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1120
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001121- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1122 number.
1123
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001124- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1125 a TypeError exception.
1126
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001127- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1128 820195.
1129
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001130- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1131 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1132 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1133
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001134- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001135 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1136 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001137
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001138- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1139 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1140 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1141
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001142- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1143 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001144 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001145
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001146- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001147 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1148 the first call.
1149
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001150
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001151Extension modules
1152-----------------
1153
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001154- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1155 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1156
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001157- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1158 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1159 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1160 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1161 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1162 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1163 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001164
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001165- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1166
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001167- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1168
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001169- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1170 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1171
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001172- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1173 fewer false positives.
1174
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001175- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1176 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1177
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001178- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001179 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1180
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001181- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001182 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001183 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001184 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1185 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001186
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001187- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1188 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1189 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1190 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1191
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001192- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1193 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1194 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1195 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1196 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1197 #897625.
1198
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001199- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1200 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1201
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001202- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1203 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1204 and pops on either side of the deque.
1205
1206- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1207 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1208
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001209- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1210 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1211 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1212 other functions that expect a function argument.
1213
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001214- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1215
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001216- os.getsid was added.
1217
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001218- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1219 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1220 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1221
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001222- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1223
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001224- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1225
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001226- readline.clear_history was added.
1227
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001228- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1229
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001230- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1231
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001232- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1233
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001234- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1235
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001236- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1237
1238- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1239
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001240- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1241
1242- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1243
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001244- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1245 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1246 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1247
1248- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1249 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1250 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1251 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1252 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1253 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1254 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1255
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001256- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1257 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1258 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1259 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001260
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001261- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001262 iterators from a single iterable.
1263
1264- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1265 of raising a TypeError exception.
1266
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001267- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1268 as parameter.
1269
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001270Library
1271-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001272
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001273- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1274 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1275 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001276
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001277- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1278 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1279 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001280
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001281- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001282
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001283- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1284 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001285
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001286- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1287 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1288
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001289- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1290
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001291- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001292 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001293
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001294- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001295 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001296
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001297- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1298
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001299- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1300 on cygwin and mingw32.
1301
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001302- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1303
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001304- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1305 module.
1306
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001307- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1308 installation scheme for all platforms.
1309
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001310- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001311 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001312
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001313- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1314 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1315 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1316
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001317- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1318 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1319 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1320
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001321- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1322
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001323- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1324
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001325- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1326 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1327
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001328- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1329 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1330 type pattern with the same value exists.
1331
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001332- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1333 when run from the command prompt).
1334
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001335- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1336 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1337
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001338- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1339 default sort).
1340
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001341- Added global runctx function to profile module
1342
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001343- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1344
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001345- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1346
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001347- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1348
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001349- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001350 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1351 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1352 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1353 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1354 accordingly.
1355
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001356- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1357 decoding standards.
1358
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001359- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1360 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1361 called for all requests.
1362
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001363- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1364 they are passed to the compiler.
1365
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001366- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1367 indent, width and depth.
1368
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001369- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1370 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1371
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001372- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1373 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1374
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001375- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1376
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001377- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1378
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001379- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1380
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001381- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1382 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1383
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001384- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001385 for better performance.
1386
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001387- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001388
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001389- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1390 a string).
1391
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001392- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1393
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001394- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1395
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001396- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1397
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001398- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1399
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001400- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1401 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1402 list of fieldnames.
1403
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001404- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1405 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1406
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001407- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1408
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001409- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1410 empty lists.
1411
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001412- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1413 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1414 and shelves.
1415
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001416- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1417 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1418
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001419- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001420 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1421 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001422
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001423- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1424 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001425 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001426
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001427- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001428 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1429 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1430
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001431- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1432 and removed in Py2.4.
1433
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001434- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1435
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001436- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1437
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001438Tools/Demos
1439-----------
1440
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001441- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1442 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1443
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001444- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1445
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001446- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1447 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1448 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1449 destination in situations where both files are given.
1450
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001451- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1452 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1453 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1454 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1455
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001456- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1457
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001458- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1459 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1460 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1461 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1462 now.
1463
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001464- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1465 in effect
1466
1467- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1468 C-c C-h
1469
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001470- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1471 -d option was given.
1472
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001473Build
1474-----
1475
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001476- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1477 build under OS X.
1478
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001479- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1480 --enable-profiling.
1481
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001482- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1483 is configured --with-tsc.
1484
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001485- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1486 on AMD64.
1487
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001488- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1489 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1490
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001491- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1492 removed.
1493
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001494- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1495 supported (see PEP 11).
1496
1497- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1498
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001499- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1500
1501- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1502 (see PEP 11).
1503
1504- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1505 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1506
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001507C API
1508-----
1509
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001510- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1511 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1512 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1513
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001514- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1515 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1516 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1517 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1518
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001519- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1520 generator objects.
1521
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001522- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1523 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001524 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1525 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001526
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001527- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1528 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1529
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001530- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1531 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1532 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1533 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1534 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1535
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001536- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1537 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1538 about 10% faster.
1539
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001540- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1541 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1542
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001543- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1544 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1545 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1546 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1547
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001548Windows
1549-------
1550
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001551- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1552 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1553 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1554 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1555
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001556- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1557 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1558 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1559
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001560
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001561What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1562===============================
1563
1564*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1565
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001566IDLE
1567----
1568
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001569- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1570 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1571 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1572 context-menu actions.
1573
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001574- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1575 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1576 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1577 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1578 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1579 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1580 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
1581 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
1582 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
1583
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001584
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001585What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
1586=============================================
1587
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00001588*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001589
1590Core and builtins
1591-----------------
1592
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001593- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001594 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001595 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1596
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001597Extension modules
1598-----------------
1599
1600- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1601 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1602 than once. This has been fixed.
1603
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001604- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1605 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1606 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1607 call.
1608
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001609- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1610
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001611Library
1612-------
1613
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001614- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1615 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1616
1617- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1618 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1619 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1620 restored.
1621
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001622IDLE
1623----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001624
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001625- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001626
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001627Build
1628-----
1629
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001630- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1631 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1632
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001633C API
1634-----
1635
1636Windows
1637-------
1638
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001639- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1640 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1641
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001642- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1643
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001644Mac
1645---
1646
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001647- Various fixes to pimp.
1648
1649- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1650
1651- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1652 more problems than it solves.
1653
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001654
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001655What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1656=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001657
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001658*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1659
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001660Core and builtins
1661-----------------
1662
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001663- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1664 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1665
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001666- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
1667 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001668 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001669
1670- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
1671 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
1672 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001673 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001674
1675- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
1676 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001677
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001678- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
1679 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
1680 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
1681
1682- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001683 770247.
1684
1685- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001686
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001687Extension modules
1688-----------------
1689
1690- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
1691 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
1692
1693- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
1694
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001695- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
1696
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00001697- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
1698 contained within the _strptime module.
1699
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001700- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
1701 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
1702
1703- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001704 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
1705
1706- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
1707 the find_class attribute, if present.
1708
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001709- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001710
1711 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
1712 (SF bug 763298).
1713
1714 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00001715 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
1716 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
1717 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001718
1719 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
1720
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001721Library
1722-------
1723
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001724- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
1725
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00001726- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
1727 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
1728 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
1729 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
1730 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
1731 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
1732 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
1733 or Tester().
1734
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001735- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
1736 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
1737 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
1738 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
1739 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
1740 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
1741 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
1742 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
1743 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00001744
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001745 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00001746
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00001747- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
1748 weren't before was an oversight.
1749
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001750- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
1751 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
1752
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00001753- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
1754 when there are no lines.
1755
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00001756- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
1757 which could occur with Tk 8.4
1758
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001759- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
1760 to child processes.
1761
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001762- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
1763
1764- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
1765
1766- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
1767 xmlrpclib.
1768
1769- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
1770 responses.
1771
1772- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
1773 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
1774
1775- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
1776 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
1777 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
1778
1779- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
1780 used as patterns.
1781
1782- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
1783 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
1784 than Tk 8.3.
1785
1786- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
1787
1788- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001789
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001790Tools/Demos
1791-----------
1792
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001793- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
1794
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00001795- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
1796
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001797- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001798
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001799Build
1800-----
1801
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001802- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
1803
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001804- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
1805
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001806- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
1807 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001808
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001809- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
1810 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
1811 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001812
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001813C API
1814-----
1815
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001816- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
1817 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
1818
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001819Windows
1820-------
1821
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001822- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
1823 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
1824 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
1825 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
1826 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
1827 Python exception ::
1828
1829 thread.error: can't start new thread
1830
1831 is raised now.
1832
1833- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
1834 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
1835 instead of from DLL teardown.
1836
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001837Mac
1838---
1839
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001840- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00001841 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001842 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
1843 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
1844 the executable in the bundle.
1845
1846- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001847
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00001848- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
1849
1850- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
1851 on Panther.
1852
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001853What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
1854================================
1855
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001856*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001857
1858Core and builtins
1859-----------------
1860
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00001861- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
1862 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
1863 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
1864 with the -i option.
1865
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00001866- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
1867 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
1868
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001869- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
1870 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
1871
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00001872- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
1873 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
1874 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
1875 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
1876 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
1877 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
1878 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
1879 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
1880 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
1881 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
1882 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
1883 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
1884 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00001885
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001886- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
1887 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
1888 embedded in a lambda expression.
1889
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00001890- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
1891 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
1892 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
1893 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
1894 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
1895
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001896- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
1897 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
1898 matches the restriction on classic classes.
1899
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00001900- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
1901 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
1902
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00001903- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
1904 It's writable again.
1905
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001906- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
1907 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
1908 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001909 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001910
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001911- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
1912 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
1913 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
1914
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001915Extension modules
1916-----------------
1917
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00001918- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
1919 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
1920
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001921- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
1922 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
1923 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
1924 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
1925
1926- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
1927 collection.
1928
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00001929- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
1930 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
1931 unique within a single program run.
1932
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00001933- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
1934 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
1935
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00001936- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
1937 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
1938
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00001939- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
1940 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00001941
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00001942- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
1943
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00001944- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
1945 Fixes SF bug #730685.
1946
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00001947- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
1948 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
1949 for many BSD-derived systems.
1950
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001951
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001952Library
1953-------
1954
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00001955- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
1956 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
1957 primary ones:
1958
1959 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
1960 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
1961 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
1962
1963 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
1964 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
1965 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
1966 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
1967 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
1968 framework features (which doctest lacks).
1969
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00001970- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
1971 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
1972 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
1973 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
1974 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
1975 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
1976 argument.
1977
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001978- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
1979 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
1980 in the archive.
1981
1982- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
1983 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
1984
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00001985- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
1986 569574).
1987
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001988- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
1989 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
1990 no more.
1991
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001992- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
1993 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
1994 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
1995 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
1996 code coverage.
1997
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001998- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
1999 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2000 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002001 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2002 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002003
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002004- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2005 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2006 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002007 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002008
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002009- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2010
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002011- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2012 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2013 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2014 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2015
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002016- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2017 handling.
2018
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002019- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2020 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2021
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002022- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2023 in socket.py.
2024
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002025- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2026
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002027- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2028 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2029 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2030 opener with proxy support.
2031
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002032- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2033
2034- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2035
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002036Tools/Demos
2037-----------
2038
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002039- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2040
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002041- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2042
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002043- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2044 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002045
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002046- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2047 files.
2048
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002049Build
2050-----
2051
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002052- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002053 different root directory.
2054
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002055C API
2056-----
2057
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002058- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2059 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2060 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2061 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2062 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2063 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2064 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2065 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2066 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2067 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2068
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002069- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2070 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2071 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2072 from Python.
2073
2074
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002075New platforms
2076-------------
2077
2078None this time.
2079
2080Tests
2081-----
2082
2083- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2084 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2085
2086Windows
2087-------
2088
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002089- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2090
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002091- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2092 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2093 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2094 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2095 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2096 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2097 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2098 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2099 that's what it's for.
2100
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002101Mac
2102---
2103
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002104- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2105 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2106 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2107 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002108- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2109 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2110- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002111
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002112SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2113------------------------------------
2114
2115430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2116598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2117622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2118661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2119683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2120697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2121713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2122724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2123727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2124729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2125730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2126731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2127732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2128733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2129735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2130740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2131744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2132745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2133747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2134749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2135751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2136753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2137755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2138757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2139760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2140
2141
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002142What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2143================================
2144
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002145*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002146
2147Core and builtins
2148-----------------
2149
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002150- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2151 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2152
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002153- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2154 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2155 and cannot be strings).
2156
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002157- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2158 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2159 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2160 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2161
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002162- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2163 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2164 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2165 Python itself.
2166
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002167- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2168 the referenced object, if it has one.
2169
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002170- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2171 the thread started at
2172 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2173
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002174- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2175 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2176 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2177 placed on a list index.
2178
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002179- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2180 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2181 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2182 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2183
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002184- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2185 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2186 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2187 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2188 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2189 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2190 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2191
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002192- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2193 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2194 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2195 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2196 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2197
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002198- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2199 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002200
2201- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2202 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2203 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2204 #693195.)
2205
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002206- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2207 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002208
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002209- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002210 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002211 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2212 interpreter executions, would fail.
2213
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002214- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002215 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002216 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002217
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002218Extension modules
2219-----------------
2220
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002221- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2222 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2223 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2224 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2225
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002226- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2227 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2228
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002229- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2230 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2231 and Greg Chapman.)
2232
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002233- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2234 recursively.
2235
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002236- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002237 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2238 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2239 leaks.
2240
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002241- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2242
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002243- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2244 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2245 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2246 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2247 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2248 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2249 #705836.
2250
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002251- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002252 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2253
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002254- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2255 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2256 See SF bug #692416.
2257
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002258- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2259 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2260
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002261- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2262 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2263 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002264
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002265- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002266 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2267 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2268
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002269- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2270 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2271 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2272 timeouts to work properly.
2273
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002274Library
2275-------
2276
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002277- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2278 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2279 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2280 future release.
2281
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002282- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2283 for querying platform dependent features.
2284
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002285- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002286
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002287- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2288 pickle protocol versions.
2289
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002290- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2291 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2292 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2293
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002294- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2295
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002296- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2297 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2298 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2299 modules.
2300
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002301- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2302 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2303 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2304
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002305- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2306 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2307
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002308- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2309 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2310 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2311
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002312- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002313 MS Office extensions.
2314
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002315- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2316 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2317
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002318- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2319 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2320
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002321- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2322 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2323 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2324 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2325 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2326 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2327
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002328- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2329 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2330 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002331
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002332- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2333 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2334 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2335
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002336- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2337
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002338- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2339 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2340 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2341
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002342Tools/Demos
2343-----------
2344
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002345- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2346 See the module docstring for details.
2347
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002348Build
2349-----
2350
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002351- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2352 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002353
2354C API
2355-----
2356
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002357- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2358
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002359- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2360 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2361 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2362
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002363- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2364 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002365
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002366 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2367 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2368 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002369
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002370- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002371 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2372
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002373- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2374 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2375 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002376
2377New platforms
2378-------------
2379
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002380None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002381
2382Tests
2383-----
2384
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002385- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2386 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002387
2388Windows
2389-------
2390
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002391- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2392 function.
2393
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002394- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2395 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002396
2397Mac
2398---
2399
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002400- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2401 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002402
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002403- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2404 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002405
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002406- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2407 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2408 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002409
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002410- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002411 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2412 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002413
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002414- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2415 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002416
2417
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002418What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2419=================================
2420
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002421*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002422
2423Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002424-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002425
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002426- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2427 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2428 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2429
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002430- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2431 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2432 (SF patch #664376.)
2433
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002434- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2435 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2436 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2437 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2438 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2439 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002440 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002441
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002442- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2443 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2444 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2445 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002446 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002447
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002448- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2449 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2450 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2451 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2452 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2453 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2454 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2455 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2456 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2457 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2458 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2459
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002460- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2461 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2462 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2463 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2464 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2465 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2466
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002467- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2468 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2469
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002470- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2471 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2472 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2473 case.)
2474
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002475- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2476 passed as unicode strings.
2477
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002478- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2479 See SF bug #683467.
2480
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002481- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2482 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2483
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002484- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2485
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002486- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2487
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002488- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2489 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2490 arguments.
2491
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002492- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2493 See SF bug #667147.
2494
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002495- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002496 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002497 See SF bug #676155.
2498
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002499- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002500 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002501 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2502 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2503 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2504 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2505 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2506 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002507
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002508Extension modules
2509-----------------
2510
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002511- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2512 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2513 tp_as_number pointer.
2514
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002515- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2516 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2517 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2518 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2519 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2520
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002521- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2522
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002523- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2524
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002525- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002526 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002527 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2528 patch #678531.)
2529
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002530- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2531 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2532
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002533- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2534 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2535
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002536- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2537
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002538- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2539 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2540 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2541
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002542- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2543
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002544- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2545 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2546
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002547- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002548
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002549- datetime changes:
2550
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002551 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2552
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002553 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2554 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2555 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2556 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2557 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2558 now.
2559
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002560 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002561 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2562 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002563
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002564 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002565 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002566 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2567 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2568 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2569 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002570
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002571 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2572 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2573 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002574 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2575
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002576 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2577 by a later example coded by Guido.
2578
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002579 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002580 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
2581 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
2582 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002583 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
2584 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
2585
2586 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
2587 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
2588 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
2589 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
2590 tzinfo subclass instance.
2591
2592 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
2593 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
2594 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2595 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2596 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2597 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2598 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2599 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002600
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002601 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2602 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2603 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2604 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2605 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002606 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2607
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002608 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002609
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002610 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2611 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2612 as a naive datetime object.
2613
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002614 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2615 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2616 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2617
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002618 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2619 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2620 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2621 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2622 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2623 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2624 comparison.
2625
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002626 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2627 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2628 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2629 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002630 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002631
2632 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002633
2634 and ::
2635
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002636 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2637
2638 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2639 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2640 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2641 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2642
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002643 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2644 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2645 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2646 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2647 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2648
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002649 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2650 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002651 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2652 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002653
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002654Library
2655-------
2656
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002657- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2658 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2659
2660- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2661 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2662 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2663 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2664 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2665 See PEP 307 for details.
2666
2667- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
2668 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
2669
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002670- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
2671 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002672 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002673 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
2674 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002675 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002676
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00002677- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
2678 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
2679
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002680- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
2681 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
2682 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
2683
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00002684- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
2685
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00002686- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
2687 exception.
2688
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00002689- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
2690 class.
2691
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00002692- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
2693 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
2694 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
2695
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00002696- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
2697 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
2698
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002699- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00002700 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
2701 See SF bug #659228.
2702
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00002703- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
2704 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
2705 See SF patch #651082.
2706
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00002707- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002708
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00002709- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
2710 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
2711
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002712- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002713 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002714
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00002715- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
2716 DOS paths from other platforms.
2717
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002718Tools/Demos
2719-----------
2720
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002721- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
2722 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
2723 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
2724 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
2725 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
2726 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
2727 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
2728 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
2729 example:
2730
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00002731 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
2732 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002733
2734 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
2735
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002736
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002737Build
2738-----
2739
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002740- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
2741 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
2742 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002743 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
2744
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002745 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
2746
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00002747- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
2748 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
2749 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
2750 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
2751 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
2752 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
2753 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
2754 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
2755 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
2756
2757- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
2758 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
2759 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
2760 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
2761
2762- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
2763 from the Tools/scripts directory.
2764
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002765C API
2766-----
2767
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002768- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
2769 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00002770
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002771- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
2772 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2773 tp_as_number pointer.
2774
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00002775- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
2776 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
2777 (SF #681367)
2778
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00002779- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
2780 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
2781 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
2782 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00002783
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002784Tests
2785-----
2786
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00002787- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002788 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
2789 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
2790 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
2791 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
2792 pydoc.)
2793
2794- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
2795
2796- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002797
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002798Windows
2799-------
2800
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002801- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
2802 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
2803 time).
2804
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00002805- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
2806 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
2807
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002808- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
2809 release without strong cryptography.
2810
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002811- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002812 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002813
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002814- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
2815 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
2816
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002817Mac
2818---
2819
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002820- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
2821 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002822
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00002823- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
2824 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
2825 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002826
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002827- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
2828 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002829
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002830- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
2831 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
2832 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
2833 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002834
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002835- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00002836 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
2837 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
2838 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002839
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002840
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002841What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002842=================================
2843
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00002844*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002845
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002846Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002847--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002848
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00002849- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
2850
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002851- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
2852 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002853 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002854 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002855 a different meaning than before.
2856
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002857- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002858 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002859 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002860
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002861- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002862 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002863 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002864
2865- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
2866 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
2867 and deallocation.
2868
2869- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
2870 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
2871
2872- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
2873 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
2874 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
2875 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
2876 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
2877
2878- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
2879 now detected by the garbage collector.
2880
2881- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
2882 [SF bug 519621]
2883
2884- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
2885 identifier.
2886
2887- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
2888 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
2889 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
2890 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
2891 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
2892 [SF bug 563060]
2893
2894- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
2895 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
2896 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
2897 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
2898 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
2899
2900- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
2901 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
2902 not called. [SF bug #537450]
2903
2904- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
2905
2906- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
2907 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
2908 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
2909 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
2910 state of the slots would be lost.)
2911
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002912Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002913-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002914
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002915- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002916 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
2917 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
2918 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
2919 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002920 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
2921 Jython 2.1.
2922
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002923- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002924 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002925 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
2926 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
2927 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
2928 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
2929 these, see PEP 302.
2930
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002931- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
2932 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
2933 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
2934
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00002935- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
2936 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
2937 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
2938
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00002939- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
2940 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
2941 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
2942
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002943- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
2944 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
2945 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
2946 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
2947 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
2948 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
2949 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
2950 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
2951 releases or implementations.
2952
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002953- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002954 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
2955 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002956
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00002957- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
2958 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
2959
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002960- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
2961 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
2962 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
2963
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00002964- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
2965 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
2966
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002967- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
2968 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002969 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
2970 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002971
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00002972- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
2973 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
2974 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
2975 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
2976 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
2977
2978 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
2979 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
2980 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
2981 pattern.
2982
2983 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
2984 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
2985 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
2986 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
2987
2988 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
2989 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
2990 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
2991 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
2992 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
2993 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
2994
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00002995- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
2996 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
2997 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
2998 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
2999 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3000 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3001 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3002 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003003
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003004- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3005 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3006 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3007 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3008 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003009 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3010 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3011 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3012 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3013 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3014 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3015 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003016
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003017- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3018 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3019
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003020- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3021 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3022 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3023 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3024 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3025 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3026 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3027 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3028 to Zack Weinberg!
3029
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003030- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3031 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3032 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3033 type. This has been fixed now.
3034
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003035- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3036 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3037 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3038
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003039- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3040 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3041 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3042 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3043 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3044 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3045 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3046 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003047 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003048
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003049- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3050 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3051 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003052
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003053- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3054 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3055 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3056 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3057 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3058 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3059 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3060 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003061 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003062 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3063 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3064
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003065- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3066 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3067 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3068 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3069 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3070 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3071 this.)
3072
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003073- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3074 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003075 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003076 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003077 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3078 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003079 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3080 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003081
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003082- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3083 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3084 currently running.
3085
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003086- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3087 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3088 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3089 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3090
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003091- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3092 as directory names.
3093
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003094- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3095 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3096
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003097- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3098 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3099
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003100- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003101 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3102 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003103
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003104- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3105 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3106 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3107 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3108 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3109
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003110- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3111 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3112 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3113 removed.
3114
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003115- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3116 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3117 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3118
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003119- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3120 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3121 to __debug__.
3122
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003123- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3124 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3125 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3126
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003127- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3128 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3129 deprecated now.
3130
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003131- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3132 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3133 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003134
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003135- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3136 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3137 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3138 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3139 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003140
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003141- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3142 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3143
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003144- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3145 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3146 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003147 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003148 is backward compatible.
3149
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003150- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3151 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3152 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3153 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3154 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3155
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003156- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3157 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3158 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3159 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3160 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3161 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003162
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003163- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3164 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3165
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003166- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3167 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3168
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003169- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3170 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3171 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3172 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3173 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3174
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003175- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3176 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3177 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3178
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003179- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003180 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3181
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003182- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3183 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3184 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003185
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003186- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3187 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3188
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003189- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3190 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3191 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3192
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003193- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3194
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003195Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003196-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003197
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003198- Added three operators to the operator module:
3199 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3200 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3201 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3202
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003203- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3204
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003205- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3206 archives.
3207
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003208- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3209 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3210 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3211
3212 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3213
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003214- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3215 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3216 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003217 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003218
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003219- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3220 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3221 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3222 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003223 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3224 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3225 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3226 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003227
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003228- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3229 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003230
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003231- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3232
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003233- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3234 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3235
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003236- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3237 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3238 supported.
3239
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003240- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3241
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003242- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3243 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003244
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003245- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3246 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3247
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003248- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3249
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003250- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3251 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3252
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003253- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3254 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3255 functions but callable type objects.
3256
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003257- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003258 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003259 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003260
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003261- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3262 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003263
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003264- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3265 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003266
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003267- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3268 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3269 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3270 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3271
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003272- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3273 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003274
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003275- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3276 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3277 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3278 and __imul__.
3279
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003280- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003281 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3282 is called.
3283
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003284- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3285 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3286 interpreter was compiled.
3287
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003288- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3289 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3290 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003291 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003292 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3293 1, not 2.
3294
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003295- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3296 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3297 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3298 limit.
3299
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003300- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3301 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3302 bug #623464.
3303
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003304- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3305 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3306 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3307 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3308
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003309Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003310-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003311
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003312- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3313
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003314- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3315 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3316 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3317 with Python 2.3a2.
3318
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003319- os.path exposes getctime.
3320
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003321- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003322 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003323 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003324 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003325 unit tests of floating point results.
3326
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003327- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3328 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3329 has been increased.
3330
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003331- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3332 executed.
3333
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003334- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3335 postinstallation script.
3336
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003337- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3338 test the current module.
3339
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003340- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003341 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3342 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3343 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3344 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3345
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003346- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003347 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003348 Ward's Optik package.
3349
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003350- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3351 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3352 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3353 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3354
3355- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3356 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003357 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003358
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003359- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3360 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3361 shelf are binary pickles.
3362
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003363- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3364 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3365
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003366- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3367 modules are iterators now.
3368
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003369- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3370 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3371 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3372 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3373 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3374 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003375
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003376- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3377 with their entity value.
3378
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003379- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3380
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003381- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3382 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003383
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003384- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3385 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003386 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003387
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003388- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3389 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3390 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3391 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3392 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3393 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3394 main():
3395
3396 import locale
3397 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3398
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003399- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3400 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3401
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003402- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3403 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3404 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3405 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3406 to the new standard.
3407
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003408- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3409 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3410 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3411 an extension to the database.
3412
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003413- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3414 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3415 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3416 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003417 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003418
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003419- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003420 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003421
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003422- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3423 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3424 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3425 bounded integers.
3426
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003427- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3428 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3429 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3430 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3431 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3432 in existence.
3433
3434 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3435 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3436 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3437 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3438 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3439 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3440
3441 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3442 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3443 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3444 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3445
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003446- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3447 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3448 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3449
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003450- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3451
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003452- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3453 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3454 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3455 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3456
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003457- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3458 argument.
3459
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003460- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3461 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3462 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3463 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3464 [SF patch 560794].
3465
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003466- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3467 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3468 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003469 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3470 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3471 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003472
3473- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3474 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003475
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003476- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3477 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3478 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3479 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003480
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003481- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3482 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3483 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3484 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3485 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3486
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003487- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003488
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003489- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3490
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003491- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3492 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3493 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3494 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3495 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3496 identical to None.
3497
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003498- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3499 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3500 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3501 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3502 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3503 results now.
3504
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003505- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3506 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3507
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003508- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3509 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3510 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3511 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3512 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3513 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3514 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3515 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3516
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003517- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3518
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003519- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3520 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3521
3522- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3523 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3524 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3525 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3526 and other systems.
3527
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003528- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3529 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3530 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3531 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 +00003532 work well with these.
3533
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003534- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3535
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003536- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003537 connections.
3538
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003539- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3540 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3541 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3542
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003543- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3544 sets
3545
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003546- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3547 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3548 name.
3549
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003550- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3551 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3552 passed in.
3553
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003554- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003555 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003556 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3557 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003558
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003559- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3560
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003561- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3562
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003563- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3564 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3565 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3566
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003567- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3568 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3569 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3570 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003571 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003572
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003573- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003574 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003575 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003576
3577- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3578 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3579 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3580
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003581- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00003582 the value of its expression argument.
3583
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003584- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
3585 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
3586 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
3587
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00003588- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
3589 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
3590 skipstone browser was included.
3591
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00003592- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
3593 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
3594
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003595Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003596-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003597
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003598- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3599 names in addition to accepting file names.
3600
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003601- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3602 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3603 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3604 still used and useful.)
3605
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003606- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3607 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3608 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3609 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003610
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003611- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3612 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3613 the generated binary.
3614
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003615Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003616-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003617
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003618- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3619
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003620- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3621 except in the hands of experts.
3622
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003623- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003624 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3625 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3626 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003627
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003628- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3629 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3630 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3631 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3632 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3633 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3634 builds.
3635
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003636- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3637 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3638 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3639 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3640 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3641 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3642 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3643 new type.
3644
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003645- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003646
3647 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3648 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3649 positive infinities.
3650
3651 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3652 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3653 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3654 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3655 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3656 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3657 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3658
3659 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3660
3661 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3662
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003663- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3664 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3665 size of the executable.
3666
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003667- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
3668 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
3669 configure script. On other platforms, remove
3670 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00003671
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00003672- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
3673
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00003674- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
3675 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
3676 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00003677
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00003678- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
3679 well as Unix.
3680
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00003681- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
3682 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
3683 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
3684 modules in the README file for details.
3685
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003686C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003687-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003688
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003689- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
3690 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003691 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00003692 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003693 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003694
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003695- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
3696 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
3697 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
3698 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
3699 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
3700 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003701 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003702 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
3703 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
3704 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
3705 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
3706 aligned.)
3707
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00003708- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
3709 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
3710 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
3711
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003712- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
3713 level.
3714
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00003715- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
3716 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
3717 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
3718 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
3719 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
3720
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00003721- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
3722 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
3723 code.
3724
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00003725- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
3726 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
3727 adjusting for negative indices.
3728
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003729- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
3730 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
3731 object.
3732
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00003733- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
3734 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
3735 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
3736
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003737- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
3738 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00003739
3740- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
3741
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00003742- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
3743 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
3744 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
3745 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
3746
3747- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
3748
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00003749- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003750
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003751- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00003752 without going through the buffer API.
3753
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003754- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00003755
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00003756- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
3757 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
3758 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
3759 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
3760
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003761- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
3762 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
3763
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003764- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003765 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
3766
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003767New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003768-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003769
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00003770- OpenVMS is now supported.
3771
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00003772- AtheOS is now supported.
3773
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00003774- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
3775
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00003776- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
3777
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003778Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003779-----
3780
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00003781- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
3782 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
3783 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003784
3785Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003786-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003787
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003788- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
3789 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
3790 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
3791 bugs.
3792 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003793 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00003794 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
3795 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003796 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003797
3798- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00003799 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003800
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00003801- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
3802 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
3803
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003804- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
3805 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003806 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003807 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
3808
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00003809- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
3810 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
3811 use files" uninstall option).
3812
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00003813- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
3814
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003815- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
3816 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
3817
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003818- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
3819 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
3820 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
3821
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003822- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
3823 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
3824 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
3825 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
3826 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003827 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
3828 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
3829 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003830
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003831- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003832 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003833 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
3834 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
3835 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
3836 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
3837 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
3838 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
3839 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
3840 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
3841 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
3842 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
3843 work around.
3844
3845- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
3846 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
3847 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
3848 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
3849 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
3850 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
3851 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
3852 specified with O_CREAT too).
3853
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003854Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003855----
3856
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003857- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003858
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00003859- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
3860 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
3861 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
3862
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003863- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
3864 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
3865 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
3866
3867- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
3868 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
3869 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
3870 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
3871 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
3872 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
3873 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
3874 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003875
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00003876- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
3877 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
3878 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003879
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003880- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
3881 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
3882 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
3883 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
3884 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003885
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003886- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
3887 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
3888 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003889
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003890- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
3891 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003892
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003893- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
3894 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
3895 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
3896 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
3897 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003898
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003899- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
3900 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
3901 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
3902
3903- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
3904 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
3905 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003906
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003907- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
3908 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
3909 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
3910 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003911 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003912
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003913- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
3914 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003915
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003916- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
3917 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003918
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003919- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00003920 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003921 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
3922 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003923
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003924
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003925What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003926===============================
3927
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003928*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
3929
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003930Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003931--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003932
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003933- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
3934 with a custom metaclass.
3935
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003936Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003937-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003938
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003939- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
3940 are proxies.
3941
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003942Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003943-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003944
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003945- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
3946 very short strings.
3947
3948- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
3949 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
3950 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
3951 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
3952 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
3953
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003954Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003955-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003956
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003957- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
3958 close or delete time).
3959
3960- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
3961 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
3962
3963- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
3964
3965- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003966 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003967
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003968Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003969-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003970
3971Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003972-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003973
3974C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003975-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003976
3977New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003978-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003979
3980Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003981-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003982
3983Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003984-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003985
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003986- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
3987
3988- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
3989 instances are deleted at process exit time.
3990
3991- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
3992 deleted at process exit time.
3993
3994- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
3995 in backslash.
3996
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003997Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003998----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003999
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004000- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4001 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4002 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4003
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004004
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004005What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004006===========================
4007
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004008*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4009
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004010Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004011--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004012
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004013- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4014 been extensively updated. See
4015
4016 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4017
4018 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4019
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004020- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4021 deleted!
4022
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004023- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4024 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4025 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4026 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4027 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4028
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004029- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4030
4031 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4032 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4033
4034 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4035 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4036 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4037 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4038 supported anyway.
4039
4040 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4041 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4042
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004043- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4044 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4045 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4046 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4047 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004048
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004049- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4050 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4051 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4052
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004053Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004054-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004055
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004056- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4057 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4058 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4059 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4060 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4061 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004062 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4063 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4064 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4065 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004066
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004067- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4068 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4069 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4070
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004071Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004072-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004073
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004074- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4075
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004076Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004077-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004078
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004079- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4080 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4081 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4082 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4083 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4084 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4085
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004086- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4087
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004088- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4089
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004090- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4091
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004092- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4093 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4094 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4095
4096- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4097
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004098Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004099-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004100
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004101- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4102 off a search on Google.
4103
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004104Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004105-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004106
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004107- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4108 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4109 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4110 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4111 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4112 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4113 other platforms should do likewise.
4114
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004115- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4116 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4117 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4118
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004119C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004120-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004121
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004122- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4123 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4124 producing key-value pairs.
4125
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004126- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004127 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004128 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4129 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4130 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4131 previously went unchallenged.
4132
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004133New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004134-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004135
4136Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004137-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004138
4139Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004140-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004141
4142Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004143----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004144
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004145- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4146 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004147
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004148- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4149 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4150 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4151 home.
4152
4153
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004154What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004155===========================
4156
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004157*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4158
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004159Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004160--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004161
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004162- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4163 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004164
4165 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004166 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004167
4168 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4169 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004170 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004171 This needs to be documented.
4172
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004173- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4174 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4175
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004176- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4177 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4178 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4179
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004180- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4181 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4182
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004183- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4184 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4185 class forbids it).
4186
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004187- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4188 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4189 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4190
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004191- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4192
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004193Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004194-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004195
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004196- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4197 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004198 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004199
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004200- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4201 (like 1 + '').
4202
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004203Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004204-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004205
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004206- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4207 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4208 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4209 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004210 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004211 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4212
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004213- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4214 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4215 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4216 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4217
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004218- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4219 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004220 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4221 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4222 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004223
4224- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4225 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004226
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004227- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4228 bytes on its input.
4229
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004230Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004231-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004232
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004233- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004234 convenience function.
4235
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004236- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4237 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4238 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004239 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4240 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4241 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4242 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4243 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4244 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004245
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004246- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4247 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4248 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4249 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4250
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004251- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4252 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4253 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4254
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004255- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4256 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4257 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4258 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4259
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004260- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4261 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004262 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004263 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4264 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4265 new -l and -e options.
4266
4267- statcache is now deprecated.
4268
4269- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4270 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004271 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004272 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4273 time properly taken into account.
4274
4275- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4276 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4277 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4278 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4279
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004280Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004281-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004282
4283Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004284-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004285
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004286- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4287 is built with libdb3 if available.
4288
4289- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4290
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004291C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004292-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004293
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004294- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4295 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4296 PySequence_Size().
4297
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004298- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4299
4300- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4301 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4302 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4303
4304- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4305 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4306
4307- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4308 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4309
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004310New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004311-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004312
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004313- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4314 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4315
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004316- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4317 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4318
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004319- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4320
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004321Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004322-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004323
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004324- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4325 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4326
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004327Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004328-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004329
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004330Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004331----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004332
4333- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4334 removed completely in the next release.
4335
4336- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4337 OSX.
4338
4339- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4340 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4341
4342- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4343
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004344
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004345What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004346===========================
4347
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004348*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4349
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004350Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004351--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004352
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004353- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004354 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004355 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004356 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4357 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004358 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4359 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004360 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4361 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004362
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004363- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4364 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4365
4366- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4367 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4368
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004369Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004370-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004371
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004372- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4373 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4374 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4375 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4376 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4377 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4378 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4379 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4380
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004381- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4382 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4383 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4384 example).
4385
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004386- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004387 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004388 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004389 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004390
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004391- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4392 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4393 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004394 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004395
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004396- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4397 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4398 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4399 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4400 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4401 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4402
4403 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4404
4405 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4406
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004407Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004408-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004409
4410- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4411
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004412- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4413
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004414- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4415 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004416
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004417- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4418 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4419 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4420 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4421 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4422 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004423 attributes.
4424
4425- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4426 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4427 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004428
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004429- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4430 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4431 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004432
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004433- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4434 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4435 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004436 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4437 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4438
4439- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4440 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004441
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004442Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004443-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004444
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004445- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4446 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4447
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004448- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4449 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4450 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4451 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4452
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004453- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4454 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4455 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4456 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4457
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004458 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4459 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4460 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4461 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4462 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4463 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4464 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4465 without losing information).
4466
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004467- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004468 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4469 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4470 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4471 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4472 module).
4473
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004474 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004475 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4476 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4477 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4478 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004479
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004480- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004481 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4482 encoding.
4483
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004484- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4485 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4486
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004487- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004488 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4489
4490- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4491 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4492 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4493 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4494
4495- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4496
4497- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4498 ON, and OFF.
4499
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004500- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4501 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4502
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004503Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004504-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004505
4506- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4507 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4508 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004509
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004510- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4511 been added: -X and -E.
4512
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004513Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004514-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004515
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004516- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4517 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4518
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004519C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004520-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004521
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004522- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4523 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4524 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4525 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4526 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4527
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004528- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4529 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4530 as long) arguments.
4531
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004532- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4533 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4534 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4535 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4536 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4537 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4538
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004539- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4540 input.
4541
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004542New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004543-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004544
4545Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004546-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004547
4548Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004549-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004550
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004551- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4552 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4553 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4554
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004555- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4556 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4557 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004558 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004559
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004560 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4561 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4562 import signal
4563 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004564
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004565 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004566 while 1:
4567 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004568 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004569 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4570 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4571 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4572 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004573
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004574
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004575What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4576===========================
4577
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004578*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4579
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004580Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004581--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004582
4583- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
4584 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
4585 documentation for all operations on list objects.
4586
4587- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
4588 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
4589 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
4590 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
4591 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
4592 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
4593 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004594
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004595- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004596 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004597 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4598 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4599 associate a docstring with a property.
4600
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004601- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4602 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4603 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4604 other built-in object types.
4605
4606- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4607 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4608 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4609 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4610 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4611
4612- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4613 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4614
4615- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4616 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004617 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004618 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4619 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4620 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4621 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4622 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4623
4624- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4625 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4626 class.
4627
4628- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4629 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4630 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4631 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4632
4633- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4634 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4635 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4636 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4637
4638- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4639 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4640
4641- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4642 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4643 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4644 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4645 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004646 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004647 with the same value as s.
4648
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004649- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4650
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004651Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004652----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004653
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004654- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4655
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004656- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4657 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4658 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4659 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4660 objects.
4661
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004662- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4663 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004664 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4665 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
4666
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004667- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
4668 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
4669 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
4670
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004671Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004672-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004673
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00004674- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4675 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
4676 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
4677 by the instances.
4678
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00004679- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
4680 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
4681 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
4682
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004683- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
4684 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
4685 before the entire comparison is complete.
4686
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00004687- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4688 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
4689 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
4690
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00004691- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
4692 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
4693 getwriter().
4694
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004695- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
4696 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
4697
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00004698- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004699 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
4700 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
4701
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00004702- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
4703 iterable object.
4704
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004705- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
4706 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004707
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004708- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
4709 authentication.
4710
4711- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
4712 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004713
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004714- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00004715 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
4716 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
4717 a sample driver.)
4718
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004719Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004720-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004721
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004722- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
4723 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
4724 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
4725 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
4726 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
4727 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
4728 kernel has large file support.
4729
4730- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
4731 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
4732 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
4733 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
4734 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
4735
4736- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
4737 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
4738 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
4739
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004740C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004741-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004742
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004743- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
4744 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
4745
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004746New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004747-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004748
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004749- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
4750 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
4751
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004752Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004753-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004754
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004755- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
4756 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
4757 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
4758 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
4759 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
4760
4761- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
4762 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
4763 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
4764 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
4765
4766- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
4767 especially in regard to reporting errors.
4768
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004769Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004770-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004771
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004772- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004773 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
4774 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004775
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004776
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004777What's New in Python 2.2a3?
4778===========================
4779
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004780*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
4781
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004782Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004783----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004784
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004785- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
4786 big to represent as a C double.
4787
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00004788- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
4789 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
4790 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
4791 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
4792 restriction).
4793
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00004794- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
4795 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
4796 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
4797 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
4798 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
4799
4800 >>> dir([])
4801 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
4802 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
4803 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
4804 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
4805 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
4806 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
4807 'reverse', 'sort']
4808
4809 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
4810
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004811- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004812 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
4813 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
4814 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
4815 OverflowError exception.
4816
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00004817- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004818 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004819 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
4820 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
4821 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
4822 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
4823 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004824 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004825 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
4826 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
4827
4828 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
4829 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
4830 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
4831 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004832
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004833- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004834 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
4835 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
4836 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
4837 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
4838 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
4839 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
4840 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
4841 once it is created.
4842
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00004843- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
4844 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
4845 (key, value) pairs.
4846
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004847- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004848 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
4849 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
4850
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00004851- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
4852 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
4853 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
4854 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
4855 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004856
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004857- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004858 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
4859 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
4860
4861 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
4862
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004863- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00004864 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
4865
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004866Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004867-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004868
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004869- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00004870 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
4871 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004872
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00004873- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
4874 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
4875 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
4876 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
4877 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
4878 in this area anymore).
4879
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00004880- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
4881 threading.Timer.
4882
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00004883- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
4884 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
4885
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004886- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004887 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
4888
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004889- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00004890 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
4891 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
4892 converted to Python longs.
4893
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004894- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004895 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
4896
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00004897- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
4898 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
4899 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
4900
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004901Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004902-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004903
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004904- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
4905 division operators as per PEP 238.
4906
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004907Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004908-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004909
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004910- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
4911 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
4912 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
4913 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
4914
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004915C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004916-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004917
4918- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004919
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004920- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
4921 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004922 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004923
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004924 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
4925 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004926 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004927 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004928
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004929- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004930 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
4931 module:
4932
4933 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004934
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004935 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
4936 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004937
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004938 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
4939 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004940
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004941 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
4942
4943 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
4944
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004945- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004946 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
4947 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
4948 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004949
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004950New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004951-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004952
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00004953- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
4954 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
4955 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
4956 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
4957 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004958
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004959Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004960-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004961
4962Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004963-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004964
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004965- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
4966 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
4967 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
4968 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00004969 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
4970 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
4971 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
4972 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
4973 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004974
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004975- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00004976 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
4977
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004978
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004979What's New in Python 2.2a2?
4980===========================
4981
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004982*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
4983
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004984Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004985-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004986
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00004987- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
4988 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
4989
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004990- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
4991 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
4992 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004993
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00004994- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
4995 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
4996 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
4997 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004998
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004999- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5000
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005001- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005002
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005003Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005004-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005005
5006- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005007 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005008 the module docstring for details.
5009
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005010Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005011-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005012
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005013- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005014 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5015 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5016 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005017
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005018- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5019 Nick Mathewson.
5020
5021Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005022----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005023
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005024- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5025 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5026 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5027 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5028 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5029 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5030 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5031 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5032
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005033- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5034 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5035 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5036 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5037
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005038- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5039 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5040 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5041 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5042 come a long way).
5043
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005044- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5045 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5046 write filters for these warnings).
5047
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005048- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5049 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5050 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5051 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5052 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5053
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005054- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5055 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5056 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5057 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5058 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5059 older distribution.
5060
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005061Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005062-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005063
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005064- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5065 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005066 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005067
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005068- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5069 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5070 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5071
5072- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5073
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005074- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5075
5076- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5077
5078- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5079
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005080- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005081
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005082- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5083
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005084New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005085-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005086
5087C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005088-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005089
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005090- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5091 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5092 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5093 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5094 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5095 against buffer overruns.
5096
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005097- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005098 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5099 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005100 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5101 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5102 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5103
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005104- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5105 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5106 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5107 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5108 deprecated.
5109
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005110Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005111-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005112
5113- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5114 relevant is found.
5115
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005116
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005117What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005118===========================
5119
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005120*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5121
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005122Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005123----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005124
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005125- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5126 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5127 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5128 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5129 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5130 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5131 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5132 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005133 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005134 repaired.
5135
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005136- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005137 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005138 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5139 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5140 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5141 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5142 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5143 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5144 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5145 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5146
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005147- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5148 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5149 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5150 leading BMO character).
5151
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005152- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5153 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5154 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5155
5156 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5157 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5158 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005159
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005160 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5161 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5162 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5163 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5164 for various simple to use conversions.
5165
5166 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5167 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5168
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005169 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5170 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5171 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5172 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5173 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5174 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5175 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5176 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5177 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5178 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5179 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5180 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5181 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5182 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5183 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005184
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005185- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5186 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5187 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005188 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005189 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005190
5191 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005192 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5193 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5194 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5195 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5196 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005197 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5198 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005199
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005200 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5201 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5202 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005203 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005204
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005205- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5206 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5207 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5208 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5209 floating arithmetic,
5210
5211 x = 9007199254740992.0
5212 print long(x)
5213
5214 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5215 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5216 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5217 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5218 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5219 functions are of good quality).
5220
5221 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5222 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5223 algorithms to break.
5224
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005225- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5226 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5227 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5228 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5229 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5230 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5231 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5232 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5233 order.
5234
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005235- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5236 operation along the most common code paths.
5237
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005238- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5239 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5240
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005241- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5242 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5243 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5244 {}.update(UserDict())
5245
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005246- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5247 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5248 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5249 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5250 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5251 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5252 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5253 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5254
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005255- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005256 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005257
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005258 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005259 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5260 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005261 join() method of strings
5262 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005263 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5264 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005265 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005266 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005267
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005268- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5269 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5270
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005271- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5272 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5273
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005274- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5275 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5276 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5277 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5278
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005279- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5280 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005281 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005282 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5283 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005284
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005285- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5286
5287
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005288Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005289-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005290
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005291- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005292 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005293 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5294 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5295
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005296- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5297 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5298
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005299- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5300 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5301 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5302 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5303
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005304- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5305 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5306 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5307
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005308- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5309
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005310- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5311
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005312- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5313 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5314 that are still imported into string.py).
5315
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005316- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5317
5318- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5319 Now it does.
5320
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005321- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5322
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005323- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5324 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5325 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5326 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5327 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005328 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5329 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005330
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005331- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5332 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5333 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5334 'help(object)'.
5335
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005336Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005337-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005338
5339- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005340 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005341 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5342 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5343
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005344- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005345 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5346 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005347
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005348C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005349-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005350
5351- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5352 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005353
5354----
5355
5356**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**