blob: ec8570b50457b6894db345ee9767c39ded916e57 [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 Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +000016- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
17 (2+3) --> (5).
18
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +000019- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
20
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000021
22Extension Modules
23-----------------
24
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +000025- stat_float_times is now True.
26
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +000027- array.array objects are now picklable.
28
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +000029- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
30 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
31
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +000032- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
33 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
34 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
35
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +000036- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
37 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000038
39Library
40-------
41
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +000042- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
43
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +000044- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
45
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +000046- Enhancements to the csv module:
47
48 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
49 reflecting it's capabilities, and improving it's compliance with
50 PEP 305.
51 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
52 reporting.
53 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
54 dictates.
55 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +000056 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +000057 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +000058 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
59 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +000060 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
61 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +000062 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +000063 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
64 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
65 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
66 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
67 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
68 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
69 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
70 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
71 without first creating a dialect class.
72 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
73 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
74 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +000075 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +000076 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
77 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +000078 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
79 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
80 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
81 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +000082 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
83 This has been fixed.
84
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +000085- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
86 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
87 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
88 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
89
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +000090- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
91
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +000092- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
93 (Bug #951915).
94
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +000095- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
96 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
97 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
98 encoding alias table
99
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000100- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
101
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000102- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
103 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
104
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000105- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
106
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000107- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
108
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000109- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
110
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000111- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
112
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000113- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
114
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000115- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
116 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
117 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
118
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000119- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000120 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000121
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000122- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
123 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
124 tokenizer with very long source lines.
125
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000126- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
127 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
128
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000129- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
130 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000131
132Build
133-----
134
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000135- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
136 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
137 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
138 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
139 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
140 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
141 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
142 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
143
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000144
145C API
146-----
147
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000148- Removed PyRange_New().
149
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000150
151Tests
152-----
153
154
155Mac
156---
157
158
159
160Tools/Demos
161-----------
162
163
164
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000165What's New in Python 2.4 final?
166===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000167
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000168*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000169
170Core and builtins
171-----------------
172
173- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
174 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
175 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
176
177
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000178What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
179==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000180
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000181*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000182
183Core and builtins
184-----------------
185
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000186- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
187 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
188 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
189
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000190
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000191Library
192-------
193
194- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
195 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
196 raised is re-raised.
197
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000198- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
199 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
200
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000201- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
202 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
203 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
204 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
205 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
206 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
207 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
208 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
209 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
210 by the slice are recomputed now.
211
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000212- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000213
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000214Build
215-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000216
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000217- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
218 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
219 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000220
221C API
222-----
223
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000224- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
225
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000226
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000227What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
228================================
229
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000230*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000231
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000232License
233-------
234
235The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
236is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
237changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
238Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
239intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
240durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
241the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
242License::
243
244 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
245
246says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
247to Python 2.1.1.
248
249The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
250License Version 2.
251
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000252Core and builtins
253-----------------
254
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000255- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
256 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
257 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
258 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
259 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
260 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
261 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
262 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
263 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
264 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
265
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000266- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000267
268Extension Modules
269-----------------
270
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000271- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
272 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
273 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
274 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000275
276Library
277-------
278
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000279- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
280 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
281 returned.
282
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000283- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
284
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000285- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
286 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
287
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000288- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
289
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000290- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
291 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000292
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000293- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
294
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000295- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
296
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000297- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000298 the source code is updated and reloaded.
299
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000300Build
301-----
302
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000303- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000304
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000305What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
306================================
307
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000308*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000309
310Core and builtins
311-----------------
312
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000313- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000314 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
315
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000316- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
317 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
318 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
319 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
320
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000321- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
322 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
323
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000324- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
325 constant.
326
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000327- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
328 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
329 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
330 large), and to anomalies such as
331 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
332 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
333 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
334 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000335
336Extension modules
337-----------------
338
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000339- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
340 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000341 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
342 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
343 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000344
345Library
346-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000347
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000348- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000349 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000350 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
351 --swig-cpp.
352
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000353- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
354 it is set.
355
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000356- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000357
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000358- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
359 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
360 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
361 Closes bug #1039270.
362
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000363- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000364
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000365 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000366 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
367 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
368 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
369 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
370 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
371 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
372 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
373 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
374 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
375 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
376 + Updates to documentation.
377
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000378- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
379 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
380 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
381 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
382
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000383- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000384
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000385- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
386 applications should use the getmember function.
387
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000388- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
389
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000390- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
391 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
392 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
393 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
394 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
395 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
396 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
397 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
398 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
399
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000400- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
401 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000402 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000403
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000404- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
405 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
406 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
407 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
408 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
409 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
410 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
411 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000412
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000413- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
414 the new public features (of which there are many).
415
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000416- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000417 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
418 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
419 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
420 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000421 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000422
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000423- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
424
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000425- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
426 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
427 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
428 options.
429
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000430- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
431 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
432 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
433 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
434 conditions under which non-string values work.
435
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000436Build
437-----
438
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000439- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
440 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
441 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
442
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000443- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
444 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
445 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
446 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
447 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000448
449C API
450-----
451
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000452- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
453 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
454
455- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
456
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000457- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
458 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
459 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
460 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
461 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
462 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
463 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
464 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
465 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
466
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000467- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
468
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000469- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
470 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
471 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000472
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000473Tests
474-----
475
476- test__locale ported to unittest
477
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000478Mac
479---
480
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000481- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
482 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
483 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000484
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000485Tools/Demos
486-----------
487
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000488- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
489 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
490 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
491 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
492 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000493
494
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000495What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
496=================================
497
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000498*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000499
500Core and builtins
501-----------------
502
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000503- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000504 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
505
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000506- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
507 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
508 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
509 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
510 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
511 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
512 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
513 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000514 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
515 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
516 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
517 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
518 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000519
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000520- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
521 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
522 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
523 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
524 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
525
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000526- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
527
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000528- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
529 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
530
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000531- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
532 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
533 modified the list.
534
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000535- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
536 functions is now writable.
537
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000538- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
539 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
540 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
541 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
542
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000543- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
544 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
545 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
546 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
547 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000548
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000549- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
550 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
551
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000552Extension modules
553-----------------
554
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000555- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
556
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000557- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
558 data.
559
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000560- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
561 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
562 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
563 supposed to have been truncated away.
564
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000565- Added socket.socketpair().
566
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000567- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
568 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
569
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000570- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000571 versions of Python, have now been removed.
572
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000573Library
574-------
575
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000576- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000577 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000578
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000579- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
580 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
581
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000582- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
583 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
584
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000585- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
586
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000587- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
588 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000589
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000590- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
591 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
592
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000593- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
594
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000595- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
596
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000597- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
598
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000599- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
600 Percivall.
601
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000602- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
603 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
604
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000605- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
606 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
607 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000608 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000609
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000610- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
611 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
612 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
613 and exponent.
614
615- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
616
617- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
618 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatability and atexit
619 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
620
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000621- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
622 to the readline module.
623
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000624- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000625 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
626 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000627
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000628- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
629 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
630 contains symlinks.
631
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000632- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
633 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
634
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000635- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
636 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
637 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
638
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000639- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
640 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
641 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
642 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
643 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
644 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
645 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
646 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
647 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
648 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
649 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
650 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
651 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
652
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000653- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
654
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000655Tools/Demos
656-----------
657
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000658- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
659 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
660
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000661- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
662
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000663Build
664-----
665
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000666- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
667 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
668 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
669 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
670 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
671 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
672 plans to do so.
673
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +0000674- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
675 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
676
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +0000677- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
678 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
679
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000680- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
681 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
682
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +0000683- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
684 GNU/k*BSD systems.
685
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +0000686- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
687 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
688
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000689C API
690-----
691
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000692..
693
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000694Documentation
695-------------
696
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +0000697- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
698 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
699
700- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
701 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
702 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +0000703
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000704New platforms
705-------------
706
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +0000707- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
708
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000709Tests
710-----
711
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000712..
713
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000714Windows
715-------
716
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +0000717- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
718 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
719 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
720 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
721 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
722 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
723 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
724 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
725 the problem.
726
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000727Mac
728---
729
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000730..
731
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000732
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000733What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
734=================================
735
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000736*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000737
738Core and builtins
739-----------------
740
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +0000741- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
742 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
743 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
744 sensitive code.
745
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000746- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000747 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000748
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000749 @staticmethod
750 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000751
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000752 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000753
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000754- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
755 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
756 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
757 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
758 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
759 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
760 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
761 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
762 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
763 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
764 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
765
766 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
767 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
768 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
769 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
770 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
771 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
772 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
773
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +0000774- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
775 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
776
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000777- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000778 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000779
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000780- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000781 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000782 which was missing for no apparent reason.
783
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000784- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000785 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
786 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
787
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000788- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
789 types that support garbage collection.
790
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +0000791- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
792
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +0000793- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
794 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
795 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
796 Jython.
797
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000798- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
799
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +0000800- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
801 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
802
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +0000803- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
804 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
805 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +0000806
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +0000807- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
808 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
809 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
810
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000811Extension modules
812-----------------
813
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +0000814- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
815
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000816Library
817-------
818
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +0000819- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
820 TIS-620
821
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +0000822- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
823 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
824 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
825 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
826 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
827 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
828 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
829 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
830 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
831 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
832
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +0000833- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
834
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +0000835- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
836 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
837 same as when the argument is omitted).
838 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
839
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +0000840- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
841
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +0000842- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
843 schemes are offered.
844
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +0000845- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
846
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +0000847- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
848 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
849 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
850
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +0000851- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
852
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +0000853- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
854 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
855
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +0000856- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
857 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
858 when dummy_threading is being used.
859
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +0000860- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
861 from a tarfile.
862
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000863- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000864 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000865
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +0000866- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
867 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
868 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
869 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
870
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +0000871- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
872 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
873
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +0000874- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
875 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
876 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
877 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
878 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
879 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
880 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
881 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
882 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
883 by some other method in progress).
884
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000885- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
886 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
887 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +0000888
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +0000889- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
890
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +0000891- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
892 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
893 AM Kuchling.
894
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +0000895- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
896 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
897 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
898
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +0000899- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
900 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
901 instead of unsigned.
902
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000903- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +0000904 no longer part of the public API.
905
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +0000906- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
907 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
908 string methods of the same name).
909
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000910- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +0000911 SF patch 945642.
912
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000913- doctest unittest integration improvements:
914
915 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
916
917 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
918 DocTestSuites.
919
920- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
921 that provide thread-local data.
922
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000923- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
924 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
925
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000926- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
927
928- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
929 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
930 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
931
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000932- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
933
934 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
935 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
936 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000937
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000938 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
939 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
940 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
941 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
942
943 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
944 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
945
946 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
947 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
948 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
949 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
950
951 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
952 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
953 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
954 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
955 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
956
957 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
958 wrapping help output.
959
960 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
961 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
962 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000963
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000964C API
965-----
966
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000967- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
968 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
969 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
970 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
971 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
972 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
973 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
974 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
975 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
976 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
977 its visible semantics have not changed.
978
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000979- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
980 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
981
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000982Documentation
983-------------
984
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000985- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000986
987 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +0000988 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000989
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +0000990 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000991
992 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
993
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000994- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000995
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000996Tests
997-----
998
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000999- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001000 platforms that use the Makefile.
1001
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001002- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1003 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1004 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1005
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001006
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001007What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1008=================================
1009
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001010*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001011
1012Core and builtins
1013-----------------
1014
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001015- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1016 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1017 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1018 objects now (one object instead of three).
1019
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001020- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1021 Windows DLLs.
1022
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001023- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1024 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001025
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001026- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1027 a new .pyc magic.
1028
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001029- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1030 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1031 be there.
1032
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001033- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1034 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1035 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1036
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001037- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1038 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1039 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1040
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001041- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1042
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001043- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1044 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1045 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001046
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001047- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1048 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1049
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001050- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1051
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001052- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001053 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001054
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001055- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1056
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001057- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1058
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001059- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1060 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1061
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001062- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1063 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1064 Fixes bug #858016 .
1065
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001066- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1067 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1068 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1069
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001070- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1071 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1072 improves their performance (about 35%).
1073
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001074- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1075 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1076 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1077
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001078- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1079 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1080 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1081 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1082
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001083- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1084 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
1085 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
1086 length is not known).
1087
1088- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1089 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001090 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1091 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001092 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1093
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001094- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1095 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1096
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001097- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1098 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1099 keyword arguments.
1100
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001101- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1102 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1103 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1104
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001105- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1106 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1107 cases.
1108
1109- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1110 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1111 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1112 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1113 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1114 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1115 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1116 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1117 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1118 a release build.
1119
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001120- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1121 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1122
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001123- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001124 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001125
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001126- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1127 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1128 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1129 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1130 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1131 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1132 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1133 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1134 destroyed.
1135
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001136- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1137 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1138 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1139 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1140 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1141 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1142 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1143 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1144
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001145- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1146 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1147 character other than a space.
1148
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001149- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1150 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1151 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1152 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1153 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1154 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1155 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1156 attributes with the same name.
1157
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001158- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1159 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1160 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1161 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1162 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1163 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1164 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1165 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1166 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1167 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1168 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1169 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1170 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1171 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001172
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001173- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1174 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1175 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1176 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1177 This has been repaired.
1178
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001179- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1180
1181- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1182
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001183- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1184 over a sequence.
1185
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001186- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001187 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001188
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001189- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1190
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001191- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1192 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1193 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1194 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1195 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1196 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1197 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1198 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1199
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001200- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1201 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1202 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1203
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001204- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1205 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1206 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1207 freelist.
1208
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001209- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1210 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1211
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001212- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1213 number.
1214
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001215- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1216 a TypeError exception.
1217
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001218- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1219 820195.
1220
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001221- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1222 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1223 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1224
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001225- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001226 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1227 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001228
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001229- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1230 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1231 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1232
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001233- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1234 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001235 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001236
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001237- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001238 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1239 the first call.
1240
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001241
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001242Extension modules
1243-----------------
1244
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001245- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1246 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1247
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001248- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1249 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1250 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1251 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1252 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1253 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1254 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001255
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001256- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1257
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001258- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1259
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001260- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1261 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1262
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001263- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1264 fewer false positives.
1265
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001266- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1267 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1268
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001269- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001270 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1271
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001272- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001273 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001274 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001275 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1276 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001277
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001278- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1279 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1280 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1281 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1282
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001283- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1284 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1285 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1286 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1287 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1288 #897625.
1289
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001290- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1291 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1292
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001293- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1294 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1295 and pops on either side of the deque.
1296
1297- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1298 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1299
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001300- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1301 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1302 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1303 other functions that expect a function argument.
1304
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001305- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1306
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001307- os.getsid was added.
1308
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001309- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1310 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1311 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1312
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001313- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1314
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001315- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1316
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001317- readline.clear_history was added.
1318
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001319- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1320
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001321- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1322
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001323- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1324
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001325- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1326
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001327- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1328
1329- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1330
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001331- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1332
1333- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1334
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001335- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1336 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1337 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1338
1339- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1340 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1341 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1342 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1343 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1344 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1345 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1346
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001347- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1348 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1349 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1350 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001351
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001352- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001353 iterators from a single iterable.
1354
1355- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1356 of raising a TypeError exception.
1357
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001358- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1359 as parameter.
1360
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001361Library
1362-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001363
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001364- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1365 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1366 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001367
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001368- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1369 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1370 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001371
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001372- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001373
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001374- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1375 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001376
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001377- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1378 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1379
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001380- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1381
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001382- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001383 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001384
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001385- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001386 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001387
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001388- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1389
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001390- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1391 on cygwin and mingw32.
1392
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001393- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1394
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001395- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1396 module.
1397
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001398- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1399 installation scheme for all platforms.
1400
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001401- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001402 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001403
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001404- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1405 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1406 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1407
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001408- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1409 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1410 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1411
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001412- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1413
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001414- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1415
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001416- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1417 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1418
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001419- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1420 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1421 type pattern with the same value exists.
1422
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001423- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1424 when run from the command prompt).
1425
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001426- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1427 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1428
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001429- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1430 default sort).
1431
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001432- Added global runctx function to profile module
1433
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001434- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1435
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001436- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1437
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001438- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1439
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001440- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001441 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1442 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1443 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1444 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1445 accordingly.
1446
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001447- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1448 decoding standards.
1449
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001450- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1451 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1452 called for all requests.
1453
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001454- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1455 they are passed to the compiler.
1456
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001457- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1458 indent, width and depth.
1459
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001460- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1461 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1462
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001463- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1464 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1465
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001466- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1467
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001468- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1469
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001470- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1471
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001472- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1473 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1474
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001475- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001476 for better performance.
1477
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001478- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001479
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001480- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1481 a string).
1482
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001483- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1484
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001485- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1486
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001487- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1488
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001489- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1490
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001491- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1492 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1493 list of fieldnames.
1494
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001495- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1496 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1497
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001498- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1499
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001500- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1501 empty lists.
1502
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001503- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1504 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1505 and shelves.
1506
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001507- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1508 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1509
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001510- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001511 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1512 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001513
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001514- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1515 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001516 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001517
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001518- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001519 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1520 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1521
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001522- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1523 and removed in Py2.4.
1524
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001525- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1526
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001527- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1528
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001529Tools/Demos
1530-----------
1531
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001532- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1533 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1534
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001535- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1536
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001537- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1538 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1539 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1540 destination in situations where both files are given.
1541
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001542- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1543 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1544 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1545 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1546
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001547- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1548
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001549- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1550 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1551 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1552 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1553 now.
1554
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001555- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1556 in effect
1557
1558- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1559 C-c C-h
1560
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001561- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1562 -d option was given.
1563
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001564Build
1565-----
1566
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001567- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1568 build under OS X.
1569
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001570- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1571 --enable-profiling.
1572
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001573- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1574 is configured --with-tsc.
1575
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001576- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1577 on AMD64.
1578
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001579- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1580 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1581
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001582- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1583 removed.
1584
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001585- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1586 supported (see PEP 11).
1587
1588- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1589
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001590- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1591
1592- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1593 (see PEP 11).
1594
1595- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1596 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1597
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001598C API
1599-----
1600
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001601- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1602 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1603 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1604
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001605- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1606 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1607 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1608 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1609
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001610- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1611 generator objects.
1612
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001613- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1614 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001615 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1616 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001617
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001618- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1619 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1620
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001621- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1622 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1623 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1624 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1625 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1626
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001627- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1628 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1629 about 10% faster.
1630
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001631- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1632 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1633
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001634- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1635 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1636 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1637 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1638
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001639Windows
1640-------
1641
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001642- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1643 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1644 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1645 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1646
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001647- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1648 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1649 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1650
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001651
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001652What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1653===============================
1654
1655*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1656
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001657IDLE
1658----
1659
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001660- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1661 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1662 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1663 context-menu actions.
1664
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001665- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1666 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1667 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1668 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1669 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1670 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1671 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
1672 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
1673 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
1674
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001675
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001676What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
1677=============================================
1678
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00001679*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001680
1681Core and builtins
1682-----------------
1683
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001684- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001685 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001686 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1687
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001688Extension modules
1689-----------------
1690
1691- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1692 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1693 than once. This has been fixed.
1694
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001695- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1696 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1697 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1698 call.
1699
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001700- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1701
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001702Library
1703-------
1704
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001705- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1706 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1707
1708- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1709 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1710 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1711 restored.
1712
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001713IDLE
1714----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001715
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001716- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001717
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001718Build
1719-----
1720
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001721- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1722 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1723
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001724C API
1725-----
1726
1727Windows
1728-------
1729
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001730- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1731 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1732
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001733- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1734
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001735Mac
1736---
1737
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001738- Various fixes to pimp.
1739
1740- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1741
1742- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1743 more problems than it solves.
1744
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001745
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001746What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1747=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001748
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001749*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1750
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001751Core and builtins
1752-----------------
1753
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001754- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1755 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1756
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001757- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
1758 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001759 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001760
1761- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
1762 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
1763 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001764 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001765
1766- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
1767 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001768
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001769- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
1770 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
1771 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
1772
1773- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001774 770247.
1775
1776- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001777
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001778Extension modules
1779-----------------
1780
1781- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
1782 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
1783
1784- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
1785
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001786- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
1787
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00001788- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
1789 contained within the _strptime module.
1790
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001791- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
1792 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
1793
1794- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001795 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
1796
1797- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
1798 the find_class attribute, if present.
1799
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001800- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001801
1802 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
1803 (SF bug 763298).
1804
1805 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00001806 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
1807 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
1808 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001809
1810 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
1811
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001812Library
1813-------
1814
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001815- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
1816
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00001817- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
1818 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
1819 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
1820 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
1821 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
1822 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
1823 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
1824 or Tester().
1825
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001826- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
1827 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
1828 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
1829 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
1830 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
1831 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
1832 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
1833 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
1834 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00001835
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001836 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00001837
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00001838- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
1839 weren't before was an oversight.
1840
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001841- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
1842 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
1843
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00001844- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
1845 when there are no lines.
1846
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00001847- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
1848 which could occur with Tk 8.4
1849
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001850- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
1851 to child processes.
1852
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001853- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
1854
1855- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
1856
1857- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
1858 xmlrpclib.
1859
1860- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
1861 responses.
1862
1863- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
1864 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
1865
1866- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
1867 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
1868 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
1869
1870- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
1871 used as patterns.
1872
1873- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
1874 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
1875 than Tk 8.3.
1876
1877- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
1878
1879- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001880
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001881Tools/Demos
1882-----------
1883
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001884- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
1885
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00001886- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
1887
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001888- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001889
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001890Build
1891-----
1892
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001893- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
1894
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001895- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
1896
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001897- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
1898 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001899
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001900- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
1901 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
1902 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001903
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001904C API
1905-----
1906
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001907- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
1908 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
1909
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001910Windows
1911-------
1912
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001913- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
1914 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
1915 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
1916 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
1917 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
1918 Python exception ::
1919
1920 thread.error: can't start new thread
1921
1922 is raised now.
1923
1924- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
1925 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
1926 instead of from DLL teardown.
1927
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001928Mac
1929---
1930
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001931- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00001932 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001933 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
1934 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
1935 the executable in the bundle.
1936
1937- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001938
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00001939- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
1940
1941- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
1942 on Panther.
1943
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001944What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
1945================================
1946
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001947*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001948
1949Core and builtins
1950-----------------
1951
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00001952- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
1953 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
1954 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
1955 with the -i option.
1956
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00001957- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
1958 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
1959
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001960- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
1961 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
1962
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00001963- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
1964 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
1965 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
1966 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
1967 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
1968 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
1969 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
1970 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
1971 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
1972 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
1973 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
1974 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
1975 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00001976
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001977- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
1978 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
1979 embedded in a lambda expression.
1980
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00001981- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
1982 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
1983 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
1984 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
1985 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
1986
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001987- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
1988 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
1989 matches the restriction on classic classes.
1990
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00001991- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
1992 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
1993
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00001994- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
1995 It's writable again.
1996
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001997- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
1998 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
1999 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002000 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002001
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002002- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2003 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2004 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2005
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002006Extension modules
2007-----------------
2008
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002009- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2010 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2011
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002012- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2013 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2014 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2015 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2016
2017- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2018 collection.
2019
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002020- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2021 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2022 unique within a single program run.
2023
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002024- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2025 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2026
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002027- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2028 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2029
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002030- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2031 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002032
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002033- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2034
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002035- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2036 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2037
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002038- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2039 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2040 for many BSD-derived systems.
2041
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002042
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002043Library
2044-------
2045
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002046- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2047 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2048 primary ones:
2049
2050 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2051 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2052 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2053
2054 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2055 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2056 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2057 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2058 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2059 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2060
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002061- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2062 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2063 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2064 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2065 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2066 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2067 argument.
2068
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002069- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2070 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2071 in the archive.
2072
2073- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2074 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2075
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002076- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2077 569574).
2078
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002079- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2080 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2081 no more.
2082
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002083- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2084 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2085 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2086 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2087 code coverage.
2088
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002089- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2090 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2091 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002092 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2093 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002094
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002095- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2096 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2097 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002098 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002099
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002100- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2101
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002102- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2103 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2104 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2105 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2106
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002107- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2108 handling.
2109
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002110- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2111 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2112
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002113- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2114 in socket.py.
2115
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002116- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2117
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002118- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2119 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2120 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2121 opener with proxy support.
2122
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002123- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2124
2125- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2126
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002127Tools/Demos
2128-----------
2129
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002130- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2131
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002132- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2133
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002134- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2135 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002136
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002137- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2138 files.
2139
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002140Build
2141-----
2142
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002143- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002144 different root directory.
2145
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002146C API
2147-----
2148
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002149- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2150 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2151 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2152 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2153 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2154 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2155 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2156 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2157 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2158 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2159
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002160- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2161 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2162 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2163 from Python.
2164
2165
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002166New platforms
2167-------------
2168
2169None this time.
2170
2171Tests
2172-----
2173
2174- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2175 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2176
2177Windows
2178-------
2179
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002180- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2181
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002182- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2183 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2184 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2185 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2186 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2187 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2188 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2189 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2190 that's what it's for.
2191
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002192Mac
2193---
2194
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002195- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2196 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2197 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2198 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002199- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2200 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2201- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002202
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002203SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2204------------------------------------
2205
2206430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2207598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2208622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2209661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2210683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2211697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2212713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2213724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2214727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2215729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2216730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2217731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2218732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2219733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2220735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2221740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2222744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2223745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2224747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2225749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2226751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2227753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2228755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2229757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2230760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2231
2232
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002233What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2234================================
2235
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002236*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002237
2238Core and builtins
2239-----------------
2240
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002241- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2242 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2243
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002244- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2245 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2246 and cannot be strings).
2247
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002248- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2249 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2250 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2251 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2252
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002253- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2254 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2255 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2256 Python itself.
2257
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002258- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2259 the referenced object, if it has one.
2260
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002261- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2262 the thread started at
2263 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2264
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002265- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2266 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2267 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2268 placed on a list index.
2269
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002270- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2271 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2272 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2273 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2274
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002275- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2276 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2277 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2278 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2279 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2280 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2281 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2282
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002283- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2284 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2285 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2286 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2287 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2288
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002289- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2290 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002291
2292- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2293 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2294 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2295 #693195.)
2296
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002297- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2298 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002299
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002300- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002301 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002302 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2303 interpreter executions, would fail.
2304
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002305- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002306 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002307 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002308
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002309Extension modules
2310-----------------
2311
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002312- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2313 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2314 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2315 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2316
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002317- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2318 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2319
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002320- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2321 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2322 and Greg Chapman.)
2323
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002324- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2325 recursively.
2326
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002327- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002328 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2329 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2330 leaks.
2331
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002332- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2333
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002334- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2335 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2336 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2337 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2338 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2339 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2340 #705836.
2341
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002342- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002343 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2344
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002345- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2346 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2347 See SF bug #692416.
2348
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002349- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2350 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2351
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002352- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2353 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2354 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002355
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002356- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002357 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2358 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2359
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002360- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2361 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2362 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2363 timeouts to work properly.
2364
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002365Library
2366-------
2367
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002368- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2369 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2370 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2371 future release.
2372
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002373- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2374 for querying platform dependent features.
2375
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002376- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002377
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002378- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2379 pickle protocol versions.
2380
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002381- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2382 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2383 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2384
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002385- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2386
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002387- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2388 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2389 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2390 modules.
2391
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002392- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2393 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2394 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2395
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002396- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2397 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2398
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002399- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2400 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2401 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2402
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002403- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002404 MS Office extensions.
2405
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002406- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2407 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2408
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002409- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2410 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2411
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002412- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2413 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2414 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2415 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2416 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2417 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2418
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002419- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2420 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2421 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002422
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002423- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2424 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2425 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2426
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002427- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2428
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002429- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2430 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2431 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2432
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002433Tools/Demos
2434-----------
2435
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002436- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2437 See the module docstring for details.
2438
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002439Build
2440-----
2441
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002442- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2443 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002444
2445C API
2446-----
2447
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002448- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2449
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002450- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2451 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2452 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2453
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002454- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2455 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002456
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002457 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2458 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2459 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002460
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002461- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002462 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2463
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002464- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2465 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2466 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002467
2468New platforms
2469-------------
2470
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002471None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002472
2473Tests
2474-----
2475
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002476- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2477 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002478
2479Windows
2480-------
2481
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002482- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2483 function.
2484
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002485- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2486 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002487
2488Mac
2489---
2490
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002491- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2492 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002493
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002494- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2495 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002496
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002497- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2498 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2499 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002500
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002501- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002502 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2503 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002504
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002505- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2506 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002507
2508
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002509What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2510=================================
2511
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002512*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002513
2514Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002515-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002516
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002517- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2518 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2519 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2520
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002521- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2522 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2523 (SF patch #664376.)
2524
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002525- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2526 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2527 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2528 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2529 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2530 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002531 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002532
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002533- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2534 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2535 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2536 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002537 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002538
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002539- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2540 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2541 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2542 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2543 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2544 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2545 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2546 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2547 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2548 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2549 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2550
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002551- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2552 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2553 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2554 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2555 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2556 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2557
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002558- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2559 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2560
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002561- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2562 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2563 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2564 case.)
2565
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002566- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2567 passed as unicode strings.
2568
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002569- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2570 See SF bug #683467.
2571
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002572- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2573 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2574
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002575- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2576
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002577- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2578
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002579- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2580 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2581 arguments.
2582
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002583- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2584 See SF bug #667147.
2585
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002586- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002587 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002588 See SF bug #676155.
2589
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002590- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002591 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002592 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2593 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2594 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2595 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2596 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2597 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002598
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002599Extension modules
2600-----------------
2601
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002602- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2603 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2604 tp_as_number pointer.
2605
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002606- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2607 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2608 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2609 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2610 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2611
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002612- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2613
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002614- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2615
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002616- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002617 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002618 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2619 patch #678531.)
2620
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002621- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2622 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2623
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002624- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2625 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2626
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002627- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2628
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002629- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2630 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2631 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2632
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002633- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2634
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002635- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2636 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2637
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002638- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002639
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002640- datetime changes:
2641
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002642 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2643
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002644 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2645 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2646 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2647 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2648 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2649 now.
2650
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002651 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002652 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2653 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002654
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002655 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002656 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002657 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2658 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2659 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2660 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002661
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002662 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2663 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2664 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002665 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2666
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002667 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2668 by a later example coded by Guido.
2669
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002670 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002671 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
2672 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
2673 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002674 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
2675 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
2676
2677 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
2678 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
2679 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
2680 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
2681 tzinfo subclass instance.
2682
2683 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
2684 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
2685 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2686 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2687 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2688 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2689 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2690 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002691
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002692 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2693 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2694 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2695 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2696 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002697 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2698
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002699 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002700
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002701 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2702 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2703 as a naive datetime object.
2704
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002705 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2706 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2707 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2708
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002709 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2710 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2711 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2712 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2713 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2714 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2715 comparison.
2716
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002717 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2718 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2719 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2720 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002721 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002722
2723 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002724
2725 and ::
2726
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002727 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2728
2729 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2730 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2731 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2732 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2733
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002734 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2735 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2736 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2737 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2738 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2739
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002740 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2741 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002742 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2743 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002744
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002745Library
2746-------
2747
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002748- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2749 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2750
2751- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2752 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2753 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2754 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2755 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2756 See PEP 307 for details.
2757
2758- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
2759 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
2760
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002761- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
2762 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002763 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002764 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
2765 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002766 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002767
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00002768- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
2769 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
2770
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002771- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
2772 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
2773 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
2774
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00002775- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
2776
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00002777- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
2778 exception.
2779
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00002780- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
2781 class.
2782
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00002783- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
2784 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
2785 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
2786
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00002787- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
2788 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
2789
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002790- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00002791 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
2792 See SF bug #659228.
2793
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00002794- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
2795 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
2796 See SF patch #651082.
2797
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00002798- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002799
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00002800- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
2801 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
2802
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002803- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002804 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002805
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00002806- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
2807 DOS paths from other platforms.
2808
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002809Tools/Demos
2810-----------
2811
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002812- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
2813 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
2814 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
2815 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
2816 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
2817 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
2818 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
2819 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
2820 example:
2821
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00002822 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
2823 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002824
2825 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
2826
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002827
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002828Build
2829-----
2830
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002831- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
2832 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
2833 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002834 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
2835
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002836 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
2837
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00002838- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
2839 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
2840 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
2841 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
2842 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
2843 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
2844 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
2845 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
2846 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
2847
2848- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
2849 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
2850 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
2851 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
2852
2853- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
2854 from the Tools/scripts directory.
2855
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002856C API
2857-----
2858
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002859- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
2860 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00002861
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002862- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
2863 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2864 tp_as_number pointer.
2865
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00002866- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
2867 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
2868 (SF #681367)
2869
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00002870- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
2871 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
2872 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
2873 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00002874
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002875Tests
2876-----
2877
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00002878- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002879 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
2880 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
2881 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
2882 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
2883 pydoc.)
2884
2885- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
2886
2887- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002888
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002889Windows
2890-------
2891
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002892- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
2893 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
2894 time).
2895
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00002896- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
2897 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
2898
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002899- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
2900 release without strong cryptography.
2901
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002902- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002903 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002904
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002905- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
2906 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
2907
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002908Mac
2909---
2910
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002911- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
2912 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002913
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00002914- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
2915 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
2916 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002917
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002918- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
2919 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002920
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002921- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
2922 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
2923 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
2924 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002925
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002926- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00002927 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
2928 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
2929 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002930
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002931
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002932What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002933=================================
2934
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00002935*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002936
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002937Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002938--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002939
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00002940- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
2941
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002942- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
2943 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002944 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002945 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002946 a different meaning than before.
2947
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002948- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002949 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002950 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002951
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002952- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002953 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002954 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002955
2956- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
2957 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
2958 and deallocation.
2959
2960- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
2961 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
2962
2963- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
2964 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
2965 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
2966 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
2967 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
2968
2969- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
2970 now detected by the garbage collector.
2971
2972- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
2973 [SF bug 519621]
2974
2975- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
2976 identifier.
2977
2978- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
2979 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
2980 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
2981 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
2982 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
2983 [SF bug 563060]
2984
2985- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
2986 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
2987 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
2988 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
2989 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
2990
2991- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
2992 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
2993 not called. [SF bug #537450]
2994
2995- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
2996
2997- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
2998 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
2999 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3000 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3001 state of the slots would be lost.)
3002
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003003Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003004-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003005
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003006- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003007 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3008 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3009 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3010 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003011 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3012 Jython 2.1.
3013
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003014- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003015 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003016 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3017 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3018 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3019 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3020 these, see PEP 302.
3021
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003022- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3023 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3024 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3025
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003026- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3027 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3028 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3029
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003030- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3031 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3032 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3033
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003034- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3035 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3036 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3037 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3038 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3039 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3040 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3041 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3042 releases or implementations.
3043
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003044- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003045 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3046 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003047
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003048- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3049 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3050
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003051- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3052 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3053 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3054
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003055- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3056 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3057
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003058- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3059 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003060 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3061 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003062
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003063- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3064 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3065 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3066 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3067 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3068
3069 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3070 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3071 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3072 pattern.
3073
3074 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3075 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3076 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3077 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3078
3079 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3080 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3081 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3082 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3083 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3084 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3085
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003086- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3087 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3088 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3089 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3090 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3091 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3092 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3093 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003094
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003095- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3096 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3097 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3098 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3099 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003100 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3101 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3102 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3103 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3104 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3105 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3106 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003107
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003108- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3109 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3110
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003111- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3112 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3113 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3114 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3115 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3116 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3117 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3118 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3119 to Zack Weinberg!
3120
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003121- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3122 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3123 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3124 type. This has been fixed now.
3125
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003126- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3127 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3128 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3129
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003130- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3131 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3132 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3133 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3134 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3135 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3136 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3137 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003138 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003139
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003140- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3141 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3142 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003143
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003144- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3145 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3146 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3147 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3148 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3149 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3150 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3151 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003152 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003153 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3154 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3155
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003156- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3157 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3158 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3159 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3160 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3161 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3162 this.)
3163
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003164- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3165 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003166 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003167 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003168 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3169 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003170 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3171 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003172
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003173- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3174 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3175 currently running.
3176
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003177- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3178 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3179 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3180 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3181
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003182- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3183 as directory names.
3184
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003185- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3186 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3187
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003188- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3189 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3190
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003191- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003192 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3193 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003194
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003195- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3196 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3197 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3198 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3199 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3200
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003201- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3202 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3203 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3204 removed.
3205
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003206- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3207 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3208 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3209
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003210- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3211 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3212 to __debug__.
3213
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003214- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3215 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3216 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3217
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003218- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3219 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3220 deprecated now.
3221
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003222- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3223 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3224 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003225
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003226- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3227 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3228 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3229 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3230 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003231
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003232- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3233 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3234
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003235- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3236 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3237 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003238 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003239 is backward compatible.
3240
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003241- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3242 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3243 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3244 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3245 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3246
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003247- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3248 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3249 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3250 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3251 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3252 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003253
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003254- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3255 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3256
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003257- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3258 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3259
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003260- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3261 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3262 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3263 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3264 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3265
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003266- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3267 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3268 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3269
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003270- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003271 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3272
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003273- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3274 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3275 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003276
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003277- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3278 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3279
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003280- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3281 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3282 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3283
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003284- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3285
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003286Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003287-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003288
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003289- Added three operators to the operator module:
3290 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3291 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3292 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3293
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003294- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3295
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003296- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3297 archives.
3298
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003299- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3300 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3301 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3302
3303 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3304
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003305- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3306 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3307 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003308 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003309
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003310- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3311 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3312 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3313 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003314 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3315 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3316 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3317 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003318
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003319- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3320 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003321
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003322- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3323
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003324- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3325 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3326
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003327- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3328 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3329 supported.
3330
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003331- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3332
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003333- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3334 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003335
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003336- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3337 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3338
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003339- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3340
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003341- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3342 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3343
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003344- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3345 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3346 functions but callable type objects.
3347
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003348- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003349 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003350 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003351
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003352- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3353 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003354
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003355- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3356 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003357
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003358- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3359 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3360 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3361 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3362
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003363- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3364 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003365
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003366- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3367 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3368 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3369 and __imul__.
3370
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003371- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003372 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3373 is called.
3374
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003375- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3376 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3377 interpreter was compiled.
3378
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003379- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3380 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3381 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003382 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003383 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3384 1, not 2.
3385
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003386- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3387 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3388 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3389 limit.
3390
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003391- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3392 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3393 bug #623464.
3394
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003395- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3396 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3397 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3398 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3399
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003400Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003401-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003402
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003403- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3404
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003405- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3406 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3407 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3408 with Python 2.3a2.
3409
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003410- os.path exposes getctime.
3411
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003412- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003413 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003414 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003415 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003416 unit tests of floating point results.
3417
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003418- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3419 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3420 has been increased.
3421
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003422- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3423 executed.
3424
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003425- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3426 postinstallation script.
3427
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003428- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3429 test the current module.
3430
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003431- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003432 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3433 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3434 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3435 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3436
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003437- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003438 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003439 Ward's Optik package.
3440
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003441- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3442 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3443 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3444 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3445
3446- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3447 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003448 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003449
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003450- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3451 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3452 shelf are binary pickles.
3453
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003454- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3455 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3456
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003457- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3458 modules are iterators now.
3459
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003460- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3461 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3462 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3463 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3464 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3465 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003466
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003467- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3468 with their entity value.
3469
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003470- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3471
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003472- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3473 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003474
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003475- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3476 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003477 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003478
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003479- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3480 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3481 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3482 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3483 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3484 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3485 main():
3486
3487 import locale
3488 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3489
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003490- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3491 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3492
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003493- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3494 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3495 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3496 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3497 to the new standard.
3498
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003499- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3500 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3501 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3502 an extension to the database.
3503
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003504- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3505 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3506 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3507 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003508 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003509
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003510- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003511 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003512
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003513- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3514 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3515 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3516 bounded integers.
3517
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003518- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3519 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3520 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3521 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3522 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3523 in existence.
3524
3525 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3526 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3527 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3528 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3529 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3530 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3531
3532 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3533 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3534 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3535 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3536
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003537- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3538 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3539 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3540
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003541- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3542
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003543- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3544 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3545 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3546 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3547
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003548- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3549 argument.
3550
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003551- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3552 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3553 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3554 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3555 [SF patch 560794].
3556
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003557- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3558 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3559 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003560 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3561 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3562 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003563
3564- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3565 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003566
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003567- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3568 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3569 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3570 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003571
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003572- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3573 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3574 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3575 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3576 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3577
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003578- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003579
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003580- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3581
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003582- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3583 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3584 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3585 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3586 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3587 identical to None.
3588
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003589- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3590 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3591 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3592 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3593 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3594 results now.
3595
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003596- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3597 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3598
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003599- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3600 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3601 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3602 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3603 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3604 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3605 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3606 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3607
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003608- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3609
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003610- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3611 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3612
3613- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3614 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3615 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3616 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3617 and other systems.
3618
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003619- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3620 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3621 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3622 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 +00003623 work well with these.
3624
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003625- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3626
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003627- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003628 connections.
3629
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003630- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3631 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3632 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3633
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003634- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3635 sets
3636
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003637- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3638 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3639 name.
3640
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003641- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3642 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3643 passed in.
3644
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003645- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003646 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003647 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3648 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003649
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003650- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3651
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003652- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3653
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003654- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3655 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3656 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3657
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003658- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3659 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3660 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3661 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003662 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003663
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003664- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003665 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003666 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003667
3668- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3669 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3670 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3671
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003672- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00003673 the value of its expression argument.
3674
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003675- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
3676 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
3677 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
3678
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00003679- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
3680 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
3681 skipstone browser was included.
3682
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00003683- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
3684 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
3685
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003686Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003687-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003688
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003689- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3690 names in addition to accepting file names.
3691
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003692- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3693 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3694 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3695 still used and useful.)
3696
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003697- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3698 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3699 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3700 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003701
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003702- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3703 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3704 the generated binary.
3705
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003706Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003707-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003708
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003709- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3710
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003711- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3712 except in the hands of experts.
3713
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003714- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003715 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3716 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3717 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003718
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003719- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3720 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3721 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3722 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3723 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3724 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3725 builds.
3726
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003727- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3728 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3729 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3730 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3731 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3732 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3733 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3734 new type.
3735
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003736- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003737
3738 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3739 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3740 positive infinities.
3741
3742 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3743 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3744 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3745 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3746 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3747 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3748 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3749
3750 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3751
3752 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3753
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003754- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3755 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3756 size of the executable.
3757
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003758- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
3759 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
3760 configure script. On other platforms, remove
3761 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00003762
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00003763- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
3764
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00003765- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
3766 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
3767 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00003768
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00003769- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
3770 well as Unix.
3771
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00003772- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
3773 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
3774 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
3775 modules in the README file for details.
3776
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003777C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003778-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003779
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003780- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
3781 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003782 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00003783 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003784 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003785
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003786- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
3787 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
3788 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
3789 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
3790 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
3791 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003792 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003793 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
3794 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
3795 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
3796 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
3797 aligned.)
3798
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00003799- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
3800 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
3801 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
3802
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003803- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
3804 level.
3805
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00003806- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
3807 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
3808 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
3809 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
3810 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
3811
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00003812- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
3813 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
3814 code.
3815
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00003816- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
3817 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
3818 adjusting for negative indices.
3819
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003820- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
3821 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
3822 object.
3823
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00003824- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
3825 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
3826 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
3827
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003828- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
3829 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00003830
3831- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
3832
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00003833- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
3834 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
3835 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
3836 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
3837
3838- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
3839
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00003840- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003841
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003842- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00003843 without going through the buffer API.
3844
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003845- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00003846
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00003847- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
3848 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
3849 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
3850 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
3851
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003852- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
3853 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
3854
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003855- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003856 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
3857
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003858New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003859-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003860
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00003861- OpenVMS is now supported.
3862
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00003863- AtheOS is now supported.
3864
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00003865- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
3866
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00003867- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
3868
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003869Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003870-----
3871
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00003872- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
3873 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
3874 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003875
3876Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003877-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003878
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003879- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
3880 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
3881 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
3882 bugs.
3883 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003884 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00003885 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
3886 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003887 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003888
3889- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00003890 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003891
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00003892- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
3893 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
3894
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003895- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
3896 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003897 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003898 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
3899
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00003900- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
3901 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
3902 use files" uninstall option).
3903
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00003904- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
3905
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003906- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
3907 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
3908
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003909- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
3910 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
3911 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
3912
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003913- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
3914 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
3915 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
3916 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
3917 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003918 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
3919 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
3920 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003921
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003922- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003923 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003924 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
3925 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
3926 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
3927 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
3928 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
3929 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
3930 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
3931 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
3932 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
3933 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
3934 work around.
3935
3936- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
3937 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
3938 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
3939 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
3940 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
3941 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
3942 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
3943 specified with O_CREAT too).
3944
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003945Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003946----
3947
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003948- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003949
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00003950- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
3951 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
3952 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
3953
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003954- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
3955 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
3956 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
3957
3958- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
3959 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
3960 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
3961 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
3962 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
3963 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
3964 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
3965 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003966
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00003967- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
3968 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
3969 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003970
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003971- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
3972 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
3973 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
3974 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
3975 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003976
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003977- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
3978 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
3979 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003980
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003981- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
3982 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003983
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003984- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
3985 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
3986 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
3987 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
3988 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003989
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003990- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
3991 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
3992 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
3993
3994- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
3995 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
3996 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003997
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003998- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
3999 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4000 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4001 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004002 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004003
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004004- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4005 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004006
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004007- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4008 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004009
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004010- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004011 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004012 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4013 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004014
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004015
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004016What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004017===============================
4018
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004019*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4020
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004021Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004022--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004023
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004024- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4025 with a custom metaclass.
4026
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004027Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004028-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004029
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004030- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4031 are proxies.
4032
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004033Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004034-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004035
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004036- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4037 very short strings.
4038
4039- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4040 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4041 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4042 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4043 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4044
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004045Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004046-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004047
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004048- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4049 close or delete time).
4050
4051- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4052 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4053
4054- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4055
4056- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004057 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004058
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004059Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004060-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004061
4062Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004063-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004064
4065C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004066-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004067
4068New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004069-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004070
4071Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004072-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004073
4074Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004075-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004076
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004077- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4078
4079- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4080 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4081
4082- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4083 deleted at process exit time.
4084
4085- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4086 in backslash.
4087
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004088Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004089----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004090
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004091- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4092 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4093 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4094
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004095
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004096What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004097===========================
4098
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004099*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4100
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004101Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004102--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004103
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004104- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4105 been extensively updated. See
4106
4107 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4108
4109 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4110
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004111- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4112 deleted!
4113
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004114- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4115 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4116 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4117 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4118 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4119
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004120- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4121
4122 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4123 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4124
4125 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4126 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4127 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4128 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4129 supported anyway.
4130
4131 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4132 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4133
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004134- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4135 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4136 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4137 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4138 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004139
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004140- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4141 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4142 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4143
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004144Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004145-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004146
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004147- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4148 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4149 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4150 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4151 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4152 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004153 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4154 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4155 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4156 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004157
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004158- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4159 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4160 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4161
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004162Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004163-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004164
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004165- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4166
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004167Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004168-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004169
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004170- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4171 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4172 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4173 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4174 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4175 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4176
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004177- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4178
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004179- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4180
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004181- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4182
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004183- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4184 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4185 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4186
4187- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4188
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004189Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004190-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004191
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004192- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4193 off a search on Google.
4194
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004195Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004196-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004197
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004198- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4199 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4200 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4201 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4202 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4203 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4204 other platforms should do likewise.
4205
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004206- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4207 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4208 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4209
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004210C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004211-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004212
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004213- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4214 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4215 producing key-value pairs.
4216
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004217- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004218 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004219 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4220 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4221 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4222 previously went unchallenged.
4223
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004224New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004225-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004226
4227Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004228-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004229
4230Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004231-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004232
4233Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004234----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004235
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004236- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4237 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004238
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004239- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4240 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4241 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4242 home.
4243
4244
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004245What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004246===========================
4247
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004248*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4249
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004250Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004251--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004252
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004253- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4254 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004255
4256 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004257 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004258
4259 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4260 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004261 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004262 This needs to be documented.
4263
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004264- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4265 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4266
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004267- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4268 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4269 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4270
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004271- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4272 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4273
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004274- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4275 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4276 class forbids it).
4277
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004278- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4279 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4280 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4281
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004282- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4283
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004284Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004285-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004286
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004287- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4288 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004289 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004290
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004291- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4292 (like 1 + '').
4293
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004294Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004295-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004296
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004297- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4298 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4299 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4300 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004301 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004302 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4303
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004304- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4305 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4306 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4307 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4308
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004309- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4310 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004311 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4312 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4313 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004314
4315- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4316 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004317
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004318- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4319 bytes on its input.
4320
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004321Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004322-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004323
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004324- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004325 convenience function.
4326
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004327- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4328 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4329 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004330 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4331 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4332 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4333 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4334 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4335 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004336
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004337- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4338 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4339 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4340 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4341
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004342- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4343 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4344 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4345
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004346- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4347 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4348 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4349 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4350
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004351- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4352 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004353 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004354 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4355 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4356 new -l and -e options.
4357
4358- statcache is now deprecated.
4359
4360- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4361 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004362 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004363 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4364 time properly taken into account.
4365
4366- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4367 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4368 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4369 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4370
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004371Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004372-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004373
4374Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004375-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004376
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004377- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4378 is built with libdb3 if available.
4379
4380- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4381
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004382C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004383-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004384
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004385- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4386 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4387 PySequence_Size().
4388
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004389- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4390
4391- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4392 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4393 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4394
4395- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4396 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4397
4398- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4399 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4400
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004401New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004402-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004403
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004404- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4405 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4406
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004407- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4408 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4409
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004410- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4411
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004412Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004413-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004414
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004415- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4416 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4417
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004418Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004419-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004420
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004421Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004422----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004423
4424- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4425 removed completely in the next release.
4426
4427- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4428 OSX.
4429
4430- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4431 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4432
4433- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4434
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004435
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004436What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004437===========================
4438
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004439*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4440
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004441Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004442--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004443
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004444- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004445 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004446 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004447 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4448 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004449 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4450 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004451 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4452 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004453
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004454- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4455 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4456
4457- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4458 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4459
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004460Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004461-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004462
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004463- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4464 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4465 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4466 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4467 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4468 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4469 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4470 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4471
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004472- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4473 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4474 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4475 example).
4476
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004477- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004478 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004479 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004480 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004481
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004482- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4483 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4484 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004485 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004486
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004487- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4488 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4489 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4490 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4491 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4492 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4493
4494 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4495
4496 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4497
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004498Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004499-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004500
4501- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4502
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004503- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4504
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004505- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4506 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004507
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004508- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4509 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4510 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4511 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4512 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4513 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004514 attributes.
4515
4516- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4517 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4518 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004519
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004520- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4521 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4522 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004523
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004524- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4525 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4526 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004527 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4528 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4529
4530- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4531 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004532
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004533Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004534-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004535
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004536- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4537 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4538
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004539- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4540 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4541 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4542 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4543
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004544- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4545 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4546 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4547 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4548
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004549 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4550 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4551 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4552 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4553 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4554 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4555 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4556 without losing information).
4557
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004558- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004559 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4560 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4561 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4562 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4563 module).
4564
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004565 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004566 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4567 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4568 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4569 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004570
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004571- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004572 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4573 encoding.
4574
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004575- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4576 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4577
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004578- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004579 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4580
4581- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4582 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4583 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4584 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4585
4586- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4587
4588- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4589 ON, and OFF.
4590
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004591- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4592 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4593
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004594Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004595-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004596
4597- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4598 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4599 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004600
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004601- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4602 been added: -X and -E.
4603
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004604Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004605-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004606
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004607- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4608 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4609
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004610C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004611-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004612
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004613- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4614 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4615 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4616 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4617 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4618
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004619- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4620 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4621 as long) arguments.
4622
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004623- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4624 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4625 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4626 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4627 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4628 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4629
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004630- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4631 input.
4632
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004633New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004634-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004635
4636Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004637-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004638
4639Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004640-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004641
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004642- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4643 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4644 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4645
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004646- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4647 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4648 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004649 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004650
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004651 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4652 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4653 import signal
4654 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004655
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004656 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004657 while 1:
4658 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004659 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004660 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4661 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4662 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4663 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004664
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004665
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004666What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4667===========================
4668
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004669*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4670
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004671Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004672--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004673
4674- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
4675 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
4676 documentation for all operations on list objects.
4677
4678- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
4679 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
4680 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
4681 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
4682 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
4683 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
4684 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004685
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004686- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004687 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004688 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4689 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4690 associate a docstring with a property.
4691
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004692- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4693 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4694 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4695 other built-in object types.
4696
4697- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4698 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4699 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4700 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4701 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4702
4703- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4704 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4705
4706- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4707 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004708 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004709 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4710 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4711 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4712 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4713 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4714
4715- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4716 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4717 class.
4718
4719- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4720 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4721 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4722 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4723
4724- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4725 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4726 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4727 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4728
4729- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4730 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4731
4732- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4733 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4734 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4735 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4736 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004737 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004738 with the same value as s.
4739
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004740- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4741
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004742Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004743----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004744
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004745- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4746
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004747- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4748 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4749 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4750 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4751 objects.
4752
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004753- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4754 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004755 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4756 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
4757
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004758- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
4759 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
4760 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
4761
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004762Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004763-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004764
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00004765- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4766 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
4767 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
4768 by the instances.
4769
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00004770- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
4771 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
4772 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
4773
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004774- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
4775 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
4776 before the entire comparison is complete.
4777
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00004778- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4779 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
4780 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
4781
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00004782- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
4783 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
4784 getwriter().
4785
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004786- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
4787 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
4788
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00004789- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004790 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
4791 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
4792
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00004793- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
4794 iterable object.
4795
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004796- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
4797 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004798
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004799- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
4800 authentication.
4801
4802- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
4803 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004804
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004805- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00004806 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
4807 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
4808 a sample driver.)
4809
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004810Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004811-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004812
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004813- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
4814 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
4815 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
4816 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
4817 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
4818 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
4819 kernel has large file support.
4820
4821- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
4822 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
4823 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
4824 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
4825 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
4826
4827- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
4828 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
4829 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
4830
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004831C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004832-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004833
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004834- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
4835 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
4836
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004837New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004838-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004839
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004840- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
4841 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
4842
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004843Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004844-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004845
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004846- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
4847 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
4848 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
4849 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
4850 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
4851
4852- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
4853 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
4854 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
4855 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
4856
4857- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
4858 especially in regard to reporting errors.
4859
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004860Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004861-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004862
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004863- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004864 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
4865 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004866
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004867
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004868What's New in Python 2.2a3?
4869===========================
4870
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004871*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
4872
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004873Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004874----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004875
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004876- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
4877 big to represent as a C double.
4878
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00004879- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
4880 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
4881 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
4882 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
4883 restriction).
4884
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00004885- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
4886 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
4887 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
4888 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
4889 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
4890
4891 >>> dir([])
4892 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
4893 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
4894 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
4895 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
4896 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
4897 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
4898 'reverse', 'sort']
4899
4900 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
4901
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004902- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004903 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
4904 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
4905 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
4906 OverflowError exception.
4907
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00004908- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004909 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004910 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
4911 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
4912 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
4913 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
4914 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004915 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004916 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
4917 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
4918
4919 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
4920 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
4921 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
4922 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004923
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004924- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004925 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
4926 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
4927 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
4928 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
4929 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
4930 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
4931 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
4932 once it is created.
4933
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00004934- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
4935 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
4936 (key, value) pairs.
4937
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004938- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004939 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
4940 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
4941
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00004942- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
4943 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
4944 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
4945 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
4946 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004947
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004948- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004949 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
4950 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
4951
4952 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
4953
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004954- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00004955 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
4956
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004957Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004958-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004959
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004960- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00004961 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
4962 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004963
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00004964- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
4965 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
4966 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
4967 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
4968 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
4969 in this area anymore).
4970
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00004971- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
4972 threading.Timer.
4973
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00004974- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
4975 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
4976
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004977- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004978 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
4979
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004980- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00004981 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
4982 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
4983 converted to Python longs.
4984
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004985- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004986 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
4987
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00004988- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
4989 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
4990 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
4991
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004992Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004993-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004994
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004995- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
4996 division operators as per PEP 238.
4997
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004998Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004999-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005000
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005001- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5002 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5003 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5004 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5005
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005006C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005007-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005008
5009- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005010
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005011- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5012 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005013 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005014
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005015 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5016 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005017 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005018 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005019
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005020- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005021 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5022 module:
5023
5024 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005025
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005026 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5027 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005028
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005029 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5030 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005031
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005032 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5033
5034 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5035
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005036- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005037 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5038 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5039 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005040
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005041New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005042-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005043
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005044- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5045 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5046 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5047 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5048 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005049
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005050Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005051-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005052
5053Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005054-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005055
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005056- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5057 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5058 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5059 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005060 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5061 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5062 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5063 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5064 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005065
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005066- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005067 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5068
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005069
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005070What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5071===========================
5072
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005073*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5074
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005075Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005076-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005077
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005078- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5079 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5080
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005081- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5082 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5083 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005084
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005085- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5086 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5087 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5088 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005089
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005090- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5091
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005092- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005093
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005094Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005095-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005096
5097- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005098 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005099 the module docstring for details.
5100
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005101Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005102-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005103
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005104- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005105 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5106 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5107 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005108
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005109- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5110 Nick Mathewson.
5111
5112Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005113----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005114
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005115- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5116 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5117 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5118 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5119 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5120 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5121 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5122 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5123
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005124- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5125 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5126 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5127 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5128
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005129- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5130 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5131 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5132 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5133 come a long way).
5134
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005135- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5136 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5137 write filters for these warnings).
5138
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005139- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5140 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5141 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5142 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5143 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5144
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005145- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5146 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5147 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5148 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5149 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5150 older distribution.
5151
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005152Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005153-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005154
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005155- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5156 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005157 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005158
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005159- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5160 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5161 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5162
5163- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5164
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005165- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5166
5167- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5168
5169- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5170
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005171- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005172
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005173- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5174
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005175New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005176-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005177
5178C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005179-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005180
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005181- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5182 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5183 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5184 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5185 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5186 against buffer overruns.
5187
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005188- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005189 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5190 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005191 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5192 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5193 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5194
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005195- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5196 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5197 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5198 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5199 deprecated.
5200
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005201Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005202-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005203
5204- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5205 relevant is found.
5206
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005207
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005208What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005209===========================
5210
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005211*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5212
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005213Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005214----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005215
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005216- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5217 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5218 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5219 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5220 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5221 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5222 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5223 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005224 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005225 repaired.
5226
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005227- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005228 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005229 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5230 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5231 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5232 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5233 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5234 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5235 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5236 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5237
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005238- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5239 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5240 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5241 leading BMO character).
5242
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005243- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5244 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5245 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5246
5247 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5248 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5249 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005250
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005251 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5252 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5253 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5254 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5255 for various simple to use conversions.
5256
5257 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5258 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5259
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005260 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5261 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5262 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5263 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5264 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5265 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5266 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5267 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5268 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5269 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5270 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5271 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5272 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5273 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5274 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005275
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005276- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5277 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5278 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005279 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005280 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005281
5282 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005283 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5284 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5285 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5286 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5287 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005288 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5289 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005290
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005291 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5292 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5293 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005294 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005295
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005296- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5297 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5298 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5299 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5300 floating arithmetic,
5301
5302 x = 9007199254740992.0
5303 print long(x)
5304
5305 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5306 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5307 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5308 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5309 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5310 functions are of good quality).
5311
5312 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5313 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5314 algorithms to break.
5315
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005316- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5317 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5318 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5319 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5320 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5321 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5322 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5323 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5324 order.
5325
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005326- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5327 operation along the most common code paths.
5328
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005329- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5330 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5331
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005332- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5333 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5334 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5335 {}.update(UserDict())
5336
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005337- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5338 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5339 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5340 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5341 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5342 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5343 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5344 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5345
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005346- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005347 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005348
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005349 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005350 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5351 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005352 join() method of strings
5353 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005354 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5355 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005356 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005357 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005358
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005359- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5360 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5361
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005362- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5363 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5364
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005365- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5366 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5367 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5368 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5369
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005370- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5371 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005372 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005373 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5374 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005375
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005376- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5377
5378
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005379Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005380-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005381
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005382- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005383 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005384 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5385 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5386
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005387- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5388 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5389
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005390- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5391 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5392 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5393 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5394
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005395- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5396 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5397 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5398
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005399- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5400
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005401- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5402
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005403- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5404 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5405 that are still imported into string.py).
5406
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005407- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5408
5409- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5410 Now it does.
5411
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005412- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5413
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005414- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5415 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5416 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5417 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5418 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005419 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5420 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005421
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005422- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5423 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5424 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5425 'help(object)'.
5426
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005427Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005428-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005429
5430- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005431 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005432 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5433 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5434
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005435- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005436 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5437 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005438
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005439C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005440-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005441
5442- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5443 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005444
5445----
5446
5447**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**