blob: 1fcd798ca2881f7d047426c5131212907b99c160 [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. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +000015- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
16 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
17 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
18 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
19 for a longer write-up of the problem).
20
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +000021- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
22 serializing floats.
23
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +000024- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
25 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
26 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
27
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +000028- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
29 278.
30
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +000031- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
32 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
33 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
34 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
35 to the base class has been moved the prroper nb_* magic slot and out of
36 PyNumber_*().
37 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
38
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +000039- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
40 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
41 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
42 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
43
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +000044- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
45 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
46 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
47 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
48 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
49
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +000050- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
51 disabled caused a crash.
52
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +000053- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
54 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
55
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000056- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
57 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
58
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +000059- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
60
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +000061- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +000062 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
63 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
64 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +000065
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +000066- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
67
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +000068- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
69 returning None.
70
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +000071- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
72 ('\') with a specific error message.
73
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +000074- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
75
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +000076- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
77 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
78
Martin v. Löwis13a1fde2005-01-27 18:56:16 +000079- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +000080 an ferror() call.
81
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +000082- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
83 list.sort().
84
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +000085- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
86 (2+3) --> (5).
87
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +000088- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
89
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +000090- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
91 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000092
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +000093- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
94 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
95 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
96
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000097Extension Modules
98-----------------
99
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000100- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
101
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000102- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
103 if available on the platform.
104
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000105- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
106 available on the platform.
107
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000108- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
109 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
110
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000111- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
112
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000113- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
114 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
115 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
116
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000117- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
118
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000119- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
120 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
121
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000122- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
123 file size.
124
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000125- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
126
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000127- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
128 {remove_history,replace_history}
129
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000130- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
131 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000132
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000133- stat_float_times is now True.
134
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000135- array.array objects are now picklable.
136
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000137- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
138 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
139
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000140- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
141 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
142 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
143
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000144- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
145 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000146
147Library
148-------
149
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000150- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
151 Bug #1224621.
152
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000153- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
154 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
155 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
156 terminates by raising StopIteration.
157
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000158- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
159
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000160- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
161 component of the path.
162
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000163- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
164 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
165 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
166 class at all.
167
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000168- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
169 files to PyPI.
170
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000171- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
172 them to PyPI.
173
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000174- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
175 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
176 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
177 work as expected.
178
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000179- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
180 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
181
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000182- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
183 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
184
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000185- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
186
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000187- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
188 to build.
189
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000190- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
191 symbolic links on Windows.
192
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000193- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
194 profile.py if available.
195
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000196- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
197
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000198- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
199 in LWPCookieJar.
200
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000201- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
202
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000203- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
204
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000205- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
206
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000207- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
208
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000209- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
210
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000211- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
212
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000213- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
214
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000215- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
216
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000217- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
218 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
219 be exploited in various ways.
220
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000221- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
222
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000223- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
224
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000225- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
226
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000227- Enhancements to the csv module:
228
229 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
230 reflecting it's capabilities, and improving it's compliance with
231 PEP 305.
232 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
233 reporting.
234 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
235 dictates.
236 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000237 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000238 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000239 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
240 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000241 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
242 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000243 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000244 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
245 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
246 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
247 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
248 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
249 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
250 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
251 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
252 without first creating a dialect class.
253 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
254 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
255 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000256 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000257 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
258 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000259 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
260 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
261 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
262 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000263 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
264 This has been fixed.
265
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000266- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
267 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
268 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
269 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
270
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000271- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
272
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000273- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
274 (Bug #951915).
275
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000276- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
277 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
278 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
279 encoding alias table
280
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000281- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
282
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000283- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
284 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
285
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000286- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
287
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000288- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
289
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000290- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
291
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000292- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
293
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000294- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
295
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000296- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
297 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
298 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
299
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000300- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000301 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000302
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000303- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
304 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
305 tokenizer with very long source lines.
306
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000307- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
308 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
309
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000310- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
311 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000312
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000313- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
314 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
315
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000316- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
317 correctly.
318
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000319- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
320 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
321 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
322 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
323 between two lines.
324
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000325
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000326Build
327-----
328
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000329- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
330 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
331 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000332 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000333
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000334- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
335 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
336 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
337
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000338- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
339
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000340- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
341 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
342
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000343- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
344 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
345 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
346 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
347 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
348 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
349 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
350 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
351
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000352- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
353 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
354 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
355 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
356
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000357
358C API
359-----
360
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000361- Removed PyRange_New().
362
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000363
364Tests
365-----
366
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000367- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000368
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000369
370Documentation
371-------------
372
373- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
374 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
375 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
376
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000377Mac
378---
379
380
381
382Tools/Demos
383-----------
384
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000385- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000386
387
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000388What's New in Python 2.4 final?
389===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000390
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000391*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000392
393Core and builtins
394-----------------
395
396- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
397 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
398 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
399
400
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000401What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
402==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000403
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000404*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000405
406Core and builtins
407-----------------
408
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000409- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
410 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
411 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
412
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000413
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000414Library
415-------
416
417- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
418 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
419 raised is re-raised.
420
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000421- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
422 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
423
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000424- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
425 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
426 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
427 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
428 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
429 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
430 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
431 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
432 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
433 by the slice are recomputed now.
434
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000435- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000436
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000437Build
438-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000439
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000440- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
441 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
442 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000443
444C API
445-----
446
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000447- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
448
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000449
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000450What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
451================================
452
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000453*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000454
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000455License
456-------
457
458The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
459is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
460changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
461Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
462intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
463durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
464the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
465License::
466
467 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
468
469says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
470to Python 2.1.1.
471
472The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
473License Version 2.
474
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000475Core and builtins
476-----------------
477
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000478- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
479 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
480 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
481 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
482 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
483 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
484 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
485 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
486 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
487 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
488
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000489- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000490
491Extension Modules
492-----------------
493
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000494- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
495 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
496 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
497 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000498
499Library
500-------
501
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000502- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
503 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
504 returned.
505
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000506- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
507
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000508- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
509 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
510
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000511- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
512
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000513- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
514 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000515
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000516- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
517
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000518- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
519
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000520- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000521 the source code is updated and reloaded.
522
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000523Build
524-----
525
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000526- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000527
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000528What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
529================================
530
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000531*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000532
533Core and builtins
534-----------------
535
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000536- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000537 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
538
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000539- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
540 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
541 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
542 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
543
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000544- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
545 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
546
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000547- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
548 constant.
549
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000550- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
551 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
552 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
553 large), and to anomalies such as
554 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
555 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
556 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
557 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000558
559Extension modules
560-----------------
561
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000562- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
563 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000564 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
565 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
566 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000567
568Library
569-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000570
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000571- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000572 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000573 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
574 --swig-cpp.
575
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000576- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
577 it is set.
578
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000579- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000580
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000581- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
582 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
583 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
584 Closes bug #1039270.
585
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000586- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000587
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000588 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000589 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
590 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
591 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
592 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
593 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
594 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
595 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
596 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
597 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
598 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
599 + Updates to documentation.
600
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000601- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
602 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
603 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
604 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
605
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000606- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000607
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000608- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
609 applications should use the getmember function.
610
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000611- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
612
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000613- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
614 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
615 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
616 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
617 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
618 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
619 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
620 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
621 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
622
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000623- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
624 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000625 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000626
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000627- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
628 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
629 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
630 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
631 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
632 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
633 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
634 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000635
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000636- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
637 the new public features (of which there are many).
638
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000639- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000640 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
641 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
642 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
643 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000644 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000645
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000646- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
647
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000648- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
649 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
650 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
651 options.
652
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000653- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
654 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
655 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
656 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
657 conditions under which non-string values work.
658
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000659Build
660-----
661
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000662- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
663 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
664 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
665
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000666- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
667 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
668 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
669 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
670 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000671
672C API
673-----
674
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000675- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
676 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
677
678- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
679
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000680- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
681 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
682 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
683 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
684 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
685 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
686 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
687 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
688 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
689
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000690- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
691
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000692- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
693 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
694 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000695
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000696Tests
697-----
698
699- test__locale ported to unittest
700
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000701Mac
702---
703
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000704- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
705 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
706 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000707
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000708Tools/Demos
709-----------
710
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000711- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
712 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
713 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
714 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
715 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000716
717
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000718What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
719=================================
720
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000721*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000722
723Core and builtins
724-----------------
725
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000726- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000727 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
728
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000729- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
730 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
731 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
732 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
733 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
734 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
735 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
736 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000737 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
738 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
739 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
740 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
741 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000742
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000743- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
744 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
745 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
746 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
747 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
748
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000749- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
750
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000751- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
752 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
753
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000754- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
755 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
756 modified the list.
757
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000758- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
759 functions is now writable.
760
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000761- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
762 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
763 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
764 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
765
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000766- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
767 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
768 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
769 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
770 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000771
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000772- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
773 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
774
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000775Extension modules
776-----------------
777
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000778- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
779
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000780- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
781 data.
782
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000783- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
784 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
785 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
786 supposed to have been truncated away.
787
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000788- Added socket.socketpair().
789
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000790- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
791 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
792
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000793- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000794 versions of Python, have now been removed.
795
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000796Library
797-------
798
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000799- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000800 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000801
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000802- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
803 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
804
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000805- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
806 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
807
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000808- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
809
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000810- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
811 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000812
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000813- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
814 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
815
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000816- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
817
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000818- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
819
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000820- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
821
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000822- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
823 Percivall.
824
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000825- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
826 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
827
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000828- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
829 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
830 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000831 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000832
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000833- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
834 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
835 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
836 and exponent.
837
838- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
839
840- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
841 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatability and atexit
842 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
843
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000844- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
845 to the readline module.
846
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000847- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000848 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
849 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000850
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000851- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
852 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
853 contains symlinks.
854
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000855- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
856 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
857
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000858- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
859 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
860 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
861
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000862- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
863 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
864 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
865 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
866 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
867 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
868 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
869 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
870 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
871 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
872 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
873 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
874 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
875
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000876- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
877
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000878Tools/Demos
879-----------
880
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000881- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
882 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
883
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000884- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
885
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000886Build
887-----
888
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000889- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
890 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
891 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
892 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
893 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
894 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
895 plans to do so.
896
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +0000897- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
898 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
899
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +0000900- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
901 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
902
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000903- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
904 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
905
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +0000906- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
907 GNU/k*BSD systems.
908
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +0000909- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
910 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
911
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000912C API
913-----
914
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000915..
916
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000917Documentation
918-------------
919
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +0000920- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
921 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
922
923- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
924 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
925 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +0000926
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000927New platforms
928-------------
929
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +0000930- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
931
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000932Tests
933-----
934
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000935..
936
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000937Windows
938-------
939
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +0000940- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
941 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
942 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
943 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
944 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
945 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
946 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
947 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
948 the problem.
949
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000950Mac
951---
952
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000953..
954
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000955
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000956What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
957=================================
958
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000959*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000960
961Core and builtins
962-----------------
963
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +0000964- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
965 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
966 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
967 sensitive code.
968
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000969- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000970 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000971
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000972 @staticmethod
973 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000974
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000975 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000976
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000977- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
978 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
979 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
980 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
981 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
982 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
983 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
984 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
985 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
986 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
987 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
988
989 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
990 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
991 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
992 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
993 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
994 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
995 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
996
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +0000997- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
998 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
999
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001000- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001001 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001002
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001003- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001004 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001005 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1006
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001007- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001008 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1009 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1010
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001011- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1012 types that support garbage collection.
1013
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001014- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1015
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001016- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1017 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1018 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1019 Jython.
1020
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001021- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1022
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001023- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1024 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1025
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001026- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1027 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1028 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001029
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001030- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1031 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1032 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1033
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001034Extension modules
1035-----------------
1036
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001037- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1038
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001039Library
1040-------
1041
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001042- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1043 TIS-620
1044
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001045- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1046 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1047 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1048 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1049 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1050 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1051 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1052 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1053 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1054 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1055
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001056- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1057
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001058- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1059 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1060 same as when the argument is omitted).
1061 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1062
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001063- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1064
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001065- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1066 schemes are offered.
1067
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001068- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1069
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001070- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1071 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1072 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1073
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001074- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1075
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001076- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1077 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1078
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001079- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1080 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1081 when dummy_threading is being used.
1082
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001083- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1084 from a tarfile.
1085
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001086- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001087 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001088
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001089- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1090 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1091 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1092 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1093
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001094- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1095 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1096
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001097- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1098 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1099 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1100 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1101 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1102 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1103 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1104 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1105 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1106 by some other method in progress).
1107
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001108- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1109 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1110 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001111
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001112- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1113
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001114- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1115 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1116 AM Kuchling.
1117
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001118- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1119 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1120 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1121
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001122- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1123 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1124 instead of unsigned.
1125
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001126- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001127 no longer part of the public API.
1128
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001129- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1130 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1131 string methods of the same name).
1132
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001133- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001134 SF patch 945642.
1135
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001136- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1137
1138 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1139
1140 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1141 DocTestSuites.
1142
1143- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1144 that provide thread-local data.
1145
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001146- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1147 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1148
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001149- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1150
1151- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1152 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1153 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1154
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001155- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1156
1157 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1158 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1159 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001160
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001161 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1162 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1163 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1164 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1165
1166 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1167 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1168
1169 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1170 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1171 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1172 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1173
1174 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1175 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1176 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1177 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1178 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1179
1180 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1181 wrapping help output.
1182
1183 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1184 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1185 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001186
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001187C API
1188-----
1189
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001190- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1191 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1192 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1193 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1194 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1195 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1196 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1197 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1198 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1199 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1200 its visible semantics have not changed.
1201
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001202- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1203 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1204
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001205Documentation
1206-------------
1207
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001208- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001209
1210 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001211 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001212
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001213 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001214
1215 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1216
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001217- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001218
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001219Tests
1220-----
1221
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001222- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001223 platforms that use the Makefile.
1224
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001225- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1226 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1227 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1228
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001229
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001230What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1231=================================
1232
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001233*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001234
1235Core and builtins
1236-----------------
1237
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001238- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1239 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1240 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1241 objects now (one object instead of three).
1242
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001243- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1244 Windows DLLs.
1245
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001246- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1247 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001248
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001249- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1250 a new .pyc magic.
1251
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001252- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1253 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1254 be there.
1255
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001256- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1257 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1258 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1259
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001260- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1261 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1262 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1263
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001264- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1265
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001266- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1267 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1268 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001269
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001270- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1271 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1272
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001273- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1274
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001275- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001276 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001277
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001278- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1279
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001280- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1281
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001282- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1283 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1284
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001285- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1286 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1287 Fixes bug #858016 .
1288
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001289- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1290 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1291 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1292
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001293- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1294 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1295 improves their performance (about 35%).
1296
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001297- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1298 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1299 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1300
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001301- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1302 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1303 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1304 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1305
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001306- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1307 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001308 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001309 length is not known).
1310
1311- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1312 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001313 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1314 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001315 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1316
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001317- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1318 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1319
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001320- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1321 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1322 keyword arguments.
1323
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001324- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1325 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1326 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1327
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001328- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1329 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1330 cases.
1331
1332- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1333 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1334 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1335 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1336 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1337 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1338 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1339 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1340 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1341 a release build.
1342
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001343- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1344 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1345
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001346- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001347 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001348
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001349- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1350 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1351 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1352 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1353 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1354 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1355 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1356 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1357 destroyed.
1358
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001359- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1360 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1361 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1362 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1363 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1364 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1365 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1366 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1367
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001368- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1369 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1370 character other than a space.
1371
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001372- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1373 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1374 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1375 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1376 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1377 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1378 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1379 attributes with the same name.
1380
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001381- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1382 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1383 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1384 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1385 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1386 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1387 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1388 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1389 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1390 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1391 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1392 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1393 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1394 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001395
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001396- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1397 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1398 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1399 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1400 This has been repaired.
1401
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001402- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1403
1404- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1405
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001406- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1407 over a sequence.
1408
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001409- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001410 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001411
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001412- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1413
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001414- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1415 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1416 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1417 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1418 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1419 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1420 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1421 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1422
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001423- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1424 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1425 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1426
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001427- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1428 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1429 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1430 freelist.
1431
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001432- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1433 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1434
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001435- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1436 number.
1437
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001438- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1439 a TypeError exception.
1440
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001441- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1442 820195.
1443
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001444- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1445 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1446 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1447
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001448- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001449 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1450 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001451
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001452- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1453 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1454 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1455
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001456- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1457 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001458 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001459
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001460- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001461 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1462 the first call.
1463
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001464
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001465Extension modules
1466-----------------
1467
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001468- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1469 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1470
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001471- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1472 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1473 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1474 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1475 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1476 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1477 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001478
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001479- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1480
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001481- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1482
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001483- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1484 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1485
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001486- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1487 fewer false positives.
1488
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001489- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1490 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1491
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001492- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001493 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1494
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001495- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001496 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001497 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001498 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1499 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001500
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001501- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1502 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1503 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1504 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1505
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001506- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1507 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1508 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1509 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1510 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1511 #897625.
1512
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001513- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1514 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1515
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001516- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1517 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1518 and pops on either side of the deque.
1519
1520- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1521 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1522
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001523- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1524 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1525 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1526 other functions that expect a function argument.
1527
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001528- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1529
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001530- os.getsid was added.
1531
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001532- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1533 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1534 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1535
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001536- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1537
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001538- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1539
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001540- readline.clear_history was added.
1541
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001542- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1543
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001544- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1545
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001546- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1547
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001548- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1549
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001550- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1551
1552- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1553
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001554- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1555
1556- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1557
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001558- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1559 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1560 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1561
1562- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1563 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1564 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1565 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1566 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1567 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1568 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1569
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001570- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1571 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1572 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1573 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001574
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001575- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001576 iterators from a single iterable.
1577
1578- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1579 of raising a TypeError exception.
1580
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001581- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1582 as parameter.
1583
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001584Library
1585-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001586
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001587- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1588 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1589 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001590
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001591- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1592 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1593 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001594
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001595- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001596
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001597- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1598 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001599
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001600- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1601 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1602
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001603- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1604
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001605- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001606 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001607
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001608- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001609 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001610
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001611- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1612
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001613- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1614 on cygwin and mingw32.
1615
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001616- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1617
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001618- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1619 module.
1620
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001621- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1622 installation scheme for all platforms.
1623
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001624- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001625 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001626
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001627- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1628 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1629 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1630
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001631- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1632 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1633 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1634
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001635- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1636
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001637- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1638
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001639- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1640 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1641
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001642- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1643 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1644 type pattern with the same value exists.
1645
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001646- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1647 when run from the command prompt).
1648
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001649- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1650 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1651
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001652- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1653 default sort).
1654
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001655- Added global runctx function to profile module
1656
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001657- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1658
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001659- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1660
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001661- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1662
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001663- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001664 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1665 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1666 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1667 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1668 accordingly.
1669
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001670- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1671 decoding standards.
1672
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001673- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1674 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1675 called for all requests.
1676
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001677- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1678 they are passed to the compiler.
1679
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001680- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1681 indent, width and depth.
1682
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001683- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1684 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1685
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001686- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1687 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1688
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001689- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1690
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001691- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1692
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001693- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1694
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001695- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1696 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1697
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001698- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001699 for better performance.
1700
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001701- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001702
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001703- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1704 a string).
1705
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001706- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1707
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001708- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1709
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001710- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1711
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001712- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1713
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001714- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1715 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1716 list of fieldnames.
1717
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001718- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1719 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1720
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001721- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1722
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001723- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1724 empty lists.
1725
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001726- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1727 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1728 and shelves.
1729
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001730- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1731 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1732
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001733- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001734 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1735 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001736
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001737- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1738 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001739 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001740
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001741- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001742 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1743 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1744
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001745- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1746 and removed in Py2.4.
1747
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001748- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1749
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001750- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1751
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001752Tools/Demos
1753-----------
1754
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001755- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1756 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1757
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001758- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1759
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001760- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1761 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1762 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1763 destination in situations where both files are given.
1764
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001765- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1766 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1767 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1768 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1769
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001770- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1771
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001772- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1773 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1774 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1775 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1776 now.
1777
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001778- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1779 in effect
1780
1781- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1782 C-c C-h
1783
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001784- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1785 -d option was given.
1786
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001787Build
1788-----
1789
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001790- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1791 build under OS X.
1792
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001793- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1794 --enable-profiling.
1795
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001796- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1797 is configured --with-tsc.
1798
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001799- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1800 on AMD64.
1801
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001802- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1803 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1804
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001805- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1806 removed.
1807
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001808- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1809 supported (see PEP 11).
1810
1811- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1812
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001813- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1814
1815- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1816 (see PEP 11).
1817
1818- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1819 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1820
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001821C API
1822-----
1823
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001824- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1825 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1826 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1827
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001828- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1829 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1830 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1831 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1832
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001833- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1834 generator objects.
1835
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001836- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1837 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001838 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1839 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001840
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001841- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1842 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1843
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001844- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1845 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1846 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1847 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1848 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1849
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001850- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1851 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1852 about 10% faster.
1853
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001854- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1855 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1856
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001857- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1858 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1859 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1860 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1861
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001862Windows
1863-------
1864
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001865- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1866 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1867 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1868 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1869
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001870- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1871 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1872 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1873
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001874
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001875What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1876===============================
1877
1878*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1879
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001880IDLE
1881----
1882
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001883- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1884 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1885 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1886 context-menu actions.
1887
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001888- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1889 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1890 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1891 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1892 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1893 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1894 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
1895 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
1896 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
1897
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001898
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001899What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
1900=============================================
1901
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00001902*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001903
1904Core and builtins
1905-----------------
1906
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001907- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001908 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001909 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1910
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001911Extension modules
1912-----------------
1913
1914- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1915 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1916 than once. This has been fixed.
1917
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001918- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1919 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1920 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1921 call.
1922
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001923- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1924
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001925Library
1926-------
1927
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001928- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1929 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1930
1931- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1932 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1933 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1934 restored.
1935
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001936IDLE
1937----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001938
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001939- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001940
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001941Build
1942-----
1943
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001944- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1945 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1946
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001947C API
1948-----
1949
1950Windows
1951-------
1952
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001953- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1954 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1955
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001956- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1957
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001958Mac
1959---
1960
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001961- Various fixes to pimp.
1962
1963- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1964
1965- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1966 more problems than it solves.
1967
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001968
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001969What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1970=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001971
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001972*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1973
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001974Core and builtins
1975-----------------
1976
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001977- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1978 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1979
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001980- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
1981 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001982 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001983
1984- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
1985 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
1986 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001987 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001988
1989- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
1990 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001991
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001992- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
1993 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
1994 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
1995
1996- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001997 770247.
1998
1999- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002000
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002001Extension modules
2002-----------------
2003
2004- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2005 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2006
2007- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2008
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002009- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2010
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002011- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2012 contained within the _strptime module.
2013
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002014- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2015 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2016
2017- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002018 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2019
2020- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2021 the find_class attribute, if present.
2022
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002023- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002024
2025 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2026 (SF bug 763298).
2027
2028 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002029 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2030 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2031 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002032
2033 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2034
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002035Library
2036-------
2037
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002038- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2039
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002040- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2041 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2042 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2043 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2044 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2045 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2046 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2047 or Tester().
2048
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002049- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2050 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2051 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2052 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2053 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2054 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2055 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2056 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2057 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002058
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002059 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002060
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002061- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2062 weren't before was an oversight.
2063
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002064- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2065 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2066
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002067- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2068 when there are no lines.
2069
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002070- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2071 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2072
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002073- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2074 to child processes.
2075
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002076- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2077
2078- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2079
2080- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2081 xmlrpclib.
2082
2083- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2084 responses.
2085
2086- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2087 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2088
2089- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2090 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2091 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2092
2093- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2094 used as patterns.
2095
2096- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2097 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2098 than Tk 8.3.
2099
2100- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2101
2102- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002103
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002104Tools/Demos
2105-----------
2106
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002107- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2108
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002109- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2110
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002111- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002112
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002113Build
2114-----
2115
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002116- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2117
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002118- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2119
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002120- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2121 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002122
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002123- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2124 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2125 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002126
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002127C API
2128-----
2129
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002130- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2131 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2132
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002133Windows
2134-------
2135
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002136- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2137 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2138 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2139 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2140 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2141 Python exception ::
2142
2143 thread.error: can't start new thread
2144
2145 is raised now.
2146
2147- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2148 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2149 instead of from DLL teardown.
2150
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002151Mac
2152---
2153
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002154- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002155 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002156 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2157 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2158 the executable in the bundle.
2159
2160- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002161
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002162- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2163
2164- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2165 on Panther.
2166
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002167What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2168================================
2169
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002170*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002171
2172Core and builtins
2173-----------------
2174
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002175- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2176 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2177 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2178 with the -i option.
2179
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002180- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2181 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2182
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002183- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2184 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2185
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002186- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2187 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2188 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2189 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2190 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2191 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2192 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2193 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2194 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2195 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2196 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2197 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2198 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002199
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002200- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2201 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2202 embedded in a lambda expression.
2203
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002204- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2205 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2206 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2207 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2208 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2209
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002210- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2211 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2212 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2213
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002214- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2215 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2216
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002217- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2218 It's writable again.
2219
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002220- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2221 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2222 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002223 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002224
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002225- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2226 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2227 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2228
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002229Extension modules
2230-----------------
2231
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002232- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2233 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2234
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002235- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2236 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2237 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2238 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2239
2240- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2241 collection.
2242
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002243- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2244 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2245 unique within a single program run.
2246
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002247- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2248 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2249
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002250- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2251 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2252
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002253- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2254 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002255
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002256- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2257
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002258- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2259 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2260
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002261- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2262 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2263 for many BSD-derived systems.
2264
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002265
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002266Library
2267-------
2268
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002269- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2270 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2271 primary ones:
2272
2273 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2274 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2275 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2276
2277 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2278 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2279 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2280 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2281 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2282 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2283
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002284- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2285 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2286 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2287 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2288 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2289 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2290 argument.
2291
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002292- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2293 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2294 in the archive.
2295
2296- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2297 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2298
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002299- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2300 569574).
2301
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002302- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2303 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2304 no more.
2305
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002306- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2307 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2308 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2309 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2310 code coverage.
2311
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002312- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2313 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2314 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002315 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2316 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002317
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002318- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2319 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2320 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002321 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002322
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002323- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2324
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002325- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2326 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2327 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2328 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2329
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002330- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2331 handling.
2332
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002333- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2334 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2335
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002336- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2337 in socket.py.
2338
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002339- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2340
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002341- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2342 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2343 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2344 opener with proxy support.
2345
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002346- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2347
2348- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2349
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002350Tools/Demos
2351-----------
2352
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002353- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2354
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002355- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2356
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002357- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2358 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002359
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002360- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2361 files.
2362
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002363Build
2364-----
2365
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002366- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002367 different root directory.
2368
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002369C API
2370-----
2371
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002372- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2373 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2374 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2375 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2376 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2377 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2378 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2379 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2380 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2381 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2382
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002383- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2384 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2385 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2386 from Python.
2387
2388
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002389New platforms
2390-------------
2391
2392None this time.
2393
2394Tests
2395-----
2396
2397- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2398 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2399
2400Windows
2401-------
2402
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002403- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2404
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002405- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2406 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2407 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2408 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2409 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2410 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2411 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2412 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2413 that's what it's for.
2414
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002415Mac
2416---
2417
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002418- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2419 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2420 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2421 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002422- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2423 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2424- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002425
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002426SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2427------------------------------------
2428
2429430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2430598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2431622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2432661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2433683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2434697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2435713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2436724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2437727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2438729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2439730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2440731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2441732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2442733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2443735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2444740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2445744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2446745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2447747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2448749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2449751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2450753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2451755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2452757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2453760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2454
2455
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002456What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2457================================
2458
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002459*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002460
2461Core and builtins
2462-----------------
2463
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002464- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2465 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2466
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002467- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2468 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2469 and cannot be strings).
2470
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002471- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2472 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2473 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2474 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2475
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002476- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2477 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2478 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2479 Python itself.
2480
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002481- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2482 the referenced object, if it has one.
2483
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002484- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2485 the thread started at
2486 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2487
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002488- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2489 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2490 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2491 placed on a list index.
2492
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002493- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2494 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2495 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2496 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2497
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002498- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2499 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2500 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2501 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2502 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2503 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2504 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2505
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002506- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2507 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2508 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2509 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2510 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2511
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002512- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2513 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002514
2515- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2516 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2517 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2518 #693195.)
2519
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002520- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2521 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002522
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002523- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002524 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002525 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2526 interpreter executions, would fail.
2527
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002528- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002529 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002530 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002531
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002532Extension modules
2533-----------------
2534
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002535- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2536 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2537 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2538 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2539
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002540- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2541 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2542
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002543- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2544 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2545 and Greg Chapman.)
2546
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002547- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2548 recursively.
2549
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002550- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002551 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2552 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2553 leaks.
2554
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002555- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2556
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002557- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2558 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2559 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2560 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2561 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2562 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2563 #705836.
2564
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002565- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002566 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2567
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002568- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2569 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2570 See SF bug #692416.
2571
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002572- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2573 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2574
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002575- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2576 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2577 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002578
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002579- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002580 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2581 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2582
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002583- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2584 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2585 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2586 timeouts to work properly.
2587
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002588Library
2589-------
2590
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002591- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2592 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2593 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2594 future release.
2595
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002596- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2597 for querying platform dependent features.
2598
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002599- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002600
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002601- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2602 pickle protocol versions.
2603
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002604- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2605 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2606 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2607
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002608- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2609
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002610- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2611 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2612 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2613 modules.
2614
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002615- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2616 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2617 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2618
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002619- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2620 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2621
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002622- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2623 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2624 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2625
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002626- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002627 MS Office extensions.
2628
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002629- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2630 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2631
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002632- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2633 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2634
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002635- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2636 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2637 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2638 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2639 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2640 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2641
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002642- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2643 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2644 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002645
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002646- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2647 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2648 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2649
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002650- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2651
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002652- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2653 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2654 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2655
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002656Tools/Demos
2657-----------
2658
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002659- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2660 See the module docstring for details.
2661
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002662Build
2663-----
2664
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002665- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2666 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002667
2668C API
2669-----
2670
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002671- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2672
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002673- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2674 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2675 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2676
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002677- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2678 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002679
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002680 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2681 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2682 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002683
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002684- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002685 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2686
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002687- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2688 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2689 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002690
2691New platforms
2692-------------
2693
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002694None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002695
2696Tests
2697-----
2698
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002699- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2700 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002701
2702Windows
2703-------
2704
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002705- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2706 function.
2707
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002708- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2709 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002710
2711Mac
2712---
2713
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002714- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2715 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002716
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002717- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2718 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002719
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002720- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2721 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2722 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002723
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002724- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002725 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2726 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002727
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002728- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2729 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002730
2731
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002732What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2733=================================
2734
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002735*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002736
2737Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002738-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002739
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002740- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2741 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2742 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2743
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002744- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2745 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2746 (SF patch #664376.)
2747
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002748- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2749 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2750 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2751 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2752 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2753 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002754 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002755
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002756- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2757 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2758 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2759 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002760 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002761
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002762- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2763 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2764 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2765 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2766 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2767 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2768 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2769 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2770 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2771 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2772 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2773
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002774- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2775 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2776 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2777 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2778 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2779 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2780
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002781- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2782 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2783
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002784- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2785 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2786 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2787 case.)
2788
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002789- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2790 passed as unicode strings.
2791
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002792- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2793 See SF bug #683467.
2794
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002795- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2796 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2797
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002798- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2799
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002800- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2801
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002802- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2803 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2804 arguments.
2805
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002806- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2807 See SF bug #667147.
2808
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002809- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002810 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002811 See SF bug #676155.
2812
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002813- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002814 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002815 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2816 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2817 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2818 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2819 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2820 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002821
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002822Extension modules
2823-----------------
2824
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002825- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2826 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2827 tp_as_number pointer.
2828
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002829- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2830 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2831 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2832 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2833 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2834
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002835- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2836
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002837- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2838
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002839- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002840 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002841 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2842 patch #678531.)
2843
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002844- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2845 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2846
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002847- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2848 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2849
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002850- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2851
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002852- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2853 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2854 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2855
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002856- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2857
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002858- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2859 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2860
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002861- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002862
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002863- datetime changes:
2864
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002865 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2866
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002867 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2868 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2869 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2870 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2871 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2872 now.
2873
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002874 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002875 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2876 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002877
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002878 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002879 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002880 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2881 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2882 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2883 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002884
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002885 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2886 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2887 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002888 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2889
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002890 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2891 by a later example coded by Guido.
2892
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002893 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002894 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
2895 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
2896 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002897 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
2898 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
2899
2900 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
2901 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
2902 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
2903 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
2904 tzinfo subclass instance.
2905
2906 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
2907 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
2908 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2909 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2910 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2911 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2912 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2913 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002914
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002915 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2916 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2917 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2918 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2919 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002920 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2921
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002922 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002923
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002924 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2925 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2926 as a naive datetime object.
2927
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002928 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2929 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2930 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2931
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002932 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2933 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2934 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2935 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2936 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2937 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2938 comparison.
2939
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002940 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2941 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2942 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2943 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002944 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002945
2946 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002947
2948 and ::
2949
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002950 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2951
2952 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2953 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2954 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2955 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2956
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002957 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2958 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2959 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2960 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2961 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2962
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002963 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2964 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002965 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2966 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002967
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002968Library
2969-------
2970
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002971- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2972 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2973
2974- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2975 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2976 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2977 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2978 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2979 See PEP 307 for details.
2980
2981- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
2982 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
2983
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002984- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
2985 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002986 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002987 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
2988 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002989 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002990
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00002991- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
2992 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
2993
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002994- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
2995 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
2996 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
2997
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00002998- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
2999
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003000- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3001 exception.
3002
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003003- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3004 class.
3005
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003006- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3007 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3008 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3009
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003010- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3011 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3012
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003013- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003014 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3015 See SF bug #659228.
3016
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003017- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3018 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3019 See SF patch #651082.
3020
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003021- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003022
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003023- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3024 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3025
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003026- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003027 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003028
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003029- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3030 DOS paths from other platforms.
3031
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003032Tools/Demos
3033-----------
3034
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003035- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3036 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3037 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3038 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3039 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3040 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3041 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3042 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3043 example:
3044
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003045 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3046 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003047
3048 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3049
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003050
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003051Build
3052-----
3053
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003054- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3055 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3056 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003057 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3058
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003059 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3060
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003061- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3062 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3063 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3064 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3065 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3066 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3067 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3068 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3069 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3070
3071- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3072 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3073 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3074 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3075
3076- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3077 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3078
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003079C API
3080-----
3081
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003082- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3083 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003084
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003085- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3086 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3087 tp_as_number pointer.
3088
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003089- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3090 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3091 (SF #681367)
3092
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003093- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3094 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3095 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3096 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003097
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003098Tests
3099-----
3100
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003101- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003102 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3103 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3104 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3105 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3106 pydoc.)
3107
3108- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3109
3110- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003111
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003112Windows
3113-------
3114
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003115- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3116 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3117 time).
3118
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003119- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3120 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3121
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003122- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3123 release without strong cryptography.
3124
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003125- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003126 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003127
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003128- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3129 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3130
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003131Mac
3132---
3133
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003134- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3135 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003136
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003137- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3138 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3139 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003140
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003141- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3142 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003143
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003144- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3145 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3146 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3147 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003148
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003149- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003150 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3151 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3152 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003153
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003154
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003155What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003156=================================
3157
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003158*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003159
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003160Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003161--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003162
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003163- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3164
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003165- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3166 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003167 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003168 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003169 a different meaning than before.
3170
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003171- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003172 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003173 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003174
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003175- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003176 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003177 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003178
3179- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3180 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3181 and deallocation.
3182
3183- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3184 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3185
3186- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3187 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3188 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3189 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3190 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3191
3192- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3193 now detected by the garbage collector.
3194
3195- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3196 [SF bug 519621]
3197
3198- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3199 identifier.
3200
3201- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3202 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3203 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3204 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3205 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3206 [SF bug 563060]
3207
3208- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3209 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3210 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3211 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3212 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3213
3214- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3215 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3216 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3217
3218- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3219
3220- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3221 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3222 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3223 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3224 state of the slots would be lost.)
3225
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003226Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003227-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003228
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003229- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003230 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3231 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3232 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3233 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003234 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3235 Jython 2.1.
3236
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003237- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003238 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003239 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3240 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3241 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3242 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3243 these, see PEP 302.
3244
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003245- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3246 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3247 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3248
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003249- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3250 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3251 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3252
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003253- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3254 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3255 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3256
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003257- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3258 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3259 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3260 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3261 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3262 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3263 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3264 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3265 releases or implementations.
3266
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003267- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003268 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3269 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003270
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003271- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3272 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3273
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003274- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3275 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3276 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3277
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003278- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3279 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3280
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003281- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3282 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003283 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3284 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003285
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003286- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3287 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3288 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3289 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3290 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3291
3292 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3293 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3294 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3295 pattern.
3296
3297 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3298 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3299 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3300 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3301
3302 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3303 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3304 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3305 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3306 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3307 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3308
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003309- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3310 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3311 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3312 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3313 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3314 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3315 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3316 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003317
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003318- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3319 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3320 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3321 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3322 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003323 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3324 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3325 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3326 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3327 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3328 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3329 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003330
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003331- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3332 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3333
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003334- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3335 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3336 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3337 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3338 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3339 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3340 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3341 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3342 to Zack Weinberg!
3343
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003344- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3345 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3346 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3347 type. This has been fixed now.
3348
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003349- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3350 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3351 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3352
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003353- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3354 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3355 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3356 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3357 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3358 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3359 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3360 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003361 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003362
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003363- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3364 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3365 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003366
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003367- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3368 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3369 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3370 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3371 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3372 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3373 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3374 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003375 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003376 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3377 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3378
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003379- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3380 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3381 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3382 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3383 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3384 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3385 this.)
3386
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003387- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3388 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003389 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003390 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003391 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3392 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003393 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3394 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003395
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003396- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3397 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3398 currently running.
3399
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003400- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3401 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3402 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3403 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3404
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003405- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3406 as directory names.
3407
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003408- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3409 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3410
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003411- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3412 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3413
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003414- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003415 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3416 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003417
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003418- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3419 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3420 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3421 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3422 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3423
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003424- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3425 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3426 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3427 removed.
3428
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003429- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3430 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3431 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3432
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003433- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3434 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3435 to __debug__.
3436
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003437- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3438 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3439 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3440
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003441- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3442 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3443 deprecated now.
3444
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003445- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3446 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3447 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003448
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003449- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3450 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3451 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3452 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3453 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003454
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003455- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3456 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3457
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003458- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3459 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3460 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003461 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003462 is backward compatible.
3463
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003464- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3465 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3466 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3467 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3468 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3469
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003470- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3471 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3472 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3473 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3474 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3475 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003476
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003477- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3478 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3479
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003480- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3481 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3482
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003483- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3484 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3485 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3486 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3487 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3488
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003489- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3490 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3491 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3492
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003493- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003494 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3495
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003496- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3497 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3498 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003499
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003500- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3501 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3502
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003503- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3504 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3505 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3506
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003507- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3508
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003509Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003510-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003511
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003512- Added three operators to the operator module:
3513 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3514 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3515 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3516
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003517- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3518
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003519- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3520 archives.
3521
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003522- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3523 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3524 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3525
3526 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3527
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003528- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3529 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3530 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003531 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003532
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003533- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3534 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3535 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3536 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003537 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3538 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3539 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3540 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003541
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003542- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3543 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003544
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003545- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3546
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003547- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3548 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3549
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003550- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3551 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3552 supported.
3553
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003554- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3555
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003556- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3557 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003558
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003559- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3560 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3561
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003562- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3563
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003564- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3565 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3566
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003567- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3568 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3569 functions but callable type objects.
3570
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003571- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003572 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003573 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003574
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003575- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3576 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003577
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003578- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3579 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003580
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003581- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3582 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3583 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3584 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3585
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003586- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3587 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003588
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003589- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3590 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3591 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3592 and __imul__.
3593
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003594- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003595 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3596 is called.
3597
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003598- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3599 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3600 interpreter was compiled.
3601
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003602- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3603 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3604 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003605 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003606 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3607 1, not 2.
3608
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003609- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3610 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3611 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3612 limit.
3613
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003614- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3615 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3616 bug #623464.
3617
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003618- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3619 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3620 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3621 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3622
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003623Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003624-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003625
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003626- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3627
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003628- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3629 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3630 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3631 with Python 2.3a2.
3632
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003633- os.path exposes getctime.
3634
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003635- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003636 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003637 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003638 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003639 unit tests of floating point results.
3640
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003641- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3642 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3643 has been increased.
3644
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003645- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3646 executed.
3647
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003648- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3649 postinstallation script.
3650
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003651- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3652 test the current module.
3653
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003654- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003655 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3656 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3657 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3658 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3659
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003660- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003661 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003662 Ward's Optik package.
3663
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003664- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3665 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3666 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3667 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3668
3669- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3670 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003671 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003672
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003673- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3674 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3675 shelf are binary pickles.
3676
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003677- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3678 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3679
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003680- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3681 modules are iterators now.
3682
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003683- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3684 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3685 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3686 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3687 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3688 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003689
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003690- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3691 with their entity value.
3692
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003693- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3694
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003695- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3696 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003697
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003698- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3699 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003700 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003701
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003702- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3703 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3704 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3705 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3706 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3707 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3708 main():
3709
3710 import locale
3711 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3712
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003713- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3714 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3715
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003716- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3717 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3718 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3719 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3720 to the new standard.
3721
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003722- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3723 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3724 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3725 an extension to the database.
3726
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003727- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3728 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3729 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3730 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003731 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003732
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003733- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003734 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003735
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003736- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3737 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3738 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3739 bounded integers.
3740
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003741- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3742 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3743 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3744 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3745 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3746 in existence.
3747
3748 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3749 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3750 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3751 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3752 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3753 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3754
3755 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3756 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3757 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3758 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3759
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003760- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3761 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3762 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3763
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003764- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3765
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003766- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3767 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3768 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3769 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3770
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003771- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3772 argument.
3773
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003774- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3775 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3776 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3777 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3778 [SF patch 560794].
3779
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003780- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3781 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3782 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003783 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3784 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3785 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003786
3787- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3788 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003789
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003790- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3791 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3792 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3793 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003794
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003795- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3796 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3797 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3798 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3799 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3800
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003801- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003802
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003803- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3804
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003805- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3806 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3807 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3808 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3809 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3810 identical to None.
3811
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003812- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3813 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3814 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3815 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3816 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3817 results now.
3818
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003819- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3820 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3821
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003822- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3823 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3824 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3825 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3826 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3827 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3828 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3829 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3830
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003831- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3832
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003833- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3834 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3835
3836- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3837 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3838 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3839 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3840 and other systems.
3841
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003842- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3843 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3844 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3845 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 +00003846 work well with these.
3847
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003848- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3849
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003850- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003851 connections.
3852
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003853- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3854 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3855 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3856
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003857- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3858 sets
3859
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003860- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3861 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3862 name.
3863
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003864- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3865 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3866 passed in.
3867
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003868- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003869 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003870 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3871 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003872
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003873- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3874
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003875- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3876
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003877- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3878 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3879 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3880
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003881- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3882 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3883 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3884 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003885 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003886
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003887- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003888 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003889 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003890
3891- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3892 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3893 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3894
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003895- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00003896 the value of its expression argument.
3897
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003898- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
3899 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
3900 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
3901
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00003902- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
3903 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
3904 skipstone browser was included.
3905
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00003906- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
3907 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
3908
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003909Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003910-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003911
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003912- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3913 names in addition to accepting file names.
3914
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003915- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3916 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3917 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3918 still used and useful.)
3919
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003920- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3921 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3922 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3923 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003924
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003925- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3926 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3927 the generated binary.
3928
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003929Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003930-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003931
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003932- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3933
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003934- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3935 except in the hands of experts.
3936
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003937- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003938 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3939 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3940 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003941
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003942- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3943 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3944 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3945 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3946 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3947 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3948 builds.
3949
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003950- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3951 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3952 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3953 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3954 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3955 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3956 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3957 new type.
3958
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003959- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003960
3961 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3962 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3963 positive infinities.
3964
3965 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3966 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3967 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3968 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3969 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3970 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3971 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3972
3973 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3974
3975 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3976
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003977- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3978 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3979 size of the executable.
3980
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003981- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
3982 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
3983 configure script. On other platforms, remove
3984 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00003985
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00003986- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
3987
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00003988- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
3989 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
3990 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00003991
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00003992- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
3993 well as Unix.
3994
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00003995- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
3996 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
3997 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
3998 modules in the README file for details.
3999
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004000C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004001-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004002
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004003- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4004 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004005 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004006 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004007 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004008
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004009- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4010 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4011 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4012 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4013 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4014 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004015 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004016 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4017 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4018 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4019 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4020 aligned.)
4021
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004022- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4023 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4024 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4025
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004026- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4027 level.
4028
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004029- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4030 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4031 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4032 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4033 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4034
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004035- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4036 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4037 code.
4038
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004039- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4040 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4041 adjusting for negative indices.
4042
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004043- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4044 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4045 object.
4046
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004047- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4048 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4049 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4050
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004051- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4052 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004053
4054- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4055
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004056- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4057 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4058 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4059 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4060
4061- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4062
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004063- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004064
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004065- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004066 without going through the buffer API.
4067
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004068- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004069
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004070- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4071 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4072 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4073 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4074
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004075- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4076 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4077
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004078- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004079 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4080
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004081New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004082-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004083
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004084- OpenVMS is now supported.
4085
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004086- AtheOS is now supported.
4087
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004088- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4089
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004090- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4091
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004092Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004093-----
4094
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004095- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4096 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4097 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004098
4099Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004100-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004101
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004102- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4103 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4104 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4105 bugs.
4106 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004107 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004108 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4109 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004110 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004111
4112- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004113 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004114
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004115- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4116 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4117
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004118- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4119 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004120 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004121 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4122
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004123- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4124 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4125 use files" uninstall option).
4126
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004127- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4128
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004129- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4130 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4131
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004132- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4133 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4134 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4135
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004136- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4137 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4138 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4139 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4140 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004141 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4142 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4143 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004144
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004145- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004146 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004147 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4148 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4149 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4150 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4151 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4152 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4153 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4154 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4155 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4156 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4157 work around.
4158
4159- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4160 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4161 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4162 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4163 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4164 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4165 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4166 specified with O_CREAT too).
4167
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004168Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004169----
4170
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004171- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004172
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004173- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4174 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4175 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4176
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004177- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4178 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4179 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4180
4181- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4182 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4183 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4184 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4185 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4186 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4187 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4188 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004189
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004190- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4191 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4192 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004193
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004194- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4195 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4196 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4197 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4198 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004199
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004200- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4201 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4202 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004203
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004204- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4205 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004206
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004207- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4208 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4209 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4210 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4211 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004212
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004213- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4214 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4215 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4216
4217- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4218 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4219 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004220
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004221- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4222 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4223 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4224 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004225 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004226
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004227- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4228 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004229
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004230- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4231 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004232
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004233- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004234 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004235 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4236 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004237
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004238
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004239What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004240===============================
4241
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004242*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4243
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004244Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004245--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004246
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004247- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4248 with a custom metaclass.
4249
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004250Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004251-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004252
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004253- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4254 are proxies.
4255
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004256Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004257-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004258
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004259- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4260 very short strings.
4261
4262- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4263 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4264 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4265 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4266 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4267
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004268Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004269-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004270
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004271- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4272 close or delete time).
4273
4274- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4275 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4276
4277- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4278
4279- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004280 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004281
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004282Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004283-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004284
4285Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004286-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004287
4288C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004289-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004290
4291New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004292-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004293
4294Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004295-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004296
4297Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004298-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004299
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004300- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4301
4302- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4303 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4304
4305- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4306 deleted at process exit time.
4307
4308- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4309 in backslash.
4310
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004311Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004312----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004313
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004314- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4315 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4316 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4317
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004318
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004319What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004320===========================
4321
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004322*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4323
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004324Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004325--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004326
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004327- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4328 been extensively updated. See
4329
4330 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4331
4332 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4333
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004334- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4335 deleted!
4336
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004337- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4338 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4339 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4340 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4341 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4342
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004343- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4344
4345 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4346 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4347
4348 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4349 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4350 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4351 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4352 supported anyway.
4353
4354 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4355 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4356
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004357- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4358 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4359 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4360 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4361 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004362
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004363- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4364 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4365 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4366
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004367Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004368-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004369
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004370- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4371 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4372 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4373 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4374 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4375 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004376 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4377 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4378 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4379 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004380
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004381- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4382 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4383 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4384
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004385Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004386-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004387
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004388- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4389
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004390Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004391-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004392
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004393- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4394 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4395 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4396 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4397 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4398 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4399
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004400- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4401
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004402- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4403
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004404- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4405
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004406- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4407 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4408 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4409
4410- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4411
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004412Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004413-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004414
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004415- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4416 off a search on Google.
4417
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004418Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004419-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004420
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004421- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4422 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4423 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4424 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4425 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4426 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4427 other platforms should do likewise.
4428
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004429- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4430 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4431 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4432
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004433C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004434-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004435
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004436- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4437 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4438 producing key-value pairs.
4439
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004440- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004441 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004442 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4443 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4444 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4445 previously went unchallenged.
4446
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004447New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004448-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004449
4450Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004451-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004452
4453Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004454-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004455
4456Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004457----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004458
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004459- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4460 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004461
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004462- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4463 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4464 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4465 home.
4466
4467
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004468What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004469===========================
4470
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004471*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4472
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004473Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004474--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004475
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004476- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4477 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004478
4479 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004480 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004481
4482 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4483 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004484 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004485 This needs to be documented.
4486
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004487- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4488 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4489
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004490- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4491 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4492 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4493
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004494- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4495 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4496
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004497- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4498 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4499 class forbids it).
4500
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004501- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4502 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4503 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4504
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004505- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4506
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004507Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004508-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004509
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004510- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4511 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004512 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004513
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004514- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4515 (like 1 + '').
4516
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004517Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004518-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004519
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004520- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4521 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4522 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4523 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004524 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004525 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4526
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004527- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4528 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4529 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4530 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4531
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004532- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4533 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004534 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4535 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4536 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004537
4538- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4539 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004540
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004541- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4542 bytes on its input.
4543
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004544Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004545-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004546
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004547- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004548 convenience function.
4549
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004550- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4551 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4552 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004553 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4554 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4555 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4556 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4557 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4558 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004559
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004560- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4561 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4562 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4563 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4564
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004565- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4566 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4567 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4568
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004569- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4570 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4571 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4572 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4573
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004574- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4575 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004576 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004577 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4578 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4579 new -l and -e options.
4580
4581- statcache is now deprecated.
4582
4583- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4584 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004585 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004586 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4587 time properly taken into account.
4588
4589- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4590 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4591 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4592 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4593
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004594Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004595-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004596
4597Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004598-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004599
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004600- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4601 is built with libdb3 if available.
4602
4603- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4604
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004605C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004606-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004607
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004608- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4609 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4610 PySequence_Size().
4611
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004612- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4613
4614- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4615 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4616 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4617
4618- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4619 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4620
4621- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4622 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4623
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004624New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004625-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004626
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004627- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4628 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4629
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004630- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4631 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4632
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004633- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4634
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004635Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004636-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004637
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004638- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4639 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4640
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004641Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004642-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004643
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004644Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004645----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004646
4647- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4648 removed completely in the next release.
4649
4650- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4651 OSX.
4652
4653- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4654 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4655
4656- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4657
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004658
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004659What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004660===========================
4661
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004662*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4663
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004664Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004665--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004666
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004667- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004668 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004669 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004670 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4671 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004672 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4673 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004674 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4675 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004676
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004677- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4678 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4679
4680- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4681 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4682
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004683Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004684-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004685
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004686- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4687 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4688 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4689 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4690 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4691 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4692 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4693 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4694
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004695- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4696 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4697 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4698 example).
4699
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004700- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004701 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004702 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004703 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004704
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004705- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4706 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4707 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004708 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004709
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004710- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4711 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4712 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4713 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4714 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4715 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4716
4717 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4718
4719 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4720
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004721Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004722-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004723
4724- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4725
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004726- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4727
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004728- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4729 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004730
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004731- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4732 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4733 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4734 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4735 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4736 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004737 attributes.
4738
4739- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4740 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4741 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004742
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004743- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4744 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4745 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004746
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004747- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4748 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4749 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004750 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4751 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4752
4753- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4754 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004755
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004756Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004757-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004758
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004759- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4760 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4761
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004762- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4763 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4764 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4765 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4766
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004767- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4768 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4769 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4770 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4771
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004772 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4773 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4774 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4775 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4776 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4777 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4778 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4779 without losing information).
4780
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004781- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004782 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4783 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4784 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4785 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4786 module).
4787
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004788 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004789 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4790 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4791 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4792 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004793
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004794- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004795 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4796 encoding.
4797
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004798- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4799 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4800
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004801- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004802 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4803
4804- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4805 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4806 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4807 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4808
4809- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4810
4811- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4812 ON, and OFF.
4813
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004814- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4815 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4816
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004817Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004818-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004819
4820- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4821 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4822 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004823
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004824- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4825 been added: -X and -E.
4826
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004827Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004828-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004829
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004830- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4831 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4832
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004833C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004834-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004835
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004836- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4837 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4838 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4839 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4840 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4841
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004842- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4843 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4844 as long) arguments.
4845
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004846- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4847 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4848 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4849 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4850 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4851 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4852
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004853- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4854 input.
4855
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004856New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004857-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004858
4859Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004860-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004861
4862Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004863-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004864
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004865- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4866 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4867 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4868
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004869- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4870 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4871 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004872 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004873
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004874 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4875 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4876 import signal
4877 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004878
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004879 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004880 while 1:
4881 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004882 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004883 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4884 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4885 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4886 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004887
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004888
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004889What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4890===========================
4891
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004892*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4893
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004894Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004895--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004896
4897- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
4898 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
4899 documentation for all operations on list objects.
4900
4901- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
4902 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
4903 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
4904 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
4905 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
4906 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
4907 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004908
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004909- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004910 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004911 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4912 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4913 associate a docstring with a property.
4914
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004915- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4916 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4917 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4918 other built-in object types.
4919
4920- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4921 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4922 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4923 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4924 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4925
4926- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4927 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4928
4929- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4930 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004931 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004932 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4933 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4934 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4935 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4936 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4937
4938- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4939 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4940 class.
4941
4942- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4943 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4944 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4945 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4946
4947- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4948 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4949 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4950 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4951
4952- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4953 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4954
4955- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4956 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4957 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4958 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4959 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004960 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004961 with the same value as s.
4962
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004963- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4964
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004965Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004966----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004967
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004968- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4969
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004970- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4971 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4972 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4973 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4974 objects.
4975
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004976- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4977 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004978 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4979 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
4980
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004981- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
4982 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
4983 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
4984
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004985Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004986-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004987
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00004988- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4989 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
4990 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
4991 by the instances.
4992
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00004993- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
4994 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
4995 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
4996
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004997- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
4998 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
4999 before the entire comparison is complete.
5000
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005001- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5002 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5003 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5004
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005005- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5006 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5007 getwriter().
5008
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005009- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5010 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5011
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005012- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005013 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5014 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5015
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005016- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5017 iterable object.
5018
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005019- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5020 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005021
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005022- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5023 authentication.
5024
5025- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5026 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005027
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005028- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005029 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5030 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5031 a sample driver.)
5032
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005033Build
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- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5037 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5038 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5039 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5040 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5041 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5042 kernel has large file support.
5043
5044- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5045 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5046 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5047 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5048 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5049
5050- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5051 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5052 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5053
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005054C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005055-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005056
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005057- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5058 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5059
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005060New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005061-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005062
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005063- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5064 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5065
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005066Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005067-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005068
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005069- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5070 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5071 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5072 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5073 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5074
5075- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5076 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5077 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5078 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5079
5080- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5081 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5082
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005083Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005084-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005085
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005086- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005087 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5088 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005089
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005090
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005091What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5092===========================
5093
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005094*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5095
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005096Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005097----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005098
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005099- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5100 big to represent as a C double.
5101
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005102- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5103 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5104 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5105 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5106 restriction).
5107
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005108- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5109 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5110 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5111 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5112 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5113
5114 >>> dir([])
5115 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5116 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5117 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5118 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5119 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5120 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5121 'reverse', 'sort']
5122
5123 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5124
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005125- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005126 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5127 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5128 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5129 OverflowError exception.
5130
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005131- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005132 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005133 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5134 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5135 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5136 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5137 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005138 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005139 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5140 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5141
5142 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5143 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5144 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5145 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005146
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005147- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005148 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5149 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5150 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5151 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5152 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5153 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5154 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5155 once it is created.
5156
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005157- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5158 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5159 (key, value) pairs.
5160
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005161- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005162 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5163 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5164
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005165- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5166 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5167 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5168 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5169 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005170
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005171- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005172 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5173 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5174
5175 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5176
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005177- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005178 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5179
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005180Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005181-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005182
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005183- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005184 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5185 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005186
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005187- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5188 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5189 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5190 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5191 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5192 in this area anymore).
5193
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005194- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5195 threading.Timer.
5196
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005197- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5198 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5199
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005200- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005201 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5202
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005203- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005204 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5205 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5206 converted to Python longs.
5207
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005208- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005209 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5210
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005211- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5212 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5213 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5214
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005215Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005216-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005217
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005218- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5219 division operators as per PEP 238.
5220
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005221Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005222-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005223
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005224- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5225 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5226 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5227 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5228
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005229C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005230-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005231
5232- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005233
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005234- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5235 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005236 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005237
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005238 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5239 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005240 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005241 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005242
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005243- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005244 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5245 module:
5246
5247 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005248
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005249 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5250 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005251
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005252 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5253 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005254
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005255 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5256
5257 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5258
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005259- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005260 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5261 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5262 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005263
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005264New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005265-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005266
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005267- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5268 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5269 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5270 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5271 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005272
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005273Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005274-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005275
5276Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005277-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005278
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005279- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5280 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5281 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5282 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005283 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5284 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5285 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5286 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5287 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005288
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005289- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005290 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5291
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005292
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005293What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5294===========================
5295
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005296*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5297
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005298Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005299-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005300
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005301- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5302 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5303
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005304- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5305 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5306 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005307
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005308- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5309 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5310 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5311 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005312
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005313- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5314
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005315- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005316
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005317Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005318-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005319
5320- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005321 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005322 the module docstring for details.
5323
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005324Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005325-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005326
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005327- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005328 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5329 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5330 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005331
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005332- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5333 Nick Mathewson.
5334
5335Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005336----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005337
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005338- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5339 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5340 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5341 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5342 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5343 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5344 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5345 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5346
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005347- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5348 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5349 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5350 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5351
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005352- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5353 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5354 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5355 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5356 come a long way).
5357
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005358- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5359 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5360 write filters for these warnings).
5361
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005362- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5363 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5364 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5365 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5366 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5367
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005368- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5369 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5370 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5371 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5372 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5373 older distribution.
5374
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005375Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005376-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005377
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005378- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5379 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005380 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005381
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005382- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5383 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5384 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5385
5386- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5387
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005388- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5389
5390- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5391
5392- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5393
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005394- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005395
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005396- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5397
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005398New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005399-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005400
5401C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005402-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005403
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005404- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5405 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5406 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5407 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5408 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5409 against buffer overruns.
5410
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005411- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005412 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5413 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005414 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5415 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5416 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5417
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005418- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5419 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5420 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5421 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5422 deprecated.
5423
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005424Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005425-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005426
5427- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5428 relevant is found.
5429
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005430
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005431What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005432===========================
5433
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005434*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5435
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005436Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005437----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005438
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005439- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5440 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5441 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5442 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5443 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5444 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5445 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5446 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005447 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005448 repaired.
5449
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005450- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005451 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005452 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5453 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5454 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5455 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5456 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5457 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5458 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5459 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5460
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005461- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5462 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5463 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5464 leading BMO character).
5465
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005466- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5467 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5468 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5469
5470 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5471 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5472 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005473
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005474 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5475 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5476 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5477 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5478 for various simple to use conversions.
5479
5480 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5481 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5482
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005483 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5484 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5485 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5486 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5487 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5488 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5489 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5490 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5491 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5492 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5493 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5494 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5495 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5496 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5497 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005498
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005499- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5500 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5501 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005502 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005503 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005504
5505 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005506 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5507 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5508 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5509 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5510 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005511 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5512 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005513
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005514 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5515 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5516 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005517 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005518
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005519- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5520 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5521 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5522 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5523 floating arithmetic,
5524
5525 x = 9007199254740992.0
5526 print long(x)
5527
5528 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5529 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5530 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5531 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5532 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5533 functions are of good quality).
5534
5535 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5536 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5537 algorithms to break.
5538
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005539- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5540 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5541 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5542 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5543 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5544 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5545 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5546 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5547 order.
5548
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005549- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5550 operation along the most common code paths.
5551
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005552- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5553 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5554
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005555- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5556 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5557 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5558 {}.update(UserDict())
5559
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005560- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5561 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5562 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5563 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5564 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5565 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5566 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5567 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5568
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005569- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005570 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005571
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005572 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005573 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5574 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005575 join() method of strings
5576 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005577 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5578 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005579 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005580 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005581
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005582- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5583 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5584
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005585- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5586 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5587
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005588- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5589 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5590 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5591 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5592
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005593- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5594 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005595 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005596 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5597 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005598
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005599- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5600
5601
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005602Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005603-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005604
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005605- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005606 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005607 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5608 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5609
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005610- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5611 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5612
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005613- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5614 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5615 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5616 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5617
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005618- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5619 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5620 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5621
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005622- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5623
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005624- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5625
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005626- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5627 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5628 that are still imported into string.py).
5629
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005630- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5631
5632- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5633 Now it does.
5634
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005635- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5636
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005637- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5638 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5639 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5640 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5641 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005642 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5643 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005644
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005645- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5646 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5647 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5648 'help(object)'.
5649
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005650Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005651-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005652
5653- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005654 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005655 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5656 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5657
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005658- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005659 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5660 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005661
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005662C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005663-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005664
5665- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5666 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005667
5668----
5669
5670**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**