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Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Skip Montanaro4a385832002-09-20 17:08:52 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00007What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
10*Release date: DD-MMM-YYYY*
11
12Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +000015- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
16
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +000017- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
18 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
19 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
20 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
21 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
22 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
23 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
24 records with equal keys is unchanged).
25
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +000026- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
27 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
28 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
29
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +000030- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
31 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
32 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
33 freelist.
34
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +000035- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
36 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
37
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +000038- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
39 number.
40
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +000041- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
42 a TypeError exception.
43
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +000044- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
45 820195.
46
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +000047Extension modules
48-----------------
49
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +000050- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
51
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +000052- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
53
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +000054- readline.clear_history was added.
55
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +000056- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
57
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +000058- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
59
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +000060- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
61
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +000062- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
63
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +000064- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
65
66- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
67
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +000068- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
69
70- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
71
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +000072Library
73-------
74
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +000075- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
76
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +000077- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
78
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +000079- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
80 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
81 list of fieldnames.
82
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +000083- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
84 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
85
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +000086- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
87
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +000088- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
89 empty lists.
90
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +000091- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
92 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
93 and shelves.
94
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +000095- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
96 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
97
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +000098- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +000099 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
100 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +0000101
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +0000102- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
103 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
104 allow any iterable. Also the Set.update() has been deprecated because
105 it duplicates Set.union_update().
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +0000106
Raymond Hettinger3081d592003-08-09 18:30:57 +0000107- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
108 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
109 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
110
Raymond Hettinger2f726e92003-10-05 09:09:15 +0000111- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
112 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
113 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
114 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
115 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
116 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
117 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
118
Raymond Hettingerb5a42082003-08-08 05:10:41 +0000119- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
120 of raising a TypeError exception.
121
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +0000122- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +0000123 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
124 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
125
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +0000126- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
127 and removed in Py2.4.
128
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000129Tools/Demos
130-----------
131
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +0000132- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
133 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
134 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
135 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
136
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +0000137- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
138
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +0000139- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
140 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
141 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
142 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
143 now.
144
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000145- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
146 in effect
147
148- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
149 C-c C-h
150
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +0000151- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
152 -d option was given.
153
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000154Build
155-----
156
157C API
158-----
159
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +0000160- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
161 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
162
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +0000163- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
164 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
165 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
166 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
167
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000168New platforms
169-------------
170
171Tests
172-----
173
174Windows
175-------
176
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +0000177- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
178 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
179 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
180
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000181Mac
182----
183
184
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000185What's New in Python 2.3 final?
186===============================
187
188*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
189
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000190IDLE
191----
192
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +0000193- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
194 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
195 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
196 context-menu actions.
197
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000198- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
199 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
200 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
201 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
202 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
203 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
204 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
205 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
206 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
207
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000208
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000209What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
210=============================================
211
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +0000212*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000213
214Core and builtins
215-----------------
216
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +0000217- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000218 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +0000219 comment at the end are still unsupported.
220
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000221Extension modules
222-----------------
223
224- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
225 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
226 than once. This has been fixed.
227
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +0000228- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
229 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
230 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
231 call.
232
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000233- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
234
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000235Library
236-------
237
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000238- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
239 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
240
241- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
242 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
243 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
244 restored.
245
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +0000246IDLE
247----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000248
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +0000249- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000250
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000251Build
252-----
253
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000254- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
255 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
256
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000257C API
258-----
259
260Windows
261-------
262
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +0000263- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
264 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
265
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000266- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
267
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000268Mac
269---
270
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000271- Various fixes to pimp.
272
273- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
274
275- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
276 more problems than it solves.
277
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000278
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000279What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
280=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000281
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +0000282*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
283
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000284Core and builtins
285-----------------
286
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +0000287- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
288 by sys.setcheckinterval().
289
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000290- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
291 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000292 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000293
294- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
295 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
296 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000297 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000298
299- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
300 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000301
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000302- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
303 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
304 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
305
306- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000307 770247.
308
309- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000310
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000311Extension modules
312-----------------
313
314- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
315 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
316
317- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
318
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +0000319- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
320
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +0000321- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
322 contained within the _strptime module.
323
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000324- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
325 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
326
327- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000328 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
329
330- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
331 the find_class attribute, if present.
332
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000333- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000334
335 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
336 (SF bug 763298).
337
338 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +0000339 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
340 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
341 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000342
343 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
344
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000345Library
346-------
347
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000348- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
349
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +0000350- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
351 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
352 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
353 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
354 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
355 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
356 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
357 or Tester().
358
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000359- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
360 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
361 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
362 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
363 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
364 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
365 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
366 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
367 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +0000368
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000369 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +0000370
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +0000371- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
372 weren't before was an oversight.
373
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000374- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
375 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
376
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +0000377- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
378 when there are no lines.
379
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +0000380- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
381 which could occur with Tk 8.4
382
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000383- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
384 to child processes.
385
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000386- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
387
388- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
389
390- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
391 xmlrpclib.
392
393- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
394 responses.
395
396- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
397 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
398
399- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
400 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
401 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
402
403- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
404 used as patterns.
405
406- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
407 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
408 than Tk 8.3.
409
410- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
411
412- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000413
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000414Tools/Demos
415-----------
416
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000417- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
418
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +0000419- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
420
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000421- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000422
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000423Build
424-----
425
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000426- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
427
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000428- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
429
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000430- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
431 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000432
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000433- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
434 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
435 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000436
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000437C API
438-----
439
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000440- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
441 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
442
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000443Windows
444-------
445
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000446- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
447 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
448 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
449 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
450 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
451 Python exception ::
452
453 thread.error: can't start new thread
454
455 is raised now.
456
457- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
458 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
459 instead of from DLL teardown.
460
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000461Mac
462---
463
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000464- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +0000465 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000466 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
467 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
468 the executable in the bundle.
469
470- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000471
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +0000472- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
473
474- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
475 on Panther.
476
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000477What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
478================================
479
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +0000480*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000481
482Core and builtins
483-----------------
484
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +0000485- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
486 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
487 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
488 with the -i option.
489
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +0000490- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
491 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
492
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +0000493- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
494 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
495
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +0000496- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
497 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
498 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
499 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
500 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
501 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
502 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
503 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
504 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
505 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
506 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
507 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
508 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +0000509
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000510- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
511 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
512 embedded in a lambda expression.
513
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +0000514- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
515 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
516 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
517 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
518 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
519
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000520- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
521 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
522 matches the restriction on classic classes.
523
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +0000524- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
525 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
526
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +0000527- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
528 It's writable again.
529
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +0000530- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
531 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
532 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +0000533 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +0000534
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000535- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
536 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
537 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
538
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000539Extension modules
540-----------------
541
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +0000542- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
543 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
544
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000545- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
546 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
547 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
548 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
549
550- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
551 collection.
552
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +0000553- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
554 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
555 unique within a single program run.
556
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +0000557- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
558 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
559
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +0000560- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
561 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
562
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +0000563- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
564 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +0000565
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +0000566- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
567
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +0000568- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
569 Fixes SF bug #730685.
570
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +0000571- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
572 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
573 for many BSD-derived systems.
574
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000575
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000576Library
577-------
578
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +0000579- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
580 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
581 primary ones:
582
583 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
584 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
585 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
586
587 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
588 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
589 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
590 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
591 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
592 framework features (which doctest lacks).
593
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +0000594- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
595 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
596 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
597 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
598 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
599 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
600 argument.
601
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000602- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
603 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
604 in the archive.
605
606- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
607 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
608
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +0000609- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
610 569574).
611
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +0000612- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
613 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
614 no more.
615
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000616- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
617 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
618 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
619 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
620 code coverage.
621
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +0000622- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
623 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
624 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000625 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
626 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +0000627
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +0000628- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
629 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
630 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +0000631 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +0000632
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +0000633- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
634
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +0000635- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
636 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
637 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
638 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
639
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +0000640- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
641 handling.
642
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +0000643- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
644 __doc__ of data descriptors.
645
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +0000646- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
647 in socket.py.
648
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +0000649- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
650
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +0000651- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
652 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
653 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
654 opener with proxy support.
655
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +0000656- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
657
658- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
659
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000660Tools/Demos
661-----------
662
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +0000663- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
664
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +0000665- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
666
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +0000667- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
668 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +0000669
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +0000670- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
671 files.
672
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000673Build
674-----
675
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +0000676- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +0000677 different root directory.
678
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000679C API
680-----
681
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +0000682- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
683 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
684 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
685 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
686 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
687 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
688 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
689 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
690 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
691 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
692
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +0000693- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
694 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
695 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
696 from Python.
697
698
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000699New platforms
700-------------
701
702None this time.
703
704Tests
705-----
706
707- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
708 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
709
710Windows
711-------
712
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +0000713- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
714
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +0000715- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
716 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
717 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
718 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
719 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
720 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
721 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
722 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
723 that's what it's for.
724
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000725Mac
726---
727
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +0000728- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
729 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
730 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
731 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +0000732- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
733 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
734- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000735
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +0000736SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
737------------------------------------
738
739430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
740598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
741622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
742661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
743683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
744697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
745713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
746724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
747727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
748729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
749730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
750731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
751732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
752733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
753735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
754740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
755744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
756745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
757747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
758749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
759751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
760753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
761755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
762757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
763760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
764
765
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000766What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
767================================
768
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +0000769*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000770
771Core and builtins
772-----------------
773
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +0000774- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
775 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
776
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +0000777- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
778 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
779 and cannot be strings).
780
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +0000781- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
782 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
783 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
784 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
785
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +0000786- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
787 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
788 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
789 Python itself.
790
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +0000791- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
792 the referenced object, if it has one.
793
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +0000794- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
795 the thread started at
796 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
797
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +0000798- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
799 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
800 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
801 placed on a list index.
802
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +0000803- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
804 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
805 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
806 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
807
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +0000808- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
809 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
810 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
811 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
812 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
813 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
814 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
815
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +0000816- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
817 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
818 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
819 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
820 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
821
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +0000822- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
823 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +0000824
825- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
826 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
827 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
828 #693195.)
829
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +0000830- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
831 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000832
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +0000833- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +0000834 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +0000835 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
836 interpreter executions, would fail.
837
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +0000838- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +0000839 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +0000840 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +0000841
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000842Extension modules
843-----------------
844
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +0000845- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
846 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
847 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
848 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
849
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +0000850- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
851 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
852
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +0000853- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
854 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
855 and Greg Chapman.)
856
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +0000857- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
858 recursively.
859
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +0000860- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +0000861 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
862 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
863 leaks.
864
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +0000865- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
866
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +0000867- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
868 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
869 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
870 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
871 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
872 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
873 #705836.
874
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +0000875- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +0000876 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
877
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +0000878- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
879 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
880 See SF bug #692416.
881
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +0000882- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
883 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
884
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +0000885- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
886 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
887 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000888
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +0000889- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +0000890 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
891 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
892
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +0000893- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
894 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
895 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
896 timeouts to work properly.
897
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000898Library
899-------
900
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +0000901- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
902 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
903 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
904 future release.
905
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +0000906- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
907 for querying platform dependent features.
908
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +0000909- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +0000910
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +0000911- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
912 pickle protocol versions.
913
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +0000914- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
915 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
916 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
917
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +0000918- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
919
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +0000920- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
921 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
922 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
923 modules.
924
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +0000925- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
926 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
927 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
928
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +0000929- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
930 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
931
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +0000932- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
933 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
934 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
935
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +0000936- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +0000937 MS Office extensions.
938
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +0000939- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
940 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
941
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +0000942- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
943 execution speed of expressions and statements.
944
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +0000945- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
946 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
947 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
948 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
949 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
950 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
951
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +0000952- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
953 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
954 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000955
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +0000956- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
957 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
958 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
959
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +0000960- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
961
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +0000962- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
963 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
964 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
965
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000966Tools/Demos
967-----------
968
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +0000969- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
970 See the module docstring for details.
971
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000972Build
973-----
974
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +0000975- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
976 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000977
978C API
979-----
980
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +0000981- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
982
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +0000983- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
984 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
985 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
986
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +0000987- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
988 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +0000989
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +0000990 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
991 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
992 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +0000993
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +0000994- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +0000995 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
996
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +0000997- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
998 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
999 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001000
1001New platforms
1002-------------
1003
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00001004None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001005
1006Tests
1007-----
1008
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00001009- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
1010 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001011
1012Windows
1013-------
1014
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00001015- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
1016 function.
1017
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00001018- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
1019 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001020
1021Mac
1022---
1023
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00001024- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
1025 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00001026
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00001027- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
1028 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001029
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00001030- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
1031 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
1032 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001033
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00001034- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00001035 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
1036 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001037
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00001038- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
1039 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001040
1041
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001042What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
1043=================================
1044
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00001045*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001046
1047Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00001048-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001049
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00001050- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
1051 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
1052 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
1053
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00001054- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
1055 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
1056 (SF patch #664376.)
1057
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00001058- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
1059 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
1060 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
1061 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
1062 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
1063 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00001064 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00001065
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00001066- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
1067 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
1068 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
1069 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001070 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00001071
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00001072- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
1073 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
1074 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
1075 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
1076 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
1077 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
1078 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
1079 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
1080 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
1081 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
1082 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
1083
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00001084- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
1085 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
1086 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
1087 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
1088 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
1089 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
1090
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00001091- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
1092 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
1093
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00001094- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
1095 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
1096 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
1097 case.)
1098
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00001099- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
1100 passed as unicode strings.
1101
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00001102- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
1103 See SF bug #683467.
1104
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00001105- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
1106 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
1107
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00001108- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
1109
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00001110- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
1111
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00001112- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
1113 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
1114 arguments.
1115
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00001116- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
1117 See SF bug #667147.
1118
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00001119- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001120 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00001121 See SF bug #676155.
1122
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00001123- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00001124 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00001125 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
1126 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
1127 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
1128 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
1129 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
1130 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00001131
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001132Extension modules
1133-----------------
1134
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00001135- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
1136 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
1137 tp_as_number pointer.
1138
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00001139- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
1140 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
1141 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
1142 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
1143 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
1144
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001145- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
1146
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00001147- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
1148
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00001149- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00001150 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00001151 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
1152 patch #678531.)
1153
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00001154- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
1155 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
1156
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00001157- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
1158 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
1159
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00001160- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
1161
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00001162- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
1163 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
1164 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
1165
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001166- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
1167
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00001168- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
1169 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
1170
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001171- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001172
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001173- datetime changes:
1174
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00001175 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
1176
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00001177 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
1178 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
1179 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
1180 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
1181 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
1182 now.
1183
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001184 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001185 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
1186 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001187
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001188 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001189 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001190 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
1191 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
1192 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
1193 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001194
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00001195 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
1196 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
1197 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001198 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
1199
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00001200 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
1201 by a later example coded by Guido.
1202
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001203 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001204 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
1205 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
1206 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001207 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
1208 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
1209
1210 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
1211 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
1212 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
1213 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
1214 tzinfo subclass instance.
1215
1216 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
1217 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
1218 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
1219 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
1220 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
1221 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
1222 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
1223 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001224
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001225 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
1226 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
1227 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
1228 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
1229 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001230 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
1231
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001232 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001233
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001234 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
1235 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
1236 as a naive datetime object.
1237
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00001238 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
1239 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
1240 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
1241
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00001242 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
1243 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
1244 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
1245 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
1246 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
1247 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
1248 comparison.
1249
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001250 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
1251 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
1252 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
1253 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001254 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001255
1256 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001257
1258 and ::
1259
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001260 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
1261
1262 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
1263 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
1264 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
1265 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
1266
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00001267 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
1268 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
1269 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
1270 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
1271 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
1272
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001273 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
1274 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00001275 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
1276 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001277
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001278Library
1279-------
1280
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001281- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
1282 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
1283
1284- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
1285 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
1286 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
1287 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
1288 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
1289 See PEP 307 for details.
1290
1291- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
1292 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
1293
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00001294- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
1295 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00001296 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001297 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
1298 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00001299 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00001300
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00001301- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
1302 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
1303
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001304- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
1305 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
1306 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
1307
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00001308- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
1309
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00001310- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
1311 exception.
1312
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00001313- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
1314 class.
1315
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00001316- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
1317 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
1318 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
1319
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00001320- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
1321 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
1322
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001323- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00001324 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
1325 See SF bug #659228.
1326
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00001327- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
1328 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
1329 See SF patch #651082.
1330
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00001331- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001332
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00001333- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
1334 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
1335
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00001336- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001337 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00001338
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00001339- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
1340 DOS paths from other platforms.
1341
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001342Tools/Demos
1343-----------
1344
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00001345- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
1346 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
1347 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
1348 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
1349 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
1350 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
1351 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
1352 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
1353 example:
1354
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00001355 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
1356 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00001357
1358 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
1359
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001360
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001361Build
1362-----
1363
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00001364- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
1365 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
1366 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001367 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
1368
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00001369 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
1370
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00001371- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
1372 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
1373 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
1374 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
1375 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
1376 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
1377 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
1378 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
1379 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
1380
1381- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
1382 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
1383 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
1384 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
1385
1386- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
1387 from the Tools/scripts directory.
1388
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001389C API
1390-----
1391
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001392- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
1393 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00001394
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00001395- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
1396 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
1397 tp_as_number pointer.
1398
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00001399- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
1400 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
1401 (SF #681367)
1402
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00001403- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
1404 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
1405 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
1406 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00001407
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001408Tests
1409-----
1410
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00001411- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001412 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
1413 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
1414 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
1415 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
1416 pydoc.)
1417
1418- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
1419
1420- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001421
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001422Windows
1423-------
1424
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00001425- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
1426 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
1427 time).
1428
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00001429- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
1430 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
1431
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00001432- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
1433 release without strong cryptography.
1434
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00001435- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001436 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00001437
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00001438- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
1439 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
1440
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001441Mac
1442---
1443
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00001444- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
1445 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001446
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00001447- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
1448 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
1449 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001450
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00001451- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
1452 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001453
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00001454- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
1455 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
1456 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
1457 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001458
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00001459- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00001460 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
1461 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
1462 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001463
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001464
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001465What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001466=================================
1467
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00001468*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001469
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001470Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001471--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001472
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00001473- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
1474
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001475- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
1476 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00001477 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001478 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00001479 a different meaning than before.
1480
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00001481- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001482 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00001483 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001484
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00001485- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00001486 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00001487 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00001488
1489- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
1490 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
1491 and deallocation.
1492
1493- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
1494 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
1495
1496- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
1497 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
1498 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
1499 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
1500 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
1501
1502- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
1503 now detected by the garbage collector.
1504
1505- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
1506 [SF bug 519621]
1507
1508- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
1509 identifier.
1510
1511- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
1512 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
1513 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
1514 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
1515 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
1516 [SF bug 563060]
1517
1518- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
1519 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
1520 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
1521 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
1522 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
1523
1524- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
1525 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
1526 not called. [SF bug #537450]
1527
1528- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
1529
1530- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
1531 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
1532 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
1533 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
1534 state of the slots would be lost.)
1535
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001536Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001537-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001538
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00001539- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00001540 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
1541 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
1542 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
1543 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00001544 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
1545 Jython 2.1.
1546
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001547- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00001548 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00001549 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
1550 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
1551 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
1552 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
1553 these, see PEP 302.
1554
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00001555- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
1556 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
1557 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
1558
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00001559- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
1560 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
1561 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
1562
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00001563- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
1564 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
1565 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
1566
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00001567- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
1568 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
1569 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
1570 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
1571 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
1572 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
1573 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
1574 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
1575 releases or implementations.
1576
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00001577- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00001578 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
1579 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00001580
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00001581- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
1582 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
1583
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00001584- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
1585 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
1586 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
1587
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00001588- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
1589 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
1590
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00001591- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
1592 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00001593 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
1594 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00001595
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00001596- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
1597 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
1598 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
1599 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
1600 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
1601
1602 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
1603 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
1604 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
1605 pattern.
1606
1607 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
1608 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
1609 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
1610 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
1611
1612 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
1613 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
1614 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
1615 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
1616 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
1617 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
1618
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00001619- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
1620 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
1621 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
1622 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
1623 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
1624 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
1625 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
1626 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00001627
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00001628- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
1629 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
1630 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
1631 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
1632 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00001633 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
1634 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
1635 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
1636 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
1637 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
1638 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
1639 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00001640
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00001641- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
1642 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
1643
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00001644- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
1645 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
1646 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
1647 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
1648 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
1649 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
1650 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
1651 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
1652 to Zack Weinberg!
1653
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00001654- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
1655 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
1656 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
1657 type. This has been fixed now.
1658
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00001659- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
1660 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
1661 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
1662
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00001663- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
1664 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
1665 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
1666 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
1667 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
1668 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
1669 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
1670 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00001671 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00001672
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00001673- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
1674 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
1675 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00001676
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00001677- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
1678 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
1679 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
1680 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
1681 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
1682 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
1683 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
1684 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00001685 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00001686 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
1687 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
1688
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00001689- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
1690 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
1691 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
1692 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
1693 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
1694 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
1695 this.)
1696
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00001697- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
1698 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00001699 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00001700 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00001701 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
1702 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00001703 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
1704 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00001705
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00001706- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
1707 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
1708 currently running.
1709
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00001710- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
1711 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
1712 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
1713 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
1714
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00001715- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
1716 as directory names.
1717
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00001718- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
1719 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
1720
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00001721- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
1722 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
1723
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00001724- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00001725 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
1726 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00001727
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00001728- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
1729 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
1730 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
1731 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
1732 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
1733
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00001734- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
1735 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
1736 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
1737 removed.
1738
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00001739- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
1740 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
1741 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
1742
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00001743- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
1744 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
1745 to __debug__.
1746
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00001747- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
1748 string to the left with zeros. For example,
1749 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
1750
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00001751- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
1752 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
1753 deprecated now.
1754
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00001755- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
1756 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
1757 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00001758
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00001759- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
1760 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
1761 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
1762 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
1763 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00001764
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00001765- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
1766 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
1767
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00001768- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
1769 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
1770 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00001771 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00001772 is backward compatible.
1773
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00001774- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
1775 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
1776 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
1777 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
1778 could access a pointer to freed memory.
1779
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00001780- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
1781 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
1782 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
1783 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
1784 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
1785 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00001786
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00001787- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
1788 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
1789
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00001790- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
1791 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
1792
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00001793- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
1794 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
1795 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
1796 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
1797 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
1798
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00001799- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
1800 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
1801 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
1802
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00001803- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00001804 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
1805
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00001806- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
1807 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
1808 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00001809
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00001810- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
1811 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
1812
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00001813- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
1814 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
1815 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
1816
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00001817- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
1818
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001819Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001820-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001821
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00001822- Added three operators to the operator module:
1823 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
1824 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
1825 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
1826
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00001827- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
1828
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00001829- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
1830 archives.
1831
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00001832- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
1833 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
1834 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
1835
1836 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
1837
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00001838- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
1839 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
1840 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00001841 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00001842
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00001843- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
1844 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
1845 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
1846 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00001847 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
1848 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
1849 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
1850 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00001851
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00001852- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
1853 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00001854
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00001855- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
1856
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00001857- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
1858 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
1859
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00001860- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
1861 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
1862 supported.
1863
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00001864- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
1865
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00001866- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
1867 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00001868
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00001869- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
1870 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
1871
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00001872- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
1873
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00001874- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
1875 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
1876
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00001877- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
1878 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
1879 functions but callable type objects.
1880
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00001881- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00001882 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00001883 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00001884
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00001885- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
1886 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00001887
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00001888- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
1889 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00001890
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00001891- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
1892 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
1893 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
1894 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
1895
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00001896- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
1897 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00001898
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00001899- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
1900 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
1901 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
1902 and __imul__.
1903
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00001904- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00001905 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
1906 is called.
1907
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00001908- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
1909 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
1910 interpreter was compiled.
1911
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00001912- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
1913 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
1914 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00001915 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00001916 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
1917 1, not 2.
1918
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00001919- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
1920 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
1921 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
1922 limit.
1923
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00001924- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
1925 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
1926 bug #623464.
1927
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00001928- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
1929 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
1930 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
1931 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
1932
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001933Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001934-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001935
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00001936- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
1937
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00001938- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
1939 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
1940 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
1941 with Python 2.3a2.
1942
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00001943- os.path exposes getctime.
1944
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00001945- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001946 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00001947 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001948 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00001949 unit tests of floating point results.
1950
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00001951- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
1952 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
1953 has been increased.
1954
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00001955- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
1956 executed.
1957
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00001958- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
1959 postinstallation script.
1960
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00001961- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
1962 test the current module.
1963
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001964- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00001965 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
1966 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
1967 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
1968 this behavior needs to be controlled.
1969
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00001970- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00001971 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00001972 Ward's Optik package.
1973
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00001974- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
1975 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
1976 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
1977 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
1978
1979- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
1980 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00001981 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00001982
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00001983- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
1984 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
1985 shelf are binary pickles.
1986
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00001987- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
1988 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
1989
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00001990- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
1991 modules are iterators now.
1992
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00001993- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
1994 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
1995 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
1996 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
1997 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
1998 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00001999
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00002000- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
2001 with their entity value.
2002
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00002003- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
2004
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00002005- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
2006 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00002007
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00002008- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
2009 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00002010 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00002011
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00002012- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
2013 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
2014 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
2015 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
2016 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
2017 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
2018 main():
2019
2020 import locale
2021 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
2022
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00002023- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
2024 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
2025
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00002026- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
2027 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
2028 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
2029 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
2030 to the new standard.
2031
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00002032- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
2033 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
2034 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
2035 an extension to the database.
2036
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00002037- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
2038 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
2039 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
2040 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00002041 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00002042
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00002043- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002044 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00002045
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002046- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
2047 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
2048 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
2049 bounded integers.
2050
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00002051- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
2052 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
2053 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
2054 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
2055 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
2056 in existence.
2057
2058 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
2059 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
2060 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
2061 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
2062 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
2063 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
2064
2065 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
2066 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
2067 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
2068 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
2069
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00002070- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
2071 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
2072 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
2073
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00002074- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
2075
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00002076- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
2077 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
2078 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
2079 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
2080
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00002081- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
2082 argument.
2083
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00002084- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
2085 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
2086 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
2087 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
2088 [SF patch 560794].
2089
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00002090- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
2091 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
2092 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00002093 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
2094 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
2095 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00002096
2097- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
2098 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00002099
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00002100- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
2101 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
2102 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
2103 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00002104
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00002105- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
2106 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
2107 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
2108 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
2109 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
2110
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00002111- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00002112
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00002113- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
2114
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00002115- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
2116 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
2117 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
2118 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
2119 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
2120 identical to None.
2121
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00002122- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
2123 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
2124 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
2125 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
2126 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
2127 results now.
2128
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00002129- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
2130 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
2131
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002132- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
2133 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
2134 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
2135 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
2136 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
2137 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
2138 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
2139 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
2140
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00002141- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
2142
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00002143- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
2144 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
2145
2146- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
2147 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
2148 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
2149 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
2150 and other systems.
2151
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00002152- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
2153 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
2154 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
2155 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 +00002156 work well with these.
2157
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00002158- compileall now supports quiet operation.
2159
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002160- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00002161 connections.
2162
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00002163- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
2164 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
2165 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
2166
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00002167- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
2168 sets
2169
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00002170- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
2171 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
2172 name.
2173
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00002174- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
2175 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
2176 passed in.
2177
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002178- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00002179 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00002180 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
2181 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00002182
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00002183- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
2184
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00002185- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
2186
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00002187- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
2188 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
2189 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
2190
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00002191- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
2192 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
2193 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
2194 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00002195 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00002196
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002197- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00002198 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002199 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00002200
2201- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
2202 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
2203 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
2204
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002205- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00002206 the value of its expression argument.
2207
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00002208- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
2209 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
2210 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
2211
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00002212- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
2213 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
2214 skipstone browser was included.
2215
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00002216- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
2217 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
2218
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002219Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002220-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002221
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00002222- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
2223 names in addition to accepting file names.
2224
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00002225- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
2226 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
2227 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
2228 still used and useful.)
2229
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00002230- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
2231 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
2232 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
2233 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00002234
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00002235- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
2236 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
2237 the generated binary.
2238
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002239Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002240-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002241
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00002242- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
2243
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00002244- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
2245 except in the hands of experts.
2246
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002247- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00002248 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
2249 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
2250 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00002251
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00002252- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
2253 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
2254 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
2255 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
2256 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
2257 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
2258 builds.
2259
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00002260- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
2261 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
2262 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
2263 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
2264 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
2265 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
2266 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
2267 new type.
2268
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00002269- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00002270
2271 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
2272 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
2273 positive infinities.
2274
2275 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
2276 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
2277 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
2278 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
2279 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
2280 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
2281 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
2282
2283 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
2284
2285 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
2286
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00002287- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
2288 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
2289 size of the executable.
2290
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00002291- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
2292 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
2293 configure script. On other platforms, remove
2294 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00002295
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00002296- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
2297
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00002298- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
2299 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
2300 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00002301
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00002302- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
2303 well as Unix.
2304
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00002305- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
2306 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
2307 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
2308 modules in the README file for details.
2309
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002310C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002311-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002312
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00002313- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
2314 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00002315 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00002316 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00002317 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00002318
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002319- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
2320 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
2321 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
2322 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
2323 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
2324 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002325 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002326 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
2327 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
2328 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
2329 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
2330 aligned.)
2331
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00002332- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
2333 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
2334 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
2335
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00002336- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
2337 level.
2338
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00002339- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
2340 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
2341 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
2342 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
2343 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
2344
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00002345- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
2346 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
2347 code.
2348
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00002349- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
2350 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
2351 adjusting for negative indices.
2352
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00002353- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
2354 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
2355 object.
2356
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00002357- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
2358 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
2359 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
2360
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00002361- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
2362 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00002363
2364- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
2365
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00002366- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
2367 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
2368 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
2369 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
2370
2371- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
2372
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00002373- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00002374
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002375- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00002376 without going through the buffer API.
2377
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002378- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00002379
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00002380- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
2381 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
2382 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
2383 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
2384
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002385- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
2386 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
2387
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00002388- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00002389 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
2390
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002391New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002392-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002393
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00002394- OpenVMS is now supported.
2395
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00002396- AtheOS is now supported.
2397
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00002398- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
2399
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00002400- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
2401
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002402Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002403-----
2404
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00002405- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
2406 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
2407 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002408
2409Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002410-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002411
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002412- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
2413 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
2414 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
2415 bugs.
2416 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002417 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00002418 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
2419 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002420 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00002421
2422- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00002423 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002424
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00002425- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
2426 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
2427
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00002428- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
2429 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002430 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00002431 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
2432
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00002433- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
2434 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
2435 use files" uninstall option).
2436
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00002437- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
2438
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00002439- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
2440 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
2441
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00002442- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
2443 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
2444 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
2445
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00002446- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
2447 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
2448 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
2449 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
2450 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00002451 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
2452 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
2453 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00002454
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002455- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002456 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002457 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
2458 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
2459 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
2460 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
2461 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
2462 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
2463 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
2464 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
2465 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
2466 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
2467 work around.
2468
2469- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
2470 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
2471 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
2472 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
2473 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
2474 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
2475 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
2476 specified with O_CREAT too).
2477
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002478Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002479----
2480
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002481- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002482
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00002483- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
2484 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
2485 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
2486
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002487- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
2488 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
2489 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
2490
2491- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
2492 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
2493 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
2494 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
2495 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
2496 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
2497 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
2498 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002499
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00002500- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
2501 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
2502 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002503
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002504- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
2505 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
2506 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
2507 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
2508 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002509
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002510- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
2511 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
2512 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002513
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002514- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
2515 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002516
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002517- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
2518 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
2519 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
2520 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
2521 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002522
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002523- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
2524 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
2525 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
2526
2527- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
2528 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
2529 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002530
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002531- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
2532 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
2533 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
2534 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002535 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002536
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002537- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
2538 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002539
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002540- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
2541 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002542
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00002543- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00002544 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00002545 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
2546 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002547
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002548
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002549What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002550===============================
2551
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002552*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
2553
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002554Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002555--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002556
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002557- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
2558 with a custom metaclass.
2559
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002560Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002561-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002562
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002563- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
2564 are proxies.
2565
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002566Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002567-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002568
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002569- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
2570 very short strings.
2571
2572- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
2573 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
2574 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
2575 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
2576 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
2577
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002578Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002579-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002580
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002581- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
2582 close or delete time).
2583
2584- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
2585 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
2586
2587- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
2588
2589- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002590 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002591
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002592Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002593-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002594
2595Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002596-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002597
2598C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002599-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002600
2601New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002602-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002603
2604Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002605-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002606
2607Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002608-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002609
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002610- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
2611
2612- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
2613 instances are deleted at process exit time.
2614
2615- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
2616 deleted at process exit time.
2617
2618- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
2619 in backslash.
2620
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002621Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002622----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002623
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002624- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
2625 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
2626 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
2627
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002628
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00002629What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002630===========================
2631
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002632*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
2633
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002634Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002635--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002636
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00002637- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
2638 been extensively updated. See
2639
2640 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
2641
2642 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
2643
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00002644- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
2645 deleted!
2646
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00002647- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
2648 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
2649 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
2650 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
2651 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
2652
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00002653- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
2654
2655 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
2656 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
2657
2658 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
2659 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
2660 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
2661 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
2662 supported anyway.
2663
2664 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
2665 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
2666
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00002667- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
2668 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
2669 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
2670 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
2671 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00002672
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00002673- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
2674 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
2675 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
2676
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002677Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002678-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002679
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00002680- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
2681 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
2682 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
2683 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
2684 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
2685 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00002686 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
2687 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
2688 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
2689 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00002690
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00002691- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
2692 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
2693 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
2694
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002695Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002696-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002697
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00002698- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
2699
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002700Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002701-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002702
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00002703- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
2704 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
2705 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
2706 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
2707 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
2708 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
2709
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00002710- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
2711
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00002712- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
2713
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00002714- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
2715
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00002716- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
2717 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
2718 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
2719
2720- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
2721
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002722Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002723-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002724
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00002725- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
2726 off a search on Google.
2727
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002728Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002729-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002730
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00002731- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
2732 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
2733 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
2734 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
2735 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
2736 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
2737 other platforms should do likewise.
2738
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00002739- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
2740 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
2741 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
2742
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002743C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002744-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002745
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00002746- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
2747 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
2748 producing key-value pairs.
2749
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00002750- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00002751 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00002752 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
2753 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
2754 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
2755 previously went unchallenged.
2756
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002757New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002758-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002759
2760Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002761-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002762
2763Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002764-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002765
2766Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002767----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002768
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00002769- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
2770 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002771
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00002772- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
2773 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
2774 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
2775 home.
2776
2777
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002778What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002779===========================
2780
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002781*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
2782
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002783Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002784--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002785
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00002786- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
2787 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00002788
2789 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00002790 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00002791
2792 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
2793 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002794 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00002795 This needs to be documented.
2796
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00002797- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
2798 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
2799
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00002800- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
2801 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
2802 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
2803
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00002804- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
2805 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
2806
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00002807- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
2808 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
2809 class forbids it).
2810
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00002811- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
2812 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
2813 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
2814
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00002815- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
2816
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002817Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002818-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002819
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00002820- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
2821 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002822 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00002823
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00002824- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
2825 (like 1 + '').
2826
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002827Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002828-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002829
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00002830- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
2831 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
2832 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
2833 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002834 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00002835 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
2836
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00002837- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
2838 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
2839 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
2840 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
2841
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00002842- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
2843 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00002844 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
2845 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
2846 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00002847
2848- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
2849 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00002850
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00002851- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
2852 bytes on its input.
2853
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002854Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002855-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002856
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00002857- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00002858 convenience function.
2859
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00002860- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
2861 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
2862 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002863 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
2864 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
2865 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
2866 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
2867 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
2868 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00002869
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00002870- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
2871 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
2872 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
2873 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
2874
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00002875- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
2876 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
2877 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
2878
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00002879- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
2880 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
2881 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
2882 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
2883
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002884- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
2885 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002886 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002887 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
2888 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
2889 new -l and -e options.
2890
2891- statcache is now deprecated.
2892
2893- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
2894 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002895 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002896 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
2897 time properly taken into account.
2898
2899- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
2900 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
2901 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
2902 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
2903
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002904Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002905-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002906
2907Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002908-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002909
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002910- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
2911 is built with libdb3 if available.
2912
2913- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
2914
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002915C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002916-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002917
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00002918- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
2919 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
2920 PySequence_Size().
2921
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002922- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
2923
2924- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
2925 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
2926 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
2927
2928- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
2929 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
2930
2931- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
2932 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
2933
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002934New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002935-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002936
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00002937- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
2938 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
2939
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00002940- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
2941 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
2942
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00002943- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
2944
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002945Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002946-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002947
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00002948- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
2949 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
2950
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002951Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002952-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002953
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002954Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002955----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002956
2957- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
2958 removed completely in the next release.
2959
2960- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
2961 OSX.
2962
2963- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
2964 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
2965
2966- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
2967
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002968
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002969What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002970===========================
2971
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002972*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
2973
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002974Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002975--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002976
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00002977- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00002978 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00002979 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00002980 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
2981 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00002982 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
2983 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00002984 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
2985 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00002986
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00002987- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
2988 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
2989
2990- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
2991 class methods, static methods, and properties.
2992
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00002993Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002994-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002995
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00002996- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
2997 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
2998 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
2999 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
3000 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
3001 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
3002 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
3003 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
3004
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003005- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
3006 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
3007 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
3008 example).
3009
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003010- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00003011 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003012 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003013 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00003014
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003015- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
3016 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
3017 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00003018 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003019
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003020- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
3021 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
3022 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
3023 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
3024 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
3025 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
3026
3027 isinstance(x, (A, B))
3028
3029 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
3030
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003031Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003032-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003033
3034- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
3035
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00003036- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
3037
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00003038- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
3039 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00003040
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00003041- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
3042 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
3043 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
3044 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
3045 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
3046 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00003047 attributes.
3048
3049- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
3050 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
3051 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00003052
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003053- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
3054 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
3055 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003056
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00003057- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
3058 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
3059 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003060 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
3061 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
3062
3063- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
3064 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00003065
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003066Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003067-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00003068
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00003069- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
3070 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
3071
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003072- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
3073 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
3074 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
3075 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
3076
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00003077- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
3078 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
3079 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
3080 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
3081
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00003082 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
3083 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
3084 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
3085 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
3086 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
3087 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
3088 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
3089 without losing information).
3090
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00003091- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00003092 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
3093 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
3094 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
3095 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
3096 module).
3097
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003098 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00003099 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
3100 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
3101 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
3102 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00003103
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00003104- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00003105 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
3106 encoding.
3107
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00003108- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
3109 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
3110
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003111- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003112 to allow saving the message body to a file.
3113
3114- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
3115 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
3116 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
3117 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
3118
3119- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
3120
3121- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
3122 ON, and OFF.
3123
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003124- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
3125 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
3126
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00003127Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003128-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00003129
3130- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
3131 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
3132 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003133
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003134- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
3135 been added: -X and -E.
3136
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003137Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003138-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003139
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003140- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
3141 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
3142
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003143C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003144-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003145
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00003146- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
3147 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
3148 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
3149 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
3150 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
3151
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00003152- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
3153 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
3154 as long) arguments.
3155
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00003156- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
3157 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
3158 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
3159 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
3160 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
3161 report any bugs or strange behavior).
3162
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003163- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
3164 input.
3165
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003166New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003167-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003168
3169Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003170-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003171
3172Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003173-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003174
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00003175- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
3176 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
3177 is created for .py and .pyw files.
3178
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003179- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
3180 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
3181 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003182 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003183
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003184 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
3185 # (SIGINT) behavior.
3186 import signal
3187 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003188
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003189 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003190 while 1:
3191 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003192 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003193 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
3194 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
3195 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
3196 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003197
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003198
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003199What's New in Python 2.2a4?
3200===========================
3201
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003202*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
3203
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003204Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003205--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003206
3207- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
3208 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
3209 documentation for all operations on list objects.
3210
3211- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
3212 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
3213 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
3214 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
3215 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
3216 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
3217 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003218
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00003219- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003220 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00003221 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
3222 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
3223 associate a docstring with a property.
3224
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003225- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
3226 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
3227 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
3228 other built-in object types.
3229
3230- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
3231 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
3232 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
3233 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
3234 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
3235
3236- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
3237 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
3238
3239- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
3240 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003241 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003242 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
3243 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
3244 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
3245 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
3246 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
3247
3248- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
3249 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
3250 class.
3251
3252- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
3253 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
3254 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
3255 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
3256
3257- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
3258 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
3259 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
3260 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
3261
3262- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
3263 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
3264
3265- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
3266 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
3267 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
3268 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
3269 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003270 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003271 with the same value as s.
3272
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00003273- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
3274
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003275Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003276----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003277
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00003278- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
3279
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00003280- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
3281 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
3282 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
3283 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
3284 objects.
3285
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003286- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
3287 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00003288 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
3289 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
3290
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003291- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
3292 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
3293 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
3294
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003295Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003296-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003297
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00003298- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
3299 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
3300 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
3301 by the instances.
3302
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00003303- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
3304 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
3305 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
3306
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003307- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
3308 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
3309 before the entire comparison is complete.
3310
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00003311- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
3312 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
3313 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
3314
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00003315- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
3316 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
3317 getwriter().
3318
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003319- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
3320 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
3321
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00003322- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003323 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
3324 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
3325
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00003326- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
3327 iterable object.
3328
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003329- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
3330 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00003331
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003332- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
3333 authentication.
3334
3335- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
3336 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00003337
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003338- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00003339 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
3340 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
3341 a sample driver.)
3342
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003343Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003344-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003345
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003346- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
3347 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
3348 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
3349 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
3350 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
3351 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
3352 kernel has large file support.
3353
3354- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
3355 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
3356 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
3357 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
3358 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
3359
3360- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
3361 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
3362 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
3363
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003364C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003365-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003366
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003367- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
3368 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
3369
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003370New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003371-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003372
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003373- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
3374 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
3375
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003376Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003377-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003378
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003379- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
3380 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
3381 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
3382 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
3383 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
3384
3385- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
3386 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
3387 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
3388 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
3389
3390- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
3391 especially in regard to reporting errors.
3392
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003393Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003394-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003395
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003396- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003397 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
3398 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003399
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003400
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003401What's New in Python 2.2a3?
3402===========================
3403
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003404*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
3405
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003406Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003407----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003408
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003409- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
3410 big to represent as a C double.
3411
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00003412- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
3413 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
3414 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
3415 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
3416 restriction).
3417
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00003418- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
3419 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
3420 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
3421 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
3422 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
3423
3424 >>> dir([])
3425 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
3426 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
3427 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
3428 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
3429 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
3430 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
3431 'reverse', 'sort']
3432
3433 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
3434
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003435- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003436 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
3437 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
3438 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
3439 OverflowError exception.
3440
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00003441- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003442 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003443 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
3444 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
3445 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
3446 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
3447 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003448 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003449 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
3450 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
3451
3452 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
3453 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
3454 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
3455 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003456
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003457- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003458 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
3459 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
3460 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
3461 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
3462 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
3463 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
3464 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
3465 once it is created.
3466
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00003467- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
3468 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
3469 (key, value) pairs.
3470
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003471- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003472 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
3473 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
3474
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00003475- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
3476 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
3477 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
3478 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
3479 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003480
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003481- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003482 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
3483 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
3484
3485 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
3486
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003487- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00003488 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
3489
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003490Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003491-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003492
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00003493- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00003494 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
3495 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00003496
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00003497- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
3498 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
3499 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
3500 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
3501 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
3502 in this area anymore).
3503
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00003504- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
3505 threading.Timer.
3506
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00003507- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
3508 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
3509
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003510- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00003511 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
3512
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003513- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00003514 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
3515 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
3516 converted to Python longs.
3517
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003518- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003519 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
3520
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00003521- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
3522 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
3523 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
3524
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003525Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003526-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003527
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003528- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
3529 division operators as per PEP 238.
3530
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003531Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003532-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003533
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003534- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
3535 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
3536 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
3537 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
3538
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00003539C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003540-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00003541
3542- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00003543
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003544- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
3545 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003546 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003547
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003548 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
3549 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003550 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003551 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003552
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003553- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003554 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
3555 module:
3556
3557 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003558
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003559 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
3560 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003561
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003562 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
3563 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003564
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003565 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
3566
3567 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
3568
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003569- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003570 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
3571 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
3572 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00003573
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003574New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003575-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003576
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00003577- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
3578 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
3579 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
3580 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
3581 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003582
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003583Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003584-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003585
3586Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003587-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003588
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00003589- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
3590 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
3591 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
3592 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00003593 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
3594 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
3595 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
3596 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
3597 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00003598
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003599- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00003600 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
3601
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003602
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003603What's New in Python 2.2a2?
3604===========================
3605
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003606*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
3607
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003608Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003609-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003610
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00003611- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
3612 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
3613
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003614- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
3615 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
3616 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003617
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00003618- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
3619 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
3620 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
3621 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003622
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003623- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
3624
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003625- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003626
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00003627Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003628-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00003629
3630- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00003631 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00003632 the module docstring for details.
3633
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003634Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003635-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003636
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00003637- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003638 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
3639 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
3640 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00003641
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003642- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
3643 Nick Mathewson.
3644
3645Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003646----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003647
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003648- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
3649 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
3650 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
3651 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
3652 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
3653 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
3654 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
3655 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
3656
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00003657- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
3658 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
3659 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
3660 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
3661
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00003662- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
3663 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
3664 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
3665 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
3666 come a long way).
3667
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00003668- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
3669 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
3670 write filters for these warnings).
3671
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00003672- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
3673 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
3674 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
3675 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
3676 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
3677
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00003678- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
3679 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
3680 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
3681 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
3682 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
3683 older distribution.
3684
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00003685Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003686-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00003687
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00003688- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
3689 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00003690 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00003691
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00003692- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
3693 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
3694 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
3695
3696- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
3697
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003698- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
3699
3700- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
3701
3702- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
3703
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003704- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003705
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00003706- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
3707
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00003708New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003709-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00003710
3711C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003712-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00003713
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00003714- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
3715 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
3716 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
3717 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
3718 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
3719 against buffer overruns.
3720
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00003721- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00003722 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
3723 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00003724 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
3725 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
3726 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
3727
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003728- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
3729 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
3730 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
3731 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
3732 deprecated.
3733
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00003734Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003735-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00003736
3737- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
3738 relevant is found.
3739
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003740
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00003741What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00003742===========================
3743
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003744*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
3745
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00003746Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003747----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003748
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00003749- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
3750 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
3751 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
3752 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
3753 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
3754 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
3755 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
3756 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003757 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00003758 repaired.
3759
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00003760- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00003761 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00003762 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
3763 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
3764 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
3765 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
3766 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
3767 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
3768 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
3769 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
3770
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00003771- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
3772 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
3773 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
3774 leading BMO character).
3775
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00003776- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
3777 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
3778 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
3779
3780 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
3781 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
3782 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00003783
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00003784 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
3785 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
3786 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
3787 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
3788 for various simple to use conversions.
3789
3790 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
3791 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
3792
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003793 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
3794 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
3795 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
3796 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
3797 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
3798 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
3799 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
3800 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
3801 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
3802 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
3803 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
3804 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
3805 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
3806 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
3807 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00003808
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00003809- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
3810 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
3811 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00003812 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00003813 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00003814
3815 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00003816 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
3817 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
3818 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
3819 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
3820 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003821 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
3822 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00003823
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003824 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
3825 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
3826 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00003827 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00003828
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00003829- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
3830 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
3831 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
3832 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
3833 floating arithmetic,
3834
3835 x = 9007199254740992.0
3836 print long(x)
3837
3838 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
3839 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
3840 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
3841 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
3842 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
3843 functions are of good quality).
3844
3845 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
3846 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
3847 algorithms to break.
3848
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00003849- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
3850 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
3851 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
3852 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
3853 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
3854 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
3855 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
3856 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
3857 order.
3858
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00003859- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
3860 operation along the most common code paths.
3861
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00003862- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
3863 the same as dict.has_key(x).
3864
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00003865- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
3866 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
3867 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
3868 {}.update(UserDict())
3869
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00003870- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
3871 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
3872 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
3873 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
3874 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
3875 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
3876 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
3877 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
3878
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00003879- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003880 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003881
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00003882 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00003883 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
3884 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00003885 join() method of strings
3886 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00003887 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
3888 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003889 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00003890 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00003891
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00003892- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
3893 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
3894
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00003895- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
3896 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
3897
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00003898- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
3899 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
3900 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
3901 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
3902
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00003903- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
3904 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00003905 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00003906 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
3907 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00003908
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00003909- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
3910
3911
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003912Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003913-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003914
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00003915- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003916 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00003917 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
3918 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
3919
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00003920- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
3921 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
3922
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00003923- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
3924 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
3925 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
3926 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
3927
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00003928- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
3929 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
3930 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
3931
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00003932- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
3933
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00003934- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
3935
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00003936- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
3937 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
3938 that are still imported into string.py).
3939
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003940- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
3941
3942- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
3943 Now it does.
3944
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00003945- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
3946
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00003947- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
3948 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
3949 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
3950 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
3951 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00003952 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
3953 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00003954
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00003955- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
3956 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
3957 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
3958 'help(object)'.
3959
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003960Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003961-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003962
3963- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003964 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003965 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
3966 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
3967
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003968- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00003969 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
3970 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003971
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00003972C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003973-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00003974
3975- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
3976 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003977
3978----
3979
3980**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**