blob: 0ea2b54e428f7ce8ede997d6c44085e9144b74e0 [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
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +000015- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
16 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
17 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
18
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +000019- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
20 278.
21
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +000022- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
23 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
24 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
25 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
26 to the base class has been moved the prroper nb_* magic slot and out of
27 PyNumber_*().
28 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
29
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +000030- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
31 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
32 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
33 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
34
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +000035- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
36 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
37 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
38 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
39 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
40
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +000041- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
42 disabled caused a crash.
43
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +000044- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
45 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
46
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000047- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
48 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
49
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +000050- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
51
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +000052- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +000053 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
54 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
55 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +000056
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +000057- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
58
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +000059- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
60 returning None.
61
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +000062- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
63 ('\') with a specific error message.
64
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +000065- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
66
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +000067- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
68 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
69
Martin v. Löwis13a1fde2005-01-27 18:56:16 +000070- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +000071 an ferror() call.
72
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +000073- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
74 list.sort().
75
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +000076- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
77 (2+3) --> (5).
78
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +000079- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
80
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +000081- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
82 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000083
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +000084- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
85 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
86 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
87
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000088Extension Modules
89-----------------
90
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +000091- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
92 available on the platform.
93
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +000094- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
95 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
96
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +000097- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
98
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +000099- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
100 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
101 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
102
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000103- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
104
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000105- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
106 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
107
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000108- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
109 file size.
110
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000111- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
112
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000113- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
114 {remove_history,replace_history}
115
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000116- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
117 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000118
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000119- stat_float_times is now True.
120
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000121- array.array objects are now picklable.
122
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000123- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
124 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
125
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000126- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
127 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
128 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
129
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000130- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
131 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000132
133Library
134-------
135
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000136- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
137 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
138 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
139 class at all.
140
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000141- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
142 files to PyPI.
143
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000144- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
145 them to PyPI.
146
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000147- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
148 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
149 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
150 work as expected.
151
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000152- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
153 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
154
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000155- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
156 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
157
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000158- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
159
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000160- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
161 to build.
162
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000163- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
164 symbolic links on Windows.
165
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000166- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
167 profile.py if available.
168
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000169- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
170
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000171- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
172 in LWPCookieJar.
173
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000174- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
175
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000176- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
177
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000178- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
179
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000180- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
181
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000182- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
183
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000184- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
185
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000186- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
187
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000188- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
189
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000190- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
191 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
192 be exploited in various ways.
193
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000194- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
195
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000196- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
197
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000198- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
199
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000200- Enhancements to the csv module:
201
202 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
203 reflecting it's capabilities, and improving it's compliance with
204 PEP 305.
205 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
206 reporting.
207 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
208 dictates.
209 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000210 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000211 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000212 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
213 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000214 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
215 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000216 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000217 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
218 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
219 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
220 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
221 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
222 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
223 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
224 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
225 without first creating a dialect class.
226 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
227 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
228 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000229 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000230 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
231 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000232 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
233 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
234 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
235 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000236 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
237 This has been fixed.
238
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000239- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
240 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
241 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
242 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
243
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000244- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
245
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000246- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
247 (Bug #951915).
248
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000249- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
250 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
251 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
252 encoding alias table
253
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000254- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
255
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000256- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
257 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
258
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000259- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
260
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000261- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
262
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000263- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
264
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000265- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
266
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000267- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
268
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000269- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
270 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
271 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
272
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000273- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000274 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000275
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000276- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
277 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
278 tokenizer with very long source lines.
279
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000280- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
281 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
282
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000283- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
284 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000285
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000286- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
287 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
288
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000289- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
290 correctly.
291
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000292- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
293 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
294 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
295 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
296 between two lines.
297
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000298
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000299Build
300-----
301
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000302- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
303 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
304 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000305 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000306
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000307- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
308 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
309 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
310
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000311- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
312
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000313- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
314 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
315
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000316- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
317 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
318 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
319 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
320 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
321 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
322 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
323 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
324
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000325- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
326 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
327 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
328 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
329
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000330
331C API
332-----
333
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000334- Removed PyRange_New().
335
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000336
337Tests
338-----
339
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000340- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000341
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000342
343Documentation
344-------------
345
346- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
347 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
348 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
349
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000350Mac
351---
352
353
354
355Tools/Demos
356-----------
357
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000358- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000359
360
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000361What's New in Python 2.4 final?
362===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000363
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000364*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000365
366Core and builtins
367-----------------
368
369- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
370 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
371 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
372
373
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000374What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
375==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000376
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000377*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000378
379Core and builtins
380-----------------
381
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000382- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
383 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
384 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
385
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000386
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000387Library
388-------
389
390- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
391 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
392 raised is re-raised.
393
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000394- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
395 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
396
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000397- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
398 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
399 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
400 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
401 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
402 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
403 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
404 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
405 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
406 by the slice are recomputed now.
407
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000408- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000409
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000410Build
411-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000412
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000413- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
414 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
415 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000416
417C API
418-----
419
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000420- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
421
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000422
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000423What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
424================================
425
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000426*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000427
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000428License
429-------
430
431The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
432is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
433changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
434Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
435intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
436durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
437the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
438License::
439
440 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
441
442says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
443to Python 2.1.1.
444
445The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
446License Version 2.
447
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000448Core and builtins
449-----------------
450
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000451- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
452 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
453 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
454 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
455 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
456 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
457 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
458 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
459 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
460 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
461
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000462- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000463
464Extension Modules
465-----------------
466
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000467- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
468 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
469 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
470 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000471
472Library
473-------
474
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000475- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
476 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
477 returned.
478
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000479- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
480
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000481- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
482 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
483
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000484- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
485
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000486- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
487 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000488
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000489- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
490
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000491- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
492
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000493- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000494 the source code is updated and reloaded.
495
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000496Build
497-----
498
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000499- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000500
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000501What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
502================================
503
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000504*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000505
506Core and builtins
507-----------------
508
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000509- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000510 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
511
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000512- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
513 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
514 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
515 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
516
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000517- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
518 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
519
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000520- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
521 constant.
522
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000523- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
524 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
525 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
526 large), and to anomalies such as
527 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
528 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
529 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
530 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000531
532Extension modules
533-----------------
534
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000535- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
536 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000537 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
538 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
539 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000540
541Library
542-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000543
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000544- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000545 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000546 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
547 --swig-cpp.
548
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000549- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
550 it is set.
551
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000552- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000553
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000554- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
555 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
556 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
557 Closes bug #1039270.
558
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000559- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000560
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000561 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000562 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
563 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
564 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
565 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
566 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
567 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
568 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
569 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
570 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
571 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
572 + Updates to documentation.
573
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000574- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
575 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
576 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
577 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
578
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000579- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000580
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000581- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
582 applications should use the getmember function.
583
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000584- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
585
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000586- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
587 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
588 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
589 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
590 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
591 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
592 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
593 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
594 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
595
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000596- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
597 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000598 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000599
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000600- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
601 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
602 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
603 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
604 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
605 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
606 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
607 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000608
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000609- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
610 the new public features (of which there are many).
611
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000612- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000613 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
614 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
615 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
616 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000617 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000618
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000619- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
620
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000621- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
622 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
623 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
624 options.
625
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000626- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
627 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
628 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
629 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
630 conditions under which non-string values work.
631
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000632Build
633-----
634
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000635- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
636 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
637 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
638
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000639- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
640 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
641 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
642 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
643 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000644
645C API
646-----
647
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000648- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
649 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
650
651- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
652
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000653- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
654 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
655 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
656 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
657 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
658 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
659 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
660 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
661 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
662
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000663- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
664
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000665- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
666 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
667 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000668
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000669Tests
670-----
671
672- test__locale ported to unittest
673
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000674Mac
675---
676
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000677- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
678 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
679 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000680
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000681Tools/Demos
682-----------
683
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000684- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
685 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
686 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
687 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
688 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000689
690
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000691What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
692=================================
693
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000694*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000695
696Core and builtins
697-----------------
698
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000699- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000700 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
701
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000702- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
703 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
704 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
705 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
706 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
707 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
708 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
709 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000710 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
711 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
712 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
713 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
714 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000715
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000716- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
717 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
718 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
719 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
720 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
721
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000722- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
723
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000724- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
725 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
726
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000727- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
728 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
729 modified the list.
730
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000731- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
732 functions is now writable.
733
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000734- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
735 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
736 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
737 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
738
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000739- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
740 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
741 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
742 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
743 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000744
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000745- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
746 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
747
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000748Extension modules
749-----------------
750
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000751- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
752
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000753- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
754 data.
755
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000756- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
757 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
758 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
759 supposed to have been truncated away.
760
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000761- Added socket.socketpair().
762
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000763- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
764 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
765
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000766- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000767 versions of Python, have now been removed.
768
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000769Library
770-------
771
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000772- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000773 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000774
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000775- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
776 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
777
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000778- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
779 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
780
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000781- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
782
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000783- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
784 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000785
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000786- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
787 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
788
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000789- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
790
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000791- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
792
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000793- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
794
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000795- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
796 Percivall.
797
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000798- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
799 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
800
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000801- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
802 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
803 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000804 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000805
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000806- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
807 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
808 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
809 and exponent.
810
811- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
812
813- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
814 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatability and atexit
815 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
816
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000817- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
818 to the readline module.
819
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000820- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000821 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
822 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000823
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000824- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
825 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
826 contains symlinks.
827
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000828- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
829 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
830
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000831- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
832 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
833 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
834
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000835- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
836 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
837 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
838 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
839 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
840 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
841 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
842 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
843 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
844 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
845 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
846 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
847 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
848
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000849- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
850
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000851Tools/Demos
852-----------
853
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000854- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
855 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
856
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000857- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
858
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000859Build
860-----
861
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000862- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
863 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
864 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
865 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
866 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
867 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
868 plans to do so.
869
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +0000870- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
871 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
872
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +0000873- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
874 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
875
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000876- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
877 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
878
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +0000879- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
880 GNU/k*BSD systems.
881
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +0000882- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
883 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
884
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000885C API
886-----
887
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000888..
889
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000890Documentation
891-------------
892
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +0000893- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
894 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
895
896- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
897 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
898 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +0000899
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000900New platforms
901-------------
902
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +0000903- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
904
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000905Tests
906-----
907
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000908..
909
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000910Windows
911-------
912
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +0000913- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
914 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
915 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
916 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
917 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
918 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
919 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
920 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
921 the problem.
922
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000923Mac
924---
925
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000926..
927
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000928
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000929What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
930=================================
931
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000932*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000933
934Core and builtins
935-----------------
936
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +0000937- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
938 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
939 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
940 sensitive code.
941
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000942- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000943 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000944
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000945 @staticmethod
946 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000947
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000948 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000949
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000950- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
951 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
952 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
953 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
954 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
955 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
956 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
957 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
958 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
959 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
960 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
961
962 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
963 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
964 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
965 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
966 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
967 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
968 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
969
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +0000970- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
971 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
972
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000973- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000974 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000975
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000976- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000977 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000978 which was missing for no apparent reason.
979
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000980- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000981 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
982 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
983
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000984- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
985 types that support garbage collection.
986
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +0000987- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
988
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +0000989- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
990 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
991 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
992 Jython.
993
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000994- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
995
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +0000996- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
997 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
998
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +0000999- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1000 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1001 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001002
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001003- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1004 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1005 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1006
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001007Extension modules
1008-----------------
1009
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001010- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1011
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001012Library
1013-------
1014
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001015- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1016 TIS-620
1017
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001018- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1019 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1020 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1021 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1022 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1023 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1024 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1025 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1026 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1027 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1028
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001029- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1030
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001031- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1032 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1033 same as when the argument is omitted).
1034 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1035
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001036- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1037
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001038- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1039 schemes are offered.
1040
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001041- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1042
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001043- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1044 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1045 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1046
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001047- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1048
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001049- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1050 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1051
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001052- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1053 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1054 when dummy_threading is being used.
1055
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001056- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1057 from a tarfile.
1058
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001059- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001060 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001061
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001062- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1063 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1064 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1065 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1066
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001067- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1068 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1069
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001070- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1071 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1072 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1073 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1074 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1075 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1076 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1077 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1078 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1079 by some other method in progress).
1080
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001081- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1082 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1083 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001084
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001085- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1086
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001087- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1088 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1089 AM Kuchling.
1090
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001091- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1092 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1093 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1094
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001095- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1096 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1097 instead of unsigned.
1098
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001099- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001100 no longer part of the public API.
1101
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001102- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1103 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1104 string methods of the same name).
1105
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001106- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001107 SF patch 945642.
1108
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001109- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1110
1111 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1112
1113 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1114 DocTestSuites.
1115
1116- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1117 that provide thread-local data.
1118
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001119- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1120 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1121
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001122- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1123
1124- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1125 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1126 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1127
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001128- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1129
1130 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1131 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1132 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001133
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001134 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1135 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1136 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1137 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1138
1139 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1140 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1141
1142 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1143 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1144 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1145 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1146
1147 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1148 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1149 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1150 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1151 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1152
1153 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1154 wrapping help output.
1155
1156 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1157 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1158 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001159
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001160C API
1161-----
1162
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001163- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1164 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1165 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1166 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1167 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1168 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1169 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1170 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1171 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1172 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1173 its visible semantics have not changed.
1174
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001175- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1176 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1177
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001178Documentation
1179-------------
1180
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001181- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001182
1183 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001184 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001185
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001186 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001187
1188 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1189
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001190- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001191
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001192Tests
1193-----
1194
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001195- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001196 platforms that use the Makefile.
1197
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001198- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1199 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1200 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1201
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001202
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001203What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1204=================================
1205
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001206*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001207
1208Core and builtins
1209-----------------
1210
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001211- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1212 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1213 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1214 objects now (one object instead of three).
1215
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001216- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1217 Windows DLLs.
1218
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001219- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1220 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001221
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001222- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1223 a new .pyc magic.
1224
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001225- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1226 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1227 be there.
1228
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001229- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1230 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1231 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1232
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001233- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1234 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1235 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1236
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001237- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1238
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001239- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1240 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1241 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001242
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001243- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1244 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1245
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001246- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1247
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001248- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001249 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001250
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001251- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1252
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001253- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1254
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001255- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1256 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1257
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001258- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1259 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1260 Fixes bug #858016 .
1261
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001262- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1263 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1264 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1265
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001266- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1267 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1268 improves their performance (about 35%).
1269
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001270- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1271 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1272 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1273
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001274- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1275 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1276 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1277 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1278
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001279- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1280 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001281 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001282 length is not known).
1283
1284- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1285 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001286 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1287 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001288 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1289
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001290- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1291 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1292
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001293- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1294 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1295 keyword arguments.
1296
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001297- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1298 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1299 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1300
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001301- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1302 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1303 cases.
1304
1305- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1306 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1307 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1308 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1309 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1310 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1311 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1312 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1313 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1314 a release build.
1315
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001316- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1317 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1318
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001319- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001320 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001321
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001322- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1323 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1324 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1325 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1326 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1327 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1328 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1329 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1330 destroyed.
1331
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001332- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1333 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1334 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1335 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1336 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1337 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1338 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1339 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1340
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001341- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1342 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1343 character other than a space.
1344
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001345- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1346 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1347 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1348 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1349 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1350 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1351 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1352 attributes with the same name.
1353
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001354- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1355 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1356 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1357 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1358 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1359 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1360 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1361 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1362 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1363 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1364 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1365 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1366 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1367 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001368
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001369- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1370 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1371 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1372 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1373 This has been repaired.
1374
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001375- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1376
1377- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1378
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001379- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1380 over a sequence.
1381
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001382- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001383 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001384
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001385- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1386
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001387- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1388 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1389 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1390 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1391 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1392 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1393 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1394 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1395
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001396- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1397 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1398 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1399
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001400- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1401 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1402 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1403 freelist.
1404
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001405- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1406 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1407
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001408- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1409 number.
1410
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001411- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1412 a TypeError exception.
1413
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001414- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1415 820195.
1416
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001417- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1418 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1419 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1420
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001421- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001422 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1423 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001424
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001425- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1426 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1427 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1428
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001429- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1430 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001431 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001432
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001433- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001434 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1435 the first call.
1436
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001437
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001438Extension modules
1439-----------------
1440
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001441- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1442 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1443
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001444- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1445 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1446 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1447 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1448 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1449 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1450 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001451
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001452- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1453
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001454- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1455
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001456- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1457 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1458
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001459- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1460 fewer false positives.
1461
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001462- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1463 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1464
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001465- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001466 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1467
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001468- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001469 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001470 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001471 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1472 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001473
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001474- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1475 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1476 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1477 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1478
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001479- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1480 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1481 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1482 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1483 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1484 #897625.
1485
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001486- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1487 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1488
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001489- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1490 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1491 and pops on either side of the deque.
1492
1493- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1494 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1495
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001496- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1497 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1498 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1499 other functions that expect a function argument.
1500
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001501- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1502
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001503- os.getsid was added.
1504
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001505- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1506 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1507 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1508
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001509- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1510
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001511- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1512
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001513- readline.clear_history was added.
1514
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001515- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1516
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001517- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1518
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001519- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1520
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001521- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1522
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001523- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1524
1525- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1526
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001527- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1528
1529- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1530
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001531- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1532 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1533 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1534
1535- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1536 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1537 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1538 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1539 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1540 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1541 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1542
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001543- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1544 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1545 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1546 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001547
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001548- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001549 iterators from a single iterable.
1550
1551- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1552 of raising a TypeError exception.
1553
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001554- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1555 as parameter.
1556
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001557Library
1558-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001559
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001560- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1561 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1562 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001563
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001564- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1565 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1566 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001567
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001568- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001569
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001570- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1571 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001572
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001573- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1574 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1575
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001576- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1577
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001578- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001579 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001580
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001581- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001582 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001583
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001584- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1585
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001586- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1587 on cygwin and mingw32.
1588
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001589- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1590
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001591- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1592 module.
1593
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001594- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1595 installation scheme for all platforms.
1596
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001597- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001598 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001599
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001600- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1601 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1602 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1603
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001604- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1605 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1606 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1607
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001608- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1609
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001610- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1611
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001612- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1613 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1614
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001615- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1616 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1617 type pattern with the same value exists.
1618
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001619- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1620 when run from the command prompt).
1621
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001622- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1623 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1624
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001625- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1626 default sort).
1627
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001628- Added global runctx function to profile module
1629
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001630- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1631
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001632- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1633
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001634- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1635
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001636- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001637 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1638 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1639 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1640 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1641 accordingly.
1642
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001643- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1644 decoding standards.
1645
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001646- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1647 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1648 called for all requests.
1649
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001650- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1651 they are passed to the compiler.
1652
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001653- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1654 indent, width and depth.
1655
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001656- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1657 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1658
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001659- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1660 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1661
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001662- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1663
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001664- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1665
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001666- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1667
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001668- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1669 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1670
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001671- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001672 for better performance.
1673
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001674- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001675
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001676- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1677 a string).
1678
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001679- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1680
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001681- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1682
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001683- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1684
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001685- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1686
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001687- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1688 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1689 list of fieldnames.
1690
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001691- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1692 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1693
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001694- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1695
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001696- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1697 empty lists.
1698
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001699- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1700 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1701 and shelves.
1702
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001703- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1704 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1705
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001706- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001707 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1708 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001709
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001710- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1711 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001712 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001713
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001714- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001715 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1716 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1717
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001718- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1719 and removed in Py2.4.
1720
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001721- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1722
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001723- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1724
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001725Tools/Demos
1726-----------
1727
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001728- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1729 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1730
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001731- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1732
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001733- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1734 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1735 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1736 destination in situations where both files are given.
1737
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001738- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1739 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1740 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1741 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1742
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001743- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1744
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001745- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1746 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1747 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1748 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1749 now.
1750
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001751- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1752 in effect
1753
1754- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1755 C-c C-h
1756
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001757- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1758 -d option was given.
1759
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001760Build
1761-----
1762
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001763- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1764 build under OS X.
1765
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001766- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1767 --enable-profiling.
1768
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001769- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1770 is configured --with-tsc.
1771
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001772- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1773 on AMD64.
1774
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001775- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1776 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1777
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001778- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1779 removed.
1780
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001781- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1782 supported (see PEP 11).
1783
1784- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1785
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001786- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1787
1788- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1789 (see PEP 11).
1790
1791- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1792 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1793
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001794C API
1795-----
1796
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001797- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1798 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1799 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1800
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001801- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1802 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1803 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1804 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1805
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001806- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1807 generator objects.
1808
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001809- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1810 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001811 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1812 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001813
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001814- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1815 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1816
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001817- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1818 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1819 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1820 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1821 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1822
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001823- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1824 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1825 about 10% faster.
1826
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001827- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1828 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1829
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001830- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1831 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1832 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1833 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1834
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001835Windows
1836-------
1837
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001838- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1839 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1840 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1841 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1842
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001843- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1844 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1845 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1846
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001847
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001848What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1849===============================
1850
1851*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1852
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001853IDLE
1854----
1855
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001856- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1857 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1858 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1859 context-menu actions.
1860
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001861- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1862 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1863 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1864 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1865 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1866 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1867 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
1868 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
1869 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
1870
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001871
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001872What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
1873=============================================
1874
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00001875*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001876
1877Core and builtins
1878-----------------
1879
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001880- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001881 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001882 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1883
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001884Extension modules
1885-----------------
1886
1887- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1888 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1889 than once. This has been fixed.
1890
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001891- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1892 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1893 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1894 call.
1895
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001896- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1897
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001898Library
1899-------
1900
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001901- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1902 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1903
1904- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1905 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1906 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1907 restored.
1908
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001909IDLE
1910----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001911
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001912- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001913
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001914Build
1915-----
1916
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001917- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1918 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1919
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001920C API
1921-----
1922
1923Windows
1924-------
1925
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001926- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1927 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1928
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001929- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1930
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001931Mac
1932---
1933
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001934- Various fixes to pimp.
1935
1936- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1937
1938- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1939 more problems than it solves.
1940
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001941
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001942What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1943=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001944
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001945*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1946
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001947Core and builtins
1948-----------------
1949
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001950- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1951 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1952
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001953- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
1954 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001955 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001956
1957- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
1958 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
1959 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001960 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001961
1962- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
1963 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001964
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001965- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
1966 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
1967 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
1968
1969- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001970 770247.
1971
1972- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001973
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001974Extension modules
1975-----------------
1976
1977- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
1978 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
1979
1980- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
1981
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001982- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
1983
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00001984- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
1985 contained within the _strptime module.
1986
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001987- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
1988 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
1989
1990- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001991 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
1992
1993- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
1994 the find_class attribute, if present.
1995
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001996- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001997
1998 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
1999 (SF bug 763298).
2000
2001 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002002 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2003 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2004 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002005
2006 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2007
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002008Library
2009-------
2010
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002011- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2012
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002013- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2014 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2015 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2016 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2017 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2018 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2019 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2020 or Tester().
2021
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002022- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2023 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2024 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2025 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2026 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2027 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2028 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2029 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2030 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002031
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002032 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002033
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002034- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2035 weren't before was an oversight.
2036
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002037- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2038 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2039
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002040- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2041 when there are no lines.
2042
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002043- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2044 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2045
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002046- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2047 to child processes.
2048
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002049- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2050
2051- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2052
2053- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2054 xmlrpclib.
2055
2056- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2057 responses.
2058
2059- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2060 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2061
2062- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2063 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2064 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2065
2066- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2067 used as patterns.
2068
2069- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2070 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2071 than Tk 8.3.
2072
2073- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2074
2075- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002076
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002077Tools/Demos
2078-----------
2079
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002080- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2081
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002082- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2083
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002084- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002085
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002086Build
2087-----
2088
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002089- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2090
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002091- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2092
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002093- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2094 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002095
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002096- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2097 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2098 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002099
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002100C API
2101-----
2102
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002103- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2104 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2105
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002106Windows
2107-------
2108
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002109- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2110 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2111 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2112 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2113 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2114 Python exception ::
2115
2116 thread.error: can't start new thread
2117
2118 is raised now.
2119
2120- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2121 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2122 instead of from DLL teardown.
2123
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002124Mac
2125---
2126
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002127- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002128 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002129 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2130 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2131 the executable in the bundle.
2132
2133- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002134
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002135- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2136
2137- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2138 on Panther.
2139
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002140What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2141================================
2142
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002143*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002144
2145Core and builtins
2146-----------------
2147
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002148- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2149 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2150 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2151 with the -i option.
2152
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002153- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2154 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2155
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002156- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2157 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2158
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002159- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2160 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2161 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2162 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2163 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2164 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2165 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2166 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2167 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2168 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2169 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2170 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2171 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002172
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002173- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2174 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2175 embedded in a lambda expression.
2176
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002177- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2178 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2179 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2180 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2181 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2182
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002183- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2184 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2185 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2186
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002187- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2188 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2189
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002190- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2191 It's writable again.
2192
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002193- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2194 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2195 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002196 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002197
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002198- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2199 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2200 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2201
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002202Extension modules
2203-----------------
2204
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002205- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2206 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2207
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002208- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2209 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2210 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2211 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2212
2213- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2214 collection.
2215
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002216- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2217 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2218 unique within a single program run.
2219
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002220- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2221 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2222
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002223- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2224 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2225
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002226- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2227 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002228
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002229- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2230
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002231- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2232 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2233
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002234- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2235 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2236 for many BSD-derived systems.
2237
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002238
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002239Library
2240-------
2241
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002242- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2243 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2244 primary ones:
2245
2246 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2247 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2248 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2249
2250 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2251 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2252 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2253 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2254 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2255 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2256
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002257- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2258 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2259 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2260 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2261 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2262 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2263 argument.
2264
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002265- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2266 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2267 in the archive.
2268
2269- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2270 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2271
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002272- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2273 569574).
2274
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002275- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2276 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2277 no more.
2278
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002279- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2280 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2281 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2282 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2283 code coverage.
2284
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002285- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2286 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2287 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002288 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2289 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002290
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002291- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2292 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2293 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002294 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002295
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002296- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2297
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002298- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2299 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2300 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2301 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2302
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002303- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2304 handling.
2305
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002306- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2307 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2308
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002309- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2310 in socket.py.
2311
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002312- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2313
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002314- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2315 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2316 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2317 opener with proxy support.
2318
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002319- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2320
2321- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2322
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002323Tools/Demos
2324-----------
2325
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002326- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2327
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002328- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2329
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002330- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2331 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002332
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002333- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2334 files.
2335
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002336Build
2337-----
2338
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002339- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002340 different root directory.
2341
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002342C API
2343-----
2344
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002345- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2346 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2347 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2348 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2349 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2350 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2351 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2352 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2353 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2354 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2355
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002356- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2357 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2358 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2359 from Python.
2360
2361
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002362New platforms
2363-------------
2364
2365None this time.
2366
2367Tests
2368-----
2369
2370- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2371 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2372
2373Windows
2374-------
2375
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002376- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2377
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002378- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2379 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2380 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2381 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2382 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2383 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2384 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2385 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2386 that's what it's for.
2387
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002388Mac
2389---
2390
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002391- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2392 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2393 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2394 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002395- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2396 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2397- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002398
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002399SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2400------------------------------------
2401
2402430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2403598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2404622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2405661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2406683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2407697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2408713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2409724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2410727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2411729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2412730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2413731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2414732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2415733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2416735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2417740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2418744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2419745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2420747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2421749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2422751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2423753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2424755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2425757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2426760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2427
2428
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002429What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2430================================
2431
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002432*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002433
2434Core and builtins
2435-----------------
2436
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002437- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2438 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2439
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002440- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2441 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2442 and cannot be strings).
2443
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002444- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2445 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2446 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2447 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2448
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002449- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2450 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2451 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2452 Python itself.
2453
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002454- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2455 the referenced object, if it has one.
2456
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002457- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2458 the thread started at
2459 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2460
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002461- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2462 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2463 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2464 placed on a list index.
2465
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002466- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2467 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2468 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2469 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2470
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002471- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2472 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2473 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2474 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2475 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2476 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2477 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2478
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002479- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2480 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2481 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2482 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2483 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2484
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002485- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2486 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002487
2488- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2489 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2490 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2491 #693195.)
2492
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002493- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2494 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002495
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002496- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002497 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002498 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2499 interpreter executions, would fail.
2500
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002501- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002502 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002503 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002504
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002505Extension modules
2506-----------------
2507
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002508- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2509 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2510 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2511 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2512
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002513- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2514 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2515
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002516- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2517 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2518 and Greg Chapman.)
2519
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002520- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2521 recursively.
2522
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002523- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002524 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2525 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2526 leaks.
2527
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002528- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2529
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002530- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2531 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2532 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2533 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2534 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2535 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2536 #705836.
2537
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002538- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002539 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2540
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002541- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2542 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2543 See SF bug #692416.
2544
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002545- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2546 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2547
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002548- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2549 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2550 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002551
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002552- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002553 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2554 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2555
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002556- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2557 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2558 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2559 timeouts to work properly.
2560
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002561Library
2562-------
2563
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002564- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2565 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2566 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2567 future release.
2568
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002569- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2570 for querying platform dependent features.
2571
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002572- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002573
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002574- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2575 pickle protocol versions.
2576
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002577- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2578 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2579 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2580
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002581- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2582
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002583- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2584 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2585 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2586 modules.
2587
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002588- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2589 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2590 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2591
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002592- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2593 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2594
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002595- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2596 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2597 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2598
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002599- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002600 MS Office extensions.
2601
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002602- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2603 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2604
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002605- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2606 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2607
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002608- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2609 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2610 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2611 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2612 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2613 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2614
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002615- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2616 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2617 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002618
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002619- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2620 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2621 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2622
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002623- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2624
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002625- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2626 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2627 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2628
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002629Tools/Demos
2630-----------
2631
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002632- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2633 See the module docstring for details.
2634
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002635Build
2636-----
2637
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002638- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2639 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002640
2641C API
2642-----
2643
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002644- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2645
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002646- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2647 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2648 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2649
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002650- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2651 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002652
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002653 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2654 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2655 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002656
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002657- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002658 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2659
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002660- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2661 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2662 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002663
2664New platforms
2665-------------
2666
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002667None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002668
2669Tests
2670-----
2671
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002672- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2673 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002674
2675Windows
2676-------
2677
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002678- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2679 function.
2680
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002681- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2682 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002683
2684Mac
2685---
2686
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002687- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2688 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002689
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002690- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2691 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002692
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002693- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2694 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2695 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002696
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002697- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002698 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2699 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002700
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002701- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2702 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002703
2704
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002705What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2706=================================
2707
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002708*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002709
2710Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002711-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002712
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002713- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2714 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2715 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2716
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002717- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2718 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2719 (SF patch #664376.)
2720
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002721- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2722 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2723 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2724 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2725 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2726 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002727 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002728
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002729- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2730 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2731 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2732 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002733 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002734
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002735- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2736 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2737 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2738 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2739 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2740 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2741 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2742 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2743 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2744 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2745 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2746
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002747- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2748 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2749 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2750 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2751 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2752 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2753
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002754- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2755 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2756
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002757- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2758 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2759 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2760 case.)
2761
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002762- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2763 passed as unicode strings.
2764
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002765- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2766 See SF bug #683467.
2767
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002768- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2769 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2770
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002771- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2772
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002773- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2774
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002775- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2776 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2777 arguments.
2778
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002779- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2780 See SF bug #667147.
2781
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002782- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002783 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002784 See SF bug #676155.
2785
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002786- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002787 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002788 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2789 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2790 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2791 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2792 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2793 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002794
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002795Extension modules
2796-----------------
2797
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002798- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2799 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2800 tp_as_number pointer.
2801
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002802- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2803 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2804 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2805 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2806 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2807
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002808- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2809
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002810- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2811
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002812- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002813 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002814 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2815 patch #678531.)
2816
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002817- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2818 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2819
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002820- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2821 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2822
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002823- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2824
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002825- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2826 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2827 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2828
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002829- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2830
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002831- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2832 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2833
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002834- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002835
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002836- datetime changes:
2837
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002838 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2839
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002840 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2841 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2842 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2843 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2844 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2845 now.
2846
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002847 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002848 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2849 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002850
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002851 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002852 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002853 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2854 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2855 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2856 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002857
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002858 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2859 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2860 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002861 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2862
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002863 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2864 by a later example coded by Guido.
2865
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002866 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002867 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
2868 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
2869 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002870 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
2871 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
2872
2873 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
2874 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
2875 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
2876 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
2877 tzinfo subclass instance.
2878
2879 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
2880 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
2881 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2882 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2883 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2884 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2885 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2886 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002887
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002888 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2889 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2890 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2891 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2892 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002893 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2894
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002895 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002896
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002897 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2898 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2899 as a naive datetime object.
2900
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002901 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2902 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2903 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2904
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002905 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2906 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2907 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2908 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2909 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2910 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2911 comparison.
2912
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002913 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2914 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2915 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2916 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002917 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002918
2919 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002920
2921 and ::
2922
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002923 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2924
2925 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2926 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2927 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2928 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2929
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002930 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2931 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2932 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2933 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2934 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2935
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002936 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2937 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002938 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2939 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002940
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002941Library
2942-------
2943
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002944- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2945 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2946
2947- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2948 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2949 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2950 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2951 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2952 See PEP 307 for details.
2953
2954- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
2955 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
2956
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002957- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
2958 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002959 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002960 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
2961 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002962 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002963
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00002964- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
2965 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
2966
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002967- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
2968 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
2969 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
2970
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00002971- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
2972
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00002973- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
2974 exception.
2975
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00002976- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
2977 class.
2978
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00002979- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
2980 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
2981 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
2982
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00002983- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
2984 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
2985
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002986- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00002987 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
2988 See SF bug #659228.
2989
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00002990- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
2991 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
2992 See SF patch #651082.
2993
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00002994- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002995
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00002996- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
2997 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
2998
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002999- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003000 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003001
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003002- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3003 DOS paths from other platforms.
3004
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003005Tools/Demos
3006-----------
3007
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003008- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3009 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3010 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3011 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3012 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3013 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3014 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3015 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3016 example:
3017
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003018 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3019 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003020
3021 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3022
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003023
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003024Build
3025-----
3026
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003027- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3028 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3029 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003030 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3031
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003032 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3033
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003034- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3035 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3036 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3037 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3038 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3039 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3040 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3041 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3042 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3043
3044- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3045 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3046 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3047 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3048
3049- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3050 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3051
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003052C API
3053-----
3054
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003055- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3056 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003057
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003058- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3059 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3060 tp_as_number pointer.
3061
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003062- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3063 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3064 (SF #681367)
3065
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003066- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3067 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3068 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3069 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003070
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003071Tests
3072-----
3073
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003074- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003075 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3076 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3077 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3078 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3079 pydoc.)
3080
3081- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3082
3083- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003084
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003085Windows
3086-------
3087
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003088- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3089 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3090 time).
3091
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003092- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3093 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3094
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003095- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3096 release without strong cryptography.
3097
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003098- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003099 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003100
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003101- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3102 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3103
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003104Mac
3105---
3106
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003107- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3108 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003109
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003110- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3111 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3112 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003113
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003114- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3115 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003116
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003117- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3118 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3119 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3120 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003121
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003122- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003123 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3124 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3125 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003126
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003127
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003128What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003129=================================
3130
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003131*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003132
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003133Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003134--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003135
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003136- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3137
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003138- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3139 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003140 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003141 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003142 a different meaning than before.
3143
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003144- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003145 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003146 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003147
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003148- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003149 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003150 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003151
3152- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3153 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3154 and deallocation.
3155
3156- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3157 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3158
3159- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3160 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3161 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3162 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3163 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3164
3165- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3166 now detected by the garbage collector.
3167
3168- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3169 [SF bug 519621]
3170
3171- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3172 identifier.
3173
3174- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3175 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3176 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3177 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3178 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3179 [SF bug 563060]
3180
3181- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3182 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3183 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3184 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3185 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3186
3187- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3188 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3189 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3190
3191- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3192
3193- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3194 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3195 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3196 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3197 state of the slots would be lost.)
3198
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003199Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003200-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003201
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003202- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003203 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3204 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3205 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3206 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003207 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3208 Jython 2.1.
3209
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003210- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003211 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003212 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3213 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3214 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3215 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3216 these, see PEP 302.
3217
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003218- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3219 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3220 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3221
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003222- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3223 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3224 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3225
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003226- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3227 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3228 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3229
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003230- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3231 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3232 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3233 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3234 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3235 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3236 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3237 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3238 releases or implementations.
3239
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003240- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003241 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3242 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003243
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003244- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3245 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3246
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003247- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3248 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3249 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3250
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003251- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3252 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3253
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003254- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3255 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003256 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3257 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003258
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003259- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3260 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3261 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3262 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3263 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3264
3265 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3266 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3267 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3268 pattern.
3269
3270 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3271 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3272 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3273 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3274
3275 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3276 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3277 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3278 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3279 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3280 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3281
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003282- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3283 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3284 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3285 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3286 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3287 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3288 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3289 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003290
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003291- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3292 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3293 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3294 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3295 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003296 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3297 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3298 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3299 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3300 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3301 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3302 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003303
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003304- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3305 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3306
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003307- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3308 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3309 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3310 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3311 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3312 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3313 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3314 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3315 to Zack Weinberg!
3316
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003317- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3318 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3319 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3320 type. This has been fixed now.
3321
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003322- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3323 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3324 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3325
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003326- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3327 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3328 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3329 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3330 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3331 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3332 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3333 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003334 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003335
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003336- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3337 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3338 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003339
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003340- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3341 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3342 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3343 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3344 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3345 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3346 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3347 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003348 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003349 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3350 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3351
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003352- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3353 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3354 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3355 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3356 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3357 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3358 this.)
3359
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003360- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3361 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003362 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003363 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003364 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3365 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003366 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3367 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003368
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003369- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3370 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3371 currently running.
3372
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003373- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3374 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3375 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3376 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3377
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003378- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3379 as directory names.
3380
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003381- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3382 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3383
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003384- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3385 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3386
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003387- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003388 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3389 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003390
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003391- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3392 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3393 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3394 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3395 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3396
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003397- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3398 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3399 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3400 removed.
3401
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003402- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3403 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3404 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3405
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003406- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3407 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3408 to __debug__.
3409
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003410- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3411 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3412 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3413
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003414- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3415 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3416 deprecated now.
3417
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003418- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3419 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3420 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003421
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003422- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3423 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3424 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3425 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3426 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003427
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003428- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3429 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3430
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003431- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3432 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3433 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003434 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003435 is backward compatible.
3436
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003437- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3438 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3439 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3440 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3441 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3442
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003443- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3444 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3445 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3446 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3447 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3448 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003449
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003450- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3451 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3452
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003453- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3454 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3455
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003456- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3457 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3458 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3459 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3460 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3461
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003462- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3463 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3464 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3465
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003466- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003467 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3468
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003469- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3470 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3471 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003472
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003473- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3474 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3475
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003476- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3477 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3478 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3479
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003480- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3481
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003482Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003483-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003484
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003485- Added three operators to the operator module:
3486 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3487 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3488 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3489
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003490- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3491
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003492- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3493 archives.
3494
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003495- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3496 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3497 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3498
3499 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3500
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003501- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3502 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3503 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003504 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003505
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003506- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3507 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3508 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3509 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003510 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3511 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3512 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3513 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003514
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003515- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3516 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003517
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003518- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3519
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003520- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3521 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3522
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003523- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3524 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3525 supported.
3526
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003527- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3528
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003529- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3530 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003531
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003532- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3533 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3534
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003535- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3536
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003537- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3538 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3539
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003540- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3541 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3542 functions but callable type objects.
3543
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003544- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003545 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003546 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003547
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003548- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3549 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003550
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003551- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3552 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003553
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003554- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3555 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3556 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3557 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3558
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003559- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3560 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003561
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003562- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3563 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3564 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3565 and __imul__.
3566
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003567- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003568 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3569 is called.
3570
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003571- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3572 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3573 interpreter was compiled.
3574
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003575- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3576 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3577 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003578 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003579 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3580 1, not 2.
3581
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003582- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3583 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3584 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3585 limit.
3586
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003587- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3588 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3589 bug #623464.
3590
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003591- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3592 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3593 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3594 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3595
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003596Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003597-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003598
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003599- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3600
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003601- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3602 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3603 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3604 with Python 2.3a2.
3605
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003606- os.path exposes getctime.
3607
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003608- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003609 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003610 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003611 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003612 unit tests of floating point results.
3613
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003614- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3615 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3616 has been increased.
3617
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003618- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3619 executed.
3620
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003621- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3622 postinstallation script.
3623
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003624- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3625 test the current module.
3626
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003627- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003628 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3629 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3630 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3631 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3632
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003633- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003634 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003635 Ward's Optik package.
3636
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003637- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3638 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3639 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3640 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3641
3642- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3643 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003644 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003645
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003646- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3647 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3648 shelf are binary pickles.
3649
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003650- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3651 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3652
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003653- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3654 modules are iterators now.
3655
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003656- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3657 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3658 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3659 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3660 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3661 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003662
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003663- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3664 with their entity value.
3665
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003666- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3667
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003668- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3669 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003670
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003671- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3672 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003673 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003674
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003675- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3676 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3677 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3678 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3679 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3680 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3681 main():
3682
3683 import locale
3684 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3685
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003686- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3687 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3688
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003689- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3690 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3691 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3692 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3693 to the new standard.
3694
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003695- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3696 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3697 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3698 an extension to the database.
3699
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003700- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3701 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3702 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3703 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003704 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003705
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003706- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003707 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003708
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003709- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3710 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3711 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3712 bounded integers.
3713
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003714- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3715 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3716 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3717 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3718 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3719 in existence.
3720
3721 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3722 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3723 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3724 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3725 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3726 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3727
3728 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3729 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3730 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3731 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3732
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003733- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3734 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3735 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3736
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003737- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3738
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003739- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3740 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3741 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3742 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3743
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003744- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3745 argument.
3746
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003747- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3748 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3749 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3750 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3751 [SF patch 560794].
3752
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003753- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3754 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3755 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003756 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3757 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3758 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003759
3760- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3761 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003762
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003763- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3764 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3765 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3766 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003767
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003768- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3769 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3770 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3771 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3772 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3773
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003774- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003775
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003776- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3777
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003778- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3779 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3780 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3781 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3782 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3783 identical to None.
3784
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003785- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3786 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3787 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3788 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3789 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3790 results now.
3791
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003792- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3793 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3794
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003795- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3796 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3797 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3798 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3799 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3800 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3801 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3802 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3803
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003804- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3805
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003806- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3807 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3808
3809- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3810 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3811 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3812 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3813 and other systems.
3814
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003815- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3816 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3817 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3818 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 +00003819 work well with these.
3820
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003821- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3822
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003823- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003824 connections.
3825
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003826- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3827 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3828 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3829
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003830- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3831 sets
3832
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003833- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3834 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3835 name.
3836
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003837- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3838 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3839 passed in.
3840
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003841- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003842 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003843 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3844 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003845
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003846- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3847
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003848- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3849
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003850- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3851 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3852 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3853
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003854- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3855 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3856 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3857 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003858 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003859
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003860- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003861 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003862 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003863
3864- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3865 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3866 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3867
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003868- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00003869 the value of its expression argument.
3870
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003871- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
3872 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
3873 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
3874
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00003875- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
3876 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
3877 skipstone browser was included.
3878
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00003879- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
3880 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
3881
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003882Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003883-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003884
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003885- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3886 names in addition to accepting file names.
3887
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003888- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3889 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3890 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3891 still used and useful.)
3892
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003893- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3894 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3895 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3896 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003897
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003898- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3899 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3900 the generated binary.
3901
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003902Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003903-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003904
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003905- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3906
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003907- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3908 except in the hands of experts.
3909
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003910- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003911 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3912 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3913 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003914
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003915- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3916 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3917 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3918 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3919 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3920 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3921 builds.
3922
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003923- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3924 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3925 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3926 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3927 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3928 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3929 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3930 new type.
3931
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003932- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003933
3934 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3935 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3936 positive infinities.
3937
3938 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3939 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3940 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3941 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3942 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3943 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3944 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3945
3946 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3947
3948 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3949
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003950- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3951 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3952 size of the executable.
3953
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003954- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
3955 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
3956 configure script. On other platforms, remove
3957 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00003958
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00003959- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
3960
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00003961- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
3962 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
3963 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00003964
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00003965- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
3966 well as Unix.
3967
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00003968- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
3969 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
3970 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
3971 modules in the README file for details.
3972
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003973C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003974-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003975
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003976- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
3977 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003978 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00003979 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003980 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003981
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003982- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
3983 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
3984 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
3985 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
3986 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
3987 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003988 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003989 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
3990 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
3991 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
3992 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
3993 aligned.)
3994
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00003995- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
3996 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
3997 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
3998
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003999- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4000 level.
4001
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004002- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4003 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4004 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4005 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4006 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4007
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004008- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4009 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4010 code.
4011
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004012- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4013 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4014 adjusting for negative indices.
4015
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004016- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4017 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4018 object.
4019
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004020- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4021 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4022 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4023
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004024- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4025 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004026
4027- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4028
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004029- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4030 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4031 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4032 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4033
4034- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4035
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004036- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004037
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004038- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004039 without going through the buffer API.
4040
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004041- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004042
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004043- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4044 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4045 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4046 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4047
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004048- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4049 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4050
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004051- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004052 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4053
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004054New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004055-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004056
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004057- OpenVMS is now supported.
4058
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004059- AtheOS is now supported.
4060
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004061- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4062
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004063- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4064
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004065Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004066-----
4067
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004068- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4069 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4070 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004071
4072Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004073-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004074
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004075- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4076 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4077 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4078 bugs.
4079 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004080 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004081 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4082 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004083 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004084
4085- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004086 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004087
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004088- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4089 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4090
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004091- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4092 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004093 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004094 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4095
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004096- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4097 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4098 use files" uninstall option).
4099
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004100- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4101
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004102- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4103 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4104
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004105- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4106 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4107 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4108
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004109- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4110 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4111 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4112 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4113 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004114 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4115 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4116 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004117
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004118- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004119 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004120 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4121 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4122 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4123 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4124 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4125 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4126 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4127 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4128 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4129 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4130 work around.
4131
4132- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4133 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4134 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4135 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4136 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4137 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4138 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4139 specified with O_CREAT too).
4140
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004141Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004142----
4143
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004144- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004145
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004146- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4147 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4148 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4149
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004150- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4151 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4152 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4153
4154- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4155 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4156 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4157 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4158 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4159 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4160 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4161 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004162
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004163- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4164 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4165 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004166
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004167- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4168 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4169 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4170 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4171 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004172
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004173- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4174 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4175 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004176
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004177- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4178 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004179
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004180- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4181 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4182 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4183 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4184 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004185
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004186- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4187 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4188 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4189
4190- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4191 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4192 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004193
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004194- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4195 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4196 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4197 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004198 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004199
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004200- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4201 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004202
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004203- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4204 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004205
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004206- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004207 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004208 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4209 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004210
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004211
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004212What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004213===============================
4214
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004215*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4216
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004217Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004218--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004219
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004220- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4221 with a custom metaclass.
4222
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004223Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004224-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004225
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004226- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4227 are proxies.
4228
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004229Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004230-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004231
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004232- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4233 very short strings.
4234
4235- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4236 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4237 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4238 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4239 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4240
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004241Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004242-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004243
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004244- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4245 close or delete time).
4246
4247- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4248 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4249
4250- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4251
4252- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004253 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004254
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004255Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004256-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004257
4258Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004259-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004260
4261C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004262-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004263
4264New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004265-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004266
4267Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004268-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004269
4270Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004271-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004272
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004273- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4274
4275- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4276 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4277
4278- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4279 deleted at process exit time.
4280
4281- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4282 in backslash.
4283
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004284Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004285----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004286
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004287- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4288 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4289 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4290
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004291
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004292What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004293===========================
4294
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004295*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4296
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004297Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004298--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004299
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004300- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4301 been extensively updated. See
4302
4303 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4304
4305 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4306
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004307- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4308 deleted!
4309
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004310- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4311 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4312 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4313 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4314 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4315
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004316- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4317
4318 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4319 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4320
4321 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4322 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4323 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4324 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4325 supported anyway.
4326
4327 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4328 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4329
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004330- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4331 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4332 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4333 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4334 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004335
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004336- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4337 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4338 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4339
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004340Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004341-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004342
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004343- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4344 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4345 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4346 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4347 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4348 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004349 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4350 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4351 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4352 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004353
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004354- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4355 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4356 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4357
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004358Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004359-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004360
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004361- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4362
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004363Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004364-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004365
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004366- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4367 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4368 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4369 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4370 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4371 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4372
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004373- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4374
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004375- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4376
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004377- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4378
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004379- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4380 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4381 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4382
4383- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4384
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004385Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004386-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004387
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004388- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4389 off a search on Google.
4390
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004391Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004392-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004393
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004394- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4395 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4396 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4397 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4398 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4399 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4400 other platforms should do likewise.
4401
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004402- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4403 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4404 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4405
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004406C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004407-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004408
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004409- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4410 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4411 producing key-value pairs.
4412
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004413- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004414 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004415 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4416 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4417 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4418 previously went unchallenged.
4419
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004420New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004421-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004422
4423Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004424-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004425
4426Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004427-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004428
4429Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004430----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004431
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004432- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4433 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004434
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004435- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4436 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4437 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4438 home.
4439
4440
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004441What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004442===========================
4443
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004444*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4445
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004446Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004447--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004448
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004449- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4450 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004451
4452 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004453 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004454
4455 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4456 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004457 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004458 This needs to be documented.
4459
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004460- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4461 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4462
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004463- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4464 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4465 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4466
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004467- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4468 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4469
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004470- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4471 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4472 class forbids it).
4473
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004474- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4475 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4476 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4477
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004478- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4479
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004480Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004481-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004482
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004483- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4484 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004485 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004486
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004487- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4488 (like 1 + '').
4489
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004490Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004491-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004492
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004493- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4494 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4495 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4496 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004497 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004498 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4499
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004500- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4501 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4502 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4503 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4504
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004505- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4506 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004507 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4508 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4509 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004510
4511- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4512 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004513
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004514- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4515 bytes on its input.
4516
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004517Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004518-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004519
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004520- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004521 convenience function.
4522
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004523- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4524 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4525 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004526 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4527 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4528 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4529 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4530 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4531 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004532
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004533- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4534 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4535 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4536 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4537
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004538- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4539 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4540 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4541
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004542- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4543 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4544 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4545 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4546
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004547- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4548 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004549 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004550 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4551 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4552 new -l and -e options.
4553
4554- statcache is now deprecated.
4555
4556- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4557 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004558 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004559 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4560 time properly taken into account.
4561
4562- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4563 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4564 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4565 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4566
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004567Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004568-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004569
4570Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004571-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004572
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004573- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4574 is built with libdb3 if available.
4575
4576- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4577
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004578C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004579-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004580
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004581- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4582 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4583 PySequence_Size().
4584
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004585- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4586
4587- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4588 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4589 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4590
4591- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4592 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4593
4594- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4595 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4596
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004597New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004598-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004599
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004600- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4601 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4602
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004603- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4604 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4605
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004606- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4607
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004608Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004609-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004610
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004611- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4612 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4613
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004614Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004615-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004616
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004617Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004618----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004619
4620- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4621 removed completely in the next release.
4622
4623- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4624 OSX.
4625
4626- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4627 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4628
4629- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4630
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004631
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004632What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004633===========================
4634
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004635*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4636
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004637Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004638--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004639
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004640- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004641 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004642 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004643 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4644 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004645 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4646 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004647 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4648 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004649
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004650- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4651 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4652
4653- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4654 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4655
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004656Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004657-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004658
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004659- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4660 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4661 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4662 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4663 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4664 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4665 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4666 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4667
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004668- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4669 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4670 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4671 example).
4672
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004673- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004674 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004675 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004676 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004677
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004678- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4679 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4680 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004681 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004682
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004683- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4684 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4685 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4686 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4687 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4688 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4689
4690 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4691
4692 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4693
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004694Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004695-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004696
4697- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4698
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004699- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4700
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004701- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4702 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004703
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004704- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4705 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4706 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4707 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4708 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4709 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004710 attributes.
4711
4712- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4713 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4714 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004715
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004716- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4717 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4718 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004719
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004720- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4721 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4722 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004723 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4724 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4725
4726- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4727 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004728
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004729Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004730-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004731
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004732- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4733 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4734
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004735- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4736 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4737 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4738 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4739
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004740- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4741 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4742 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4743 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4744
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004745 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4746 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4747 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4748 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4749 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4750 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4751 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4752 without losing information).
4753
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004754- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004755 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4756 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4757 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4758 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4759 module).
4760
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004761 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004762 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4763 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4764 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4765 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004766
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004767- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004768 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4769 encoding.
4770
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004771- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4772 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4773
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004774- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004775 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4776
4777- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4778 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4779 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4780 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4781
4782- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4783
4784- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4785 ON, and OFF.
4786
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004787- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4788 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4789
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004790Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004791-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004792
4793- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4794 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4795 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004796
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004797- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4798 been added: -X and -E.
4799
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004800Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004801-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004802
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004803- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4804 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4805
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004806C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004807-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004808
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004809- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4810 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4811 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4812 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4813 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4814
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004815- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4816 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4817 as long) arguments.
4818
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004819- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4820 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4821 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4822 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4823 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4824 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4825
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004826- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4827 input.
4828
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004829New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004830-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004831
4832Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004833-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004834
4835Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004836-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004837
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004838- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4839 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4840 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4841
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004842- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4843 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4844 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004845 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004846
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004847 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4848 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4849 import signal
4850 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004851
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004852 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004853 while 1:
4854 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004855 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004856 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4857 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4858 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4859 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004860
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004861
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004862What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4863===========================
4864
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004865*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4866
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004867Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004868--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004869
4870- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
4871 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
4872 documentation for all operations on list objects.
4873
4874- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
4875 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
4876 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
4877 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
4878 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
4879 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
4880 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004881
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004882- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004883 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004884 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4885 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4886 associate a docstring with a property.
4887
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004888- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4889 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4890 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4891 other built-in object types.
4892
4893- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4894 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4895 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4896 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4897 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4898
4899- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4900 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4901
4902- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4903 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004904 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004905 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4906 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4907 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4908 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4909 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4910
4911- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4912 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4913 class.
4914
4915- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4916 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4917 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4918 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4919
4920- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4921 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4922 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4923 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4924
4925- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4926 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4927
4928- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4929 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4930 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4931 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4932 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004933 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004934 with the same value as s.
4935
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004936- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4937
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004938Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004939----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004940
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004941- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4942
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004943- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4944 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4945 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4946 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4947 objects.
4948
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004949- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4950 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004951 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4952 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
4953
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004954- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
4955 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
4956 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
4957
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004958Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004959-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004960
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00004961- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4962 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
4963 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
4964 by the instances.
4965
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00004966- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
4967 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
4968 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
4969
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004970- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
4971 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
4972 before the entire comparison is complete.
4973
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00004974- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4975 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
4976 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
4977
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00004978- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
4979 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
4980 getwriter().
4981
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004982- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
4983 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
4984
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00004985- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004986 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
4987 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
4988
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00004989- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
4990 iterable object.
4991
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004992- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
4993 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004994
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004995- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
4996 authentication.
4997
4998- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
4999 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005000
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005001- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005002 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5003 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5004 a sample driver.)
5005
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005006Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005007-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005008
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005009- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5010 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5011 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5012 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5013 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5014 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5015 kernel has large file support.
5016
5017- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5018 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5019 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5020 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5021 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5022
5023- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5024 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5025 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5026
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005027C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005028-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005029
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005030- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5031 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5032
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005033New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005034-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005035
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005036- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5037 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5038
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005039Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005040-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005041
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005042- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5043 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5044 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5045 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5046 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5047
5048- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5049 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5050 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5051 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5052
5053- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5054 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5055
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005056Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005057-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005058
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005059- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005060 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5061 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005062
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005063
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005064What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5065===========================
5066
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005067*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5068
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005069Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005070----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005071
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005072- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5073 big to represent as a C double.
5074
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005075- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5076 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5077 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5078 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5079 restriction).
5080
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005081- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5082 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5083 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5084 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5085 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5086
5087 >>> dir([])
5088 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5089 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5090 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5091 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5092 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5093 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5094 'reverse', 'sort']
5095
5096 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5097
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005098- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005099 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5100 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5101 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5102 OverflowError exception.
5103
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005104- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005105 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005106 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5107 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5108 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5109 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5110 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005111 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005112 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5113 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5114
5115 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5116 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5117 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5118 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005119
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005120- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005121 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5122 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5123 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5124 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5125 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5126 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5127 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5128 once it is created.
5129
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005130- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5131 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5132 (key, value) pairs.
5133
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005134- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005135 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5136 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5137
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005138- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5139 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5140 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5141 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5142 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005143
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005144- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005145 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5146 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5147
5148 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5149
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005150- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005151 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5152
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005153Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005154-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005155
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005156- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005157 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5158 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005159
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005160- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5161 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5162 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5163 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5164 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5165 in this area anymore).
5166
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005167- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5168 threading.Timer.
5169
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005170- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5171 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5172
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005173- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005174 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5175
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005176- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005177 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5178 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5179 converted to Python longs.
5180
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005181- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005182 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5183
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005184- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5185 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5186 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5187
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005188Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005189-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005190
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005191- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5192 division operators as per PEP 238.
5193
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005194Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005195-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005196
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005197- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5198 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5199 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5200 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5201
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005202C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005203-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005204
5205- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005206
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005207- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5208 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005209 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005210
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005211 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5212 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005213 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005214 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005215
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005216- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005217 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5218 module:
5219
5220 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005221
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005222 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5223 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005224
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005225 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5226 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005227
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005228 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5229
5230 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5231
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005232- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005233 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5234 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5235 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005236
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005237New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005238-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005239
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005240- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5241 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5242 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5243 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5244 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005245
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005246Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005247-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005248
5249Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005250-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005251
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005252- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5253 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5254 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5255 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005256 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5257 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5258 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5259 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5260 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005261
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005262- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005263 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5264
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005265
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005266What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5267===========================
5268
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005269*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5270
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005271Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005272-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005273
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005274- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5275 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5276
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005277- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5278 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5279 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005280
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005281- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5282 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5283 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5284 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005285
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005286- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5287
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005288- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005289
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005290Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005291-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005292
5293- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005294 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005295 the module docstring for details.
5296
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005297Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005298-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005299
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005300- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005301 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5302 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5303 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005304
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005305- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5306 Nick Mathewson.
5307
5308Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005309----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005310
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005311- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5312 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5313 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5314 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5315 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5316 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5317 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5318 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5319
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005320- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5321 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5322 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5323 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5324
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005325- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5326 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5327 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5328 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5329 come a long way).
5330
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005331- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5332 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5333 write filters for these warnings).
5334
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005335- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5336 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5337 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5338 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5339 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5340
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005341- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5342 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5343 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5344 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5345 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5346 older distribution.
5347
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005348Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005349-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005350
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005351- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5352 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005353 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005354
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005355- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5356 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5357 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5358
5359- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5360
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005361- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5362
5363- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5364
5365- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5366
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005367- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005368
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005369- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5370
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005371New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005372-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005373
5374C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005375-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005376
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005377- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5378 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5379 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5380 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5381 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5382 against buffer overruns.
5383
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005384- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005385 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5386 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005387 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5388 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5389 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5390
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005391- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5392 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5393 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5394 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5395 deprecated.
5396
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005397Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005398-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005399
5400- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5401 relevant is found.
5402
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005403
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005404What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005405===========================
5406
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005407*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5408
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005409Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005410----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005411
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005412- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5413 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5414 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5415 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5416 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5417 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5418 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5419 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005420 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005421 repaired.
5422
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005423- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005424 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005425 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5426 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5427 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5428 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5429 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5430 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5431 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5432 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5433
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005434- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5435 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5436 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5437 leading BMO character).
5438
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005439- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5440 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5441 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5442
5443 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5444 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5445 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005446
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005447 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5448 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5449 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5450 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5451 for various simple to use conversions.
5452
5453 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5454 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5455
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005456 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5457 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5458 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5459 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5460 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5461 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5462 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5463 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5464 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5465 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5466 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5467 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5468 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5469 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5470 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005471
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005472- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5473 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5474 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005475 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005476 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005477
5478 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005479 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5480 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5481 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5482 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5483 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005484 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5485 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005486
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005487 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5488 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5489 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005490 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005491
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005492- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5493 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5494 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5495 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5496 floating arithmetic,
5497
5498 x = 9007199254740992.0
5499 print long(x)
5500
5501 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5502 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5503 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5504 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5505 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5506 functions are of good quality).
5507
5508 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5509 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5510 algorithms to break.
5511
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005512- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5513 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5514 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5515 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5516 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5517 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5518 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5519 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5520 order.
5521
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005522- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5523 operation along the most common code paths.
5524
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005525- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5526 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5527
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005528- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5529 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5530 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5531 {}.update(UserDict())
5532
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005533- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5534 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5535 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5536 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5537 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5538 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5539 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5540 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5541
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005542- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005543 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005544
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005545 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005546 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5547 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005548 join() method of strings
5549 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005550 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5551 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005552 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005553 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005554
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005555- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5556 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5557
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005558- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5559 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5560
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005561- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5562 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5563 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5564 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5565
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005566- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5567 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005568 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005569 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5570 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005571
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005572- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5573
5574
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005575Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005576-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005577
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005578- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005579 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005580 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5581 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5582
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005583- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5584 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5585
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005586- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5587 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5588 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5589 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5590
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005591- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5592 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5593 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5594
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005595- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5596
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005597- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5598
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005599- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5600 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5601 that are still imported into string.py).
5602
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005603- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5604
5605- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5606 Now it does.
5607
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005608- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5609
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005610- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5611 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5612 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5613 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5614 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005615 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5616 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005617
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005618- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5619 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5620 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5621 'help(object)'.
5622
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005623Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005624-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005625
5626- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005627 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005628 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5629 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5630
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005631- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005632 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5633 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005634
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005635C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005636-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005637
5638- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5639 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005640
5641----
5642
5643**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**