blob: e891cefbb0fbbec0932c470c94277111bd1ac467 [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +000015- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
16 disabled caused a crash.
17
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +000018- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
19 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
20
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000021- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
22 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
23
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +000024- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
25
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +000026- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
27 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error)
28
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +000029- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
30
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +000031- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
32 returning None.
33
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +000034- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
35 ('\') with a specific error message.
36
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +000037- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
38
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +000039- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
40 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
41
Martin v. Löwis13a1fde2005-01-27 18:56:16 +000042- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +000043 an ferror() call.
44
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +000045- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
46 list.sort().
47
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +000048- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
49 (2+3) --> (5).
50
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +000051- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
52
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +000053- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
54 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000055
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +000056- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
57 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
58 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
59
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000060Extension Modules
61-----------------
62
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +000063- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
64 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
65
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +000066- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
67
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +000068- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
69 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
70 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
71
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +000072- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
73
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +000074- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
75 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
76
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +000077- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
78 file size.
79
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +000080- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
81
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +000082- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
83 {remove_history,replace_history}
84
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +000085- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
86 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +000087
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +000088- stat_float_times is now True.
89
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +000090- array.array objects are now picklable.
91
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +000092- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
93 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
94
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +000095- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
96 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
97 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
98
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +000099- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
100 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000101
102Library
103-------
104
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000105- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
106 files to PyPI.
107
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000108- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
109 them to PyPI.
110
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000111- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
112 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
113 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
114 work as expected.
115
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000116- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
117 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
118
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000119- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
120 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
121
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000122- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
123
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000124- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
125 to build.
126
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000127- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
128 symbolic links on Windows.
129
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000130- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
131 profile.py if available.
132
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000133- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
134
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000135- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
136 in LWPCookieJar.
137
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000138- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
139
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000140- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
141
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000142- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
143
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000144- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
145
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000146- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
147
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000148- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
149
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000150- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
151
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000152- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
153
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000154- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
155 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
156 be exploited in various ways.
157
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000158- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
159
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000160- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
161
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000162- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
163
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000164- Enhancements to the csv module:
165
166 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
167 reflecting it's capabilities, and improving it's compliance with
168 PEP 305.
169 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
170 reporting.
171 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
172 dictates.
173 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000174 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000175 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000176 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
177 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000178 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
179 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000180 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000181 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
182 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
183 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
184 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
185 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
186 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
187 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
188 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
189 without first creating a dialect class.
190 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
191 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
192 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000193 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000194 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
195 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000196 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
197 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
198 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
199 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000200 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
201 This has been fixed.
202
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000203- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
204 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
205 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
206 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
207
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000208- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
209
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000210- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
211 (Bug #951915).
212
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000213- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
214 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
215 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
216 encoding alias table
217
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000218- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
219
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000220- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
221 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
222
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000223- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
224
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000225- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
226
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000227- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
228
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000229- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
230
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000231- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
232
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000233- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
234 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
235 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
236
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000237- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000238 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000239
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000240- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
241 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
242 tokenizer with very long source lines.
243
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000244- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
245 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
246
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000247- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
248 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000249
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000250- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
251 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
252
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000253- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
254 correctly.
255
256
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000257Build
258-----
259
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000260- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
261 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
262 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
263
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000264- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
265
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000266- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
267 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
268
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000269- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
270 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
271 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
272 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
273 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
274 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
275 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
276 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
277
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000278- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
279 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
280 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
281 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
282
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000283
284C API
285-----
286
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000287- Removed PyRange_New().
288
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000289
290Tests
291-----
292
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000293- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000294
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000295
296Documentation
297-------------
298
299- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
300 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
301 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
302
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000303Mac
304---
305
306
307
308Tools/Demos
309-----------
310
311
312
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000313What's New in Python 2.4 final?
314===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000315
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000316*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000317
318Core and builtins
319-----------------
320
321- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
322 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
323 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
324
325
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000326What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
327==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000328
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000329*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000330
331Core and builtins
332-----------------
333
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000334- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
335 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
336 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
337
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000338
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000339Library
340-------
341
342- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
343 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
344 raised is re-raised.
345
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000346- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
347 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
348
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000349- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
350 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
351 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
352 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
353 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
354 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
355 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
356 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
357 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
358 by the slice are recomputed now.
359
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000360- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000361
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000362Build
363-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000364
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000365- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
366 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
367 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000368
369C API
370-----
371
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000372- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
373
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000374
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000375What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
376================================
377
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000378*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000379
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000380License
381-------
382
383The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
384is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
385changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
386Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
387intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
388durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
389the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
390License::
391
392 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
393
394says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
395to Python 2.1.1.
396
397The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
398License Version 2.
399
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000400Core and builtins
401-----------------
402
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000403- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
404 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
405 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
406 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
407 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
408 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
409 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
410 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
411 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
412 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
413
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000414- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000415
416Extension Modules
417-----------------
418
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000419- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
420 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
421 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
422 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000423
424Library
425-------
426
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000427- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
428 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
429 returned.
430
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000431- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
432
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000433- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
434 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
435
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000436- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
437
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000438- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
439 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000440
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000441- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
442
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000443- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
444
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000445- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000446 the source code is updated and reloaded.
447
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000448Build
449-----
450
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000451- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000452
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000453What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
454================================
455
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000456*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000457
458Core and builtins
459-----------------
460
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000461- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000462 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
463
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000464- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
465 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
466 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
467 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
468
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000469- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
470 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
471
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000472- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
473 constant.
474
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000475- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
476 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
477 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
478 large), and to anomalies such as
479 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
480 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
481 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
482 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000483
484Extension modules
485-----------------
486
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000487- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
488 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000489 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
490 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
491 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000492
493Library
494-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000495
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000496- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000497 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000498 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
499 --swig-cpp.
500
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000501- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
502 it is set.
503
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000504- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000505
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000506- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
507 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
508 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
509 Closes bug #1039270.
510
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000511- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000512
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000513 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000514 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
515 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
516 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
517 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
518 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
519 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
520 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
521 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
522 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
523 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
524 + Updates to documentation.
525
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000526- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
527 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
528 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
529 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
530
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000531- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000532
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000533- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
534 applications should use the getmember function.
535
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000536- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
537
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000538- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
539 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
540 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
541 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
542 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
543 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
544 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
545 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
546 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
547
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000548- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
549 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000550 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000551
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000552- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
553 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
554 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
555 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
556 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
557 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
558 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
559 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000560
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000561- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
562 the new public features (of which there are many).
563
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000564- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000565 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
566 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
567 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
568 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000569 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000570
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000571- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
572
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000573- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
574 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
575 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
576 options.
577
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000578- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
579 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
580 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
581 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
582 conditions under which non-string values work.
583
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000584Build
585-----
586
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000587- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
588 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
589 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
590
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000591- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
592 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
593 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
594 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
595 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000596
597C API
598-----
599
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000600- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
601 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
602
603- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
604
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000605- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
606 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
607 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
608 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
609 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
610 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
611 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
612 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
613 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
614
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000615- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
616
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000617- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
618 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
619 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000620
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000621Tests
622-----
623
624- test__locale ported to unittest
625
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000626Mac
627---
628
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000629- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
630 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
631 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000632
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000633Tools/Demos
634-----------
635
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000636- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
637 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
638 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
639 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
640 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000641
642
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000643What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
644=================================
645
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000646*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000647
648Core and builtins
649-----------------
650
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000651- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000652 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
653
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000654- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
655 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
656 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
657 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
658 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
659 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
660 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
661 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000662 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
663 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
664 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
665 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
666 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000667
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000668- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
669 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
670 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
671 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
672 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
673
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000674- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
675
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000676- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
677 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
678
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000679- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
680 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
681 modified the list.
682
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000683- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
684 functions is now writable.
685
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000686- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
687 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
688 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
689 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
690
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000691- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
692 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
693 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
694 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
695 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000696
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000697- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
698 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
699
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000700Extension modules
701-----------------
702
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000703- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
704
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000705- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
706 data.
707
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000708- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
709 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
710 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
711 supposed to have been truncated away.
712
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000713- Added socket.socketpair().
714
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000715- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
716 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
717
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000718- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000719 versions of Python, have now been removed.
720
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000721Library
722-------
723
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000724- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000725 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000726
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000727- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
728 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
729
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000730- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
731 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
732
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000733- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
734
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000735- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
736 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000737
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000738- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
739 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
740
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000741- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
742
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000743- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
744
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000745- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
746
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000747- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
748 Percivall.
749
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000750- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
751 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
752
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000753- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
754 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
755 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000756 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000757
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000758- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
759 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
760 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
761 and exponent.
762
763- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
764
765- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
766 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatability and atexit
767 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
768
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000769- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
770 to the readline module.
771
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000772- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000773 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
774 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000775
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000776- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
777 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
778 contains symlinks.
779
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000780- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
781 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
782
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000783- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
784 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
785 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
786
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000787- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
788 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
789 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
790 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
791 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
792 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
793 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
794 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
795 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
796 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
797 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
798 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
799 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
800
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000801- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
802
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000803Tools/Demos
804-----------
805
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000806- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
807 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
808
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000809- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
810
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000811Build
812-----
813
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000814- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
815 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
816 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
817 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
818 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
819 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
820 plans to do so.
821
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +0000822- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
823 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
824
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +0000825- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
826 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
827
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000828- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
829 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
830
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +0000831- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
832 GNU/k*BSD systems.
833
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +0000834- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
835 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
836
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000837C API
838-----
839
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000840..
841
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000842Documentation
843-------------
844
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +0000845- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
846 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
847
848- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
849 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
850 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +0000851
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000852New platforms
853-------------
854
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +0000855- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
856
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000857Tests
858-----
859
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000860..
861
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000862Windows
863-------
864
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +0000865- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
866 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
867 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
868 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
869 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
870 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
871 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
872 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
873 the problem.
874
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000875Mac
876---
877
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000878..
879
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000880
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000881What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
882=================================
883
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000884*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000885
886Core and builtins
887-----------------
888
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +0000889- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
890 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
891 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
892 sensitive code.
893
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000894- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000895 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000896
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000897 @staticmethod
898 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000899
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000900 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000901
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000902- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
903 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
904 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
905 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
906 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
907 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
908 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
909 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
910 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
911 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
912 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
913
914 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
915 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
916 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
917 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
918 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
919 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
920 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
921
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +0000922- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
923 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
924
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000925- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000926 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000927
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000928- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000929 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000930 which was missing for no apparent reason.
931
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000932- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000933 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
934 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
935
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000936- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
937 types that support garbage collection.
938
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +0000939- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
940
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +0000941- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
942 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
943 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
944 Jython.
945
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000946- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
947
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +0000948- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
949 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
950
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +0000951- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
952 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
953 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +0000954
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +0000955- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
956 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
957 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
958
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000959Extension modules
960-----------------
961
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +0000962- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
963
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000964Library
965-------
966
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +0000967- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
968 TIS-620
969
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +0000970- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
971 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
972 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
973 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
974 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
975 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
976 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
977 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
978 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
979 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
980
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +0000981- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
982
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +0000983- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
984 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
985 same as when the argument is omitted).
986 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
987
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +0000988- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
989
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +0000990- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
991 schemes are offered.
992
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +0000993- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
994
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +0000995- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
996 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
997 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
998
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +0000999- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1000
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001001- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1002 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1003
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001004- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1005 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1006 when dummy_threading is being used.
1007
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001008- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1009 from a tarfile.
1010
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001011- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001012 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001013
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001014- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1015 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1016 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1017 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1018
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001019- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1020 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1021
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001022- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1023 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1024 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1025 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1026 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1027 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1028 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1029 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1030 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1031 by some other method in progress).
1032
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001033- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1034 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1035 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001036
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001037- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1038
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001039- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1040 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1041 AM Kuchling.
1042
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001043- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1044 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1045 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1046
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001047- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1048 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1049 instead of unsigned.
1050
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001051- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001052 no longer part of the public API.
1053
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001054- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1055 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1056 string methods of the same name).
1057
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001058- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001059 SF patch 945642.
1060
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001061- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1062
1063 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1064
1065 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1066 DocTestSuites.
1067
1068- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1069 that provide thread-local data.
1070
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001071- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1072 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1073
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001074- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1075
1076- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1077 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1078 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1079
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001080- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1081
1082 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1083 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1084 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001085
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001086 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1087 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1088 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1089 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1090
1091 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1092 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1093
1094 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1095 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1096 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1097 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1098
1099 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1100 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1101 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1102 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1103 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1104
1105 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1106 wrapping help output.
1107
1108 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1109 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1110 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001111
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001112C API
1113-----
1114
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001115- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1116 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1117 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1118 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1119 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1120 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1121 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1122 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1123 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1124 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1125 its visible semantics have not changed.
1126
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001127- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1128 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1129
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001130Documentation
1131-------------
1132
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001133- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001134
1135 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001136 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001137
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001138 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001139
1140 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1141
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001142- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001143
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001144Tests
1145-----
1146
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001147- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001148 platforms that use the Makefile.
1149
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001150- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1151 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1152 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1153
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001154
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001155What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1156=================================
1157
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001158*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001159
1160Core and builtins
1161-----------------
1162
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001163- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1164 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1165 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1166 objects now (one object instead of three).
1167
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001168- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1169 Windows DLLs.
1170
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001171- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1172 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001173
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001174- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1175 a new .pyc magic.
1176
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001177- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1178 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1179 be there.
1180
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001181- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1182 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1183 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1184
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001185- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1186 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1187 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1188
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001189- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1190
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001191- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1192 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1193 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001194
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001195- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1196 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1197
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001198- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1199
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001200- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001201 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001202
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001203- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1204
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001205- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1206
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001207- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1208 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1209
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001210- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1211 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1212 Fixes bug #858016 .
1213
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001214- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1215 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1216 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1217
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001218- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1219 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1220 improves their performance (about 35%).
1221
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001222- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1223 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1224 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1225
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001226- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1227 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1228 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1229 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1230
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001231- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1232 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001233 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001234 length is not known).
1235
1236- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1237 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001238 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1239 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001240 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1241
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001242- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1243 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1244
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001245- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1246 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1247 keyword arguments.
1248
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001249- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1250 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1251 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1252
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001253- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1254 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1255 cases.
1256
1257- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1258 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1259 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1260 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1261 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1262 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1263 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1264 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1265 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1266 a release build.
1267
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001268- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1269 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1270
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001271- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001272 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001273
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001274- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1275 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1276 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1277 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1278 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1279 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1280 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1281 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1282 destroyed.
1283
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001284- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1285 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1286 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1287 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1288 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1289 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1290 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1291 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1292
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001293- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1294 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1295 character other than a space.
1296
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001297- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1298 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1299 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1300 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1301 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1302 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1303 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1304 attributes with the same name.
1305
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001306- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1307 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1308 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1309 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1310 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1311 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1312 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1313 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1314 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1315 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1316 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1317 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1318 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1319 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001320
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001321- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1322 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1323 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1324 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1325 This has been repaired.
1326
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001327- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1328
1329- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1330
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001331- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1332 over a sequence.
1333
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001334- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001335 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001336
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001337- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1338
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001339- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1340 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1341 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1342 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1343 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1344 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1345 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1346 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1347
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001348- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1349 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1350 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1351
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001352- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1353 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1354 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1355 freelist.
1356
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001357- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1358 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1359
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001360- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1361 number.
1362
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001363- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1364 a TypeError exception.
1365
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001366- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1367 820195.
1368
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001369- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1370 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1371 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1372
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001373- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001374 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1375 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001376
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001377- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1378 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1379 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1380
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001381- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1382 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001383 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001384
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001385- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001386 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1387 the first call.
1388
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001389
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001390Extension modules
1391-----------------
1392
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001393- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1394 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1395
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001396- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1397 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1398 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1399 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1400 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1401 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1402 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001403
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001404- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1405
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001406- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1407
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001408- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1409 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1410
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001411- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1412 fewer false positives.
1413
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001414- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1415 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1416
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001417- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001418 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1419
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001420- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001421 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001422 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001423 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1424 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001425
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001426- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1427 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1428 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1429 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1430
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001431- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1432 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1433 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1434 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1435 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1436 #897625.
1437
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001438- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1439 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1440
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001441- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1442 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1443 and pops on either side of the deque.
1444
1445- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1446 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1447
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001448- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1449 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1450 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1451 other functions that expect a function argument.
1452
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001453- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1454
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001455- os.getsid was added.
1456
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001457- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1458 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1459 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1460
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001461- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1462
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001463- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1464
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001465- readline.clear_history was added.
1466
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001467- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1468
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001469- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1470
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001471- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1472
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001473- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1474
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001475- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1476
1477- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1478
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001479- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1480
1481- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1482
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001483- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1484 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1485 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1486
1487- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1488 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1489 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1490 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1491 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1492 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1493 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1494
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001495- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1496 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1497 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1498 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001499
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001500- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001501 iterators from a single iterable.
1502
1503- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1504 of raising a TypeError exception.
1505
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001506- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1507 as parameter.
1508
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001509Library
1510-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001511
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001512- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1513 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1514 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001515
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001516- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1517 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1518 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001519
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001520- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001521
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001522- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1523 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001524
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001525- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1526 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1527
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001528- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1529
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001530- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001531 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001532
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001533- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001534 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001535
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001536- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1537
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001538- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1539 on cygwin and mingw32.
1540
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001541- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1542
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001543- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1544 module.
1545
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001546- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1547 installation scheme for all platforms.
1548
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001549- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001550 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001551
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001552- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1553 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1554 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1555
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001556- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1557 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1558 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1559
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001560- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1561
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001562- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1563
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001564- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1565 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1566
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001567- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1568 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1569 type pattern with the same value exists.
1570
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001571- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1572 when run from the command prompt).
1573
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001574- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1575 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1576
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001577- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1578 default sort).
1579
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001580- Added global runctx function to profile module
1581
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001582- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1583
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001584- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1585
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001586- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1587
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001588- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001589 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1590 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1591 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1592 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1593 accordingly.
1594
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001595- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1596 decoding standards.
1597
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001598- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1599 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1600 called for all requests.
1601
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001602- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1603 they are passed to the compiler.
1604
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001605- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1606 indent, width and depth.
1607
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001608- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1609 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1610
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001611- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1612 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1613
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001614- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1615
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001616- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1617
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001618- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1619
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001620- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1621 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1622
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001623- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001624 for better performance.
1625
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001626- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001627
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001628- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1629 a string).
1630
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001631- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1632
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001633- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1634
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001635- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1636
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001637- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1638
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001639- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1640 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1641 list of fieldnames.
1642
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001643- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1644 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1645
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001646- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1647
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001648- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1649 empty lists.
1650
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001651- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1652 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1653 and shelves.
1654
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001655- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1656 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1657
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001658- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001659 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1660 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001661
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001662- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1663 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001664 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001665
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001666- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001667 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1668 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1669
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001670- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1671 and removed in Py2.4.
1672
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001673- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1674
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001675- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1676
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001677Tools/Demos
1678-----------
1679
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001680- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1681 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1682
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001683- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1684
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001685- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1686 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1687 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1688 destination in situations where both files are given.
1689
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001690- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1691 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1692 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1693 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1694
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001695- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1696
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001697- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1698 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1699 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1700 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1701 now.
1702
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001703- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1704 in effect
1705
1706- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1707 C-c C-h
1708
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001709- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1710 -d option was given.
1711
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001712Build
1713-----
1714
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001715- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1716 build under OS X.
1717
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001718- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1719 --enable-profiling.
1720
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001721- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1722 is configured --with-tsc.
1723
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001724- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1725 on AMD64.
1726
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001727- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1728 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1729
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001730- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1731 removed.
1732
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001733- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1734 supported (see PEP 11).
1735
1736- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1737
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001738- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1739
1740- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1741 (see PEP 11).
1742
1743- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1744 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1745
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001746C API
1747-----
1748
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001749- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1750 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1751 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1752
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001753- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1754 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1755 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1756 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1757
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001758- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1759 generator objects.
1760
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001761- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1762 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001763 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1764 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001765
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001766- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1767 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1768
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001769- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1770 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1771 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1772 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1773 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1774
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001775- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1776 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1777 about 10% faster.
1778
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001779- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1780 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1781
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001782- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1783 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1784 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1785 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1786
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001787Windows
1788-------
1789
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001790- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1791 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1792 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1793 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1794
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001795- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1796 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1797 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1798
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001799
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001800What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1801===============================
1802
1803*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1804
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001805IDLE
1806----
1807
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001808- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1809 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1810 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1811 context-menu actions.
1812
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001813- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1814 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1815 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1816 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1817 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1818 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1819 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
1820 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
1821 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
1822
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001823
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001824What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
1825=============================================
1826
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00001827*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001828
1829Core and builtins
1830-----------------
1831
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001832- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001833 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001834 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1835
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001836Extension modules
1837-----------------
1838
1839- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1840 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1841 than once. This has been fixed.
1842
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001843- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1844 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1845 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1846 call.
1847
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001848- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1849
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001850Library
1851-------
1852
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001853- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1854 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1855
1856- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1857 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1858 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1859 restored.
1860
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001861IDLE
1862----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001863
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001864- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001865
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001866Build
1867-----
1868
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001869- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1870 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1871
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001872C API
1873-----
1874
1875Windows
1876-------
1877
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001878- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1879 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1880
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001881- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1882
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001883Mac
1884---
1885
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001886- Various fixes to pimp.
1887
1888- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1889
1890- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1891 more problems than it solves.
1892
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001893
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001894What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1895=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001896
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001897*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1898
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001899Core and builtins
1900-----------------
1901
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001902- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1903 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1904
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001905- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
1906 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001907 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001908
1909- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
1910 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
1911 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001912 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001913
1914- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
1915 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001916
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001917- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
1918 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
1919 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
1920
1921- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001922 770247.
1923
1924- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001925
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001926Extension modules
1927-----------------
1928
1929- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
1930 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
1931
1932- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
1933
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001934- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
1935
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00001936- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
1937 contained within the _strptime module.
1938
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001939- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
1940 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
1941
1942- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001943 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
1944
1945- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
1946 the find_class attribute, if present.
1947
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001948- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001949
1950 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
1951 (SF bug 763298).
1952
1953 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00001954 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
1955 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
1956 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001957
1958 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
1959
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001960Library
1961-------
1962
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001963- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
1964
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00001965- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
1966 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
1967 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
1968 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
1969 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
1970 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
1971 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
1972 or Tester().
1973
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001974- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
1975 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
1976 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
1977 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
1978 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
1979 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
1980 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
1981 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
1982 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00001983
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001984 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00001985
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00001986- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
1987 weren't before was an oversight.
1988
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001989- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
1990 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
1991
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00001992- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
1993 when there are no lines.
1994
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00001995- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
1996 which could occur with Tk 8.4
1997
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001998- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
1999 to child processes.
2000
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002001- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2002
2003- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2004
2005- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2006 xmlrpclib.
2007
2008- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2009 responses.
2010
2011- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2012 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2013
2014- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2015 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2016 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2017
2018- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2019 used as patterns.
2020
2021- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2022 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2023 than Tk 8.3.
2024
2025- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2026
2027- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002028
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002029Tools/Demos
2030-----------
2031
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002032- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2033
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002034- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2035
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002036- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002037
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002038Build
2039-----
2040
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002041- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2042
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002043- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2044
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002045- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2046 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002047
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002048- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2049 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2050 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002051
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002052C API
2053-----
2054
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002055- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2056 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2057
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002058Windows
2059-------
2060
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002061- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2062 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2063 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2064 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2065 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2066 Python exception ::
2067
2068 thread.error: can't start new thread
2069
2070 is raised now.
2071
2072- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2073 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2074 instead of from DLL teardown.
2075
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002076Mac
2077---
2078
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002079- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002080 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002081 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2082 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2083 the executable in the bundle.
2084
2085- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002086
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002087- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2088
2089- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2090 on Panther.
2091
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002092What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2093================================
2094
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002095*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002096
2097Core and builtins
2098-----------------
2099
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002100- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2101 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2102 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2103 with the -i option.
2104
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002105- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2106 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2107
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002108- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2109 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2110
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002111- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2112 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2113 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2114 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2115 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2116 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2117 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2118 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2119 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2120 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2121 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2122 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2123 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002124
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002125- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2126 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2127 embedded in a lambda expression.
2128
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002129- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2130 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2131 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2132 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2133 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2134
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002135- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2136 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2137 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2138
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002139- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2140 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2141
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002142- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2143 It's writable again.
2144
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002145- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2146 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2147 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002148 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002149
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002150- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2151 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2152 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2153
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002154Extension modules
2155-----------------
2156
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002157- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2158 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2159
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002160- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2161 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2162 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2163 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2164
2165- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2166 collection.
2167
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002168- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2169 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2170 unique within a single program run.
2171
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002172- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2173 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2174
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002175- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2176 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2177
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002178- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2179 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002180
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002181- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2182
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002183- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2184 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2185
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002186- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2187 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2188 for many BSD-derived systems.
2189
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002190
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002191Library
2192-------
2193
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002194- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2195 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2196 primary ones:
2197
2198 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2199 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2200 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2201
2202 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2203 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2204 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2205 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2206 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2207 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2208
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002209- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2210 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2211 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2212 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2213 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2214 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2215 argument.
2216
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002217- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2218 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2219 in the archive.
2220
2221- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2222 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2223
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002224- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2225 569574).
2226
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002227- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2228 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2229 no more.
2230
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002231- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2232 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2233 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2234 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2235 code coverage.
2236
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002237- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2238 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2239 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002240 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2241 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002242
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002243- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2244 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2245 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002246 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002247
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002248- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2249
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002250- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2251 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2252 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2253 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2254
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002255- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2256 handling.
2257
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002258- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2259 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2260
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002261- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2262 in socket.py.
2263
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002264- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2265
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002266- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2267 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2268 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2269 opener with proxy support.
2270
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002271- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2272
2273- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2274
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002275Tools/Demos
2276-----------
2277
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002278- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2279
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002280- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2281
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002282- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2283 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002284
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002285- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2286 files.
2287
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002288Build
2289-----
2290
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002291- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002292 different root directory.
2293
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002294C API
2295-----
2296
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002297- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2298 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2299 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2300 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2301 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2302 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2303 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2304 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2305 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2306 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2307
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002308- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2309 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2310 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2311 from Python.
2312
2313
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002314New platforms
2315-------------
2316
2317None this time.
2318
2319Tests
2320-----
2321
2322- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2323 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2324
2325Windows
2326-------
2327
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002328- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2329
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002330- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2331 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2332 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2333 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2334 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2335 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2336 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2337 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2338 that's what it's for.
2339
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002340Mac
2341---
2342
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002343- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2344 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2345 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2346 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002347- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2348 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2349- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002350
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002351SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2352------------------------------------
2353
2354430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2355598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2356622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2357661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2358683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2359697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2360713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2361724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2362727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2363729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2364730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2365731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2366732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2367733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2368735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2369740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2370744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2371745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2372747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2373749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2374751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2375753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2376755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2377757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2378760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2379
2380
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002381What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2382================================
2383
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002384*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002385
2386Core and builtins
2387-----------------
2388
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002389- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2390 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2391
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002392- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2393 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2394 and cannot be strings).
2395
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002396- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2397 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2398 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2399 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2400
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002401- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2402 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2403 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2404 Python itself.
2405
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002406- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2407 the referenced object, if it has one.
2408
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002409- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2410 the thread started at
2411 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2412
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002413- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2414 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2415 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2416 placed on a list index.
2417
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002418- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2419 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2420 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2421 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2422
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002423- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2424 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2425 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2426 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2427 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2428 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2429 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2430
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002431- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2432 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2433 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2434 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2435 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2436
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002437- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2438 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002439
2440- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2441 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2442 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2443 #693195.)
2444
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002445- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2446 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002447
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002448- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002449 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002450 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2451 interpreter executions, would fail.
2452
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002453- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002454 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002455 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002456
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002457Extension modules
2458-----------------
2459
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002460- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2461 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2462 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2463 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2464
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002465- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2466 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2467
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002468- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2469 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2470 and Greg Chapman.)
2471
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002472- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2473 recursively.
2474
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002475- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002476 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2477 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2478 leaks.
2479
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002480- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2481
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002482- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2483 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2484 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2485 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2486 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2487 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2488 #705836.
2489
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002490- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002491 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2492
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002493- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2494 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2495 See SF bug #692416.
2496
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002497- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2498 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2499
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002500- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2501 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2502 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002503
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002504- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002505 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2506 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2507
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002508- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2509 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2510 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2511 timeouts to work properly.
2512
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002513Library
2514-------
2515
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002516- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2517 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2518 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2519 future release.
2520
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002521- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2522 for querying platform dependent features.
2523
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002524- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002525
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002526- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2527 pickle protocol versions.
2528
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002529- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2530 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2531 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2532
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002533- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2534
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002535- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2536 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2537 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2538 modules.
2539
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002540- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2541 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2542 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2543
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002544- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2545 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2546
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002547- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2548 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2549 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2550
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002551- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002552 MS Office extensions.
2553
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002554- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2555 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2556
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002557- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2558 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2559
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002560- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2561 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2562 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2563 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2564 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2565 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2566
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002567- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2568 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2569 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002570
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002571- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2572 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2573 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2574
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002575- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2576
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002577- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2578 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2579 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2580
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002581Tools/Demos
2582-----------
2583
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002584- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2585 See the module docstring for details.
2586
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002587Build
2588-----
2589
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002590- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2591 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002592
2593C API
2594-----
2595
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002596- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2597
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002598- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2599 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2600 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2601
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002602- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2603 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002604
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002605 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2606 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2607 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002608
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002609- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002610 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2611
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002612- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2613 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2614 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002615
2616New platforms
2617-------------
2618
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002619None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002620
2621Tests
2622-----
2623
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002624- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2625 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002626
2627Windows
2628-------
2629
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002630- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2631 function.
2632
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002633- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2634 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002635
2636Mac
2637---
2638
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002639- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2640 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002641
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002642- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2643 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002644
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002645- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2646 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2647 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002648
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002649- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002650 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2651 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002652
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002653- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2654 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002655
2656
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002657What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2658=================================
2659
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002660*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002661
2662Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002663-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002664
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002665- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2666 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2667 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2668
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002669- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2670 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2671 (SF patch #664376.)
2672
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002673- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2674 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2675 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2676 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2677 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2678 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002679 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002680
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002681- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2682 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2683 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2684 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002685 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002686
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002687- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2688 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2689 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2690 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2691 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2692 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2693 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2694 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2695 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2696 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2697 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2698
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002699- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2700 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2701 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2702 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2703 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2704 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2705
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002706- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2707 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2708
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002709- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2710 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2711 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2712 case.)
2713
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002714- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2715 passed as unicode strings.
2716
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002717- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2718 See SF bug #683467.
2719
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002720- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2721 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2722
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002723- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2724
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002725- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2726
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002727- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2728 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2729 arguments.
2730
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002731- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2732 See SF bug #667147.
2733
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002734- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002735 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002736 See SF bug #676155.
2737
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002738- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002739 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002740 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2741 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2742 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2743 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2744 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2745 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002746
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002747Extension modules
2748-----------------
2749
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002750- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2751 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2752 tp_as_number pointer.
2753
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002754- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2755 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2756 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2757 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2758 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2759
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002760- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2761
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002762- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2763
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002764- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002765 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002766 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2767 patch #678531.)
2768
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002769- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2770 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2771
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002772- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2773 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2774
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002775- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2776
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002777- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2778 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2779 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2780
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002781- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2782
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002783- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2784 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2785
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002786- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002787
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002788- datetime changes:
2789
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002790 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2791
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002792 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2793 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2794 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2795 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2796 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2797 now.
2798
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002799 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002800 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2801 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002802
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002803 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002804 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002805 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2806 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2807 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2808 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002809
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002810 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2811 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2812 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002813 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2814
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002815 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2816 by a later example coded by Guido.
2817
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002818 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002819 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
2820 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
2821 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002822 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
2823 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
2824
2825 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
2826 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
2827 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
2828 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
2829 tzinfo subclass instance.
2830
2831 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
2832 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
2833 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2834 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2835 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2836 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2837 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2838 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002839
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002840 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2841 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2842 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2843 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2844 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002845 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2846
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002847 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002848
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002849 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2850 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2851 as a naive datetime object.
2852
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002853 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2854 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2855 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2856
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002857 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2858 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2859 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2860 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2861 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2862 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2863 comparison.
2864
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002865 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2866 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2867 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2868 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002869 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002870
2871 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002872
2873 and ::
2874
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002875 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2876
2877 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2878 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2879 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2880 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2881
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002882 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2883 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2884 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2885 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2886 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2887
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002888 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2889 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002890 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2891 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002892
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002893Library
2894-------
2895
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002896- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2897 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2898
2899- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2900 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2901 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2902 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2903 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2904 See PEP 307 for details.
2905
2906- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
2907 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
2908
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002909- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
2910 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002911 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002912 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
2913 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002914 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002915
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00002916- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
2917 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
2918
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002919- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
2920 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
2921 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
2922
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00002923- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
2924
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00002925- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
2926 exception.
2927
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00002928- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
2929 class.
2930
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00002931- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
2932 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
2933 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
2934
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00002935- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
2936 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
2937
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002938- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00002939 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
2940 See SF bug #659228.
2941
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00002942- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
2943 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
2944 See SF patch #651082.
2945
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00002946- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002947
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00002948- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
2949 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
2950
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002951- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002952 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002953
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00002954- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
2955 DOS paths from other platforms.
2956
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002957Tools/Demos
2958-----------
2959
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002960- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
2961 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
2962 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
2963 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
2964 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
2965 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
2966 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
2967 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
2968 example:
2969
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00002970 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
2971 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002972
2973 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
2974
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002975
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002976Build
2977-----
2978
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002979- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
2980 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
2981 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002982 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
2983
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002984 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
2985
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00002986- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
2987 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
2988 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
2989 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
2990 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
2991 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
2992 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
2993 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
2994 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
2995
2996- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
2997 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
2998 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
2999 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3000
3001- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3002 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3003
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003004C API
3005-----
3006
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003007- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3008 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003009
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003010- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3011 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3012 tp_as_number pointer.
3013
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003014- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3015 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3016 (SF #681367)
3017
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003018- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3019 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3020 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3021 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003022
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003023Tests
3024-----
3025
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003026- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003027 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3028 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3029 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3030 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3031 pydoc.)
3032
3033- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3034
3035- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003036
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003037Windows
3038-------
3039
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003040- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3041 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3042 time).
3043
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003044- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3045 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3046
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003047- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3048 release without strong cryptography.
3049
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003050- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003051 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003052
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003053- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3054 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3055
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003056Mac
3057---
3058
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003059- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3060 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003061
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003062- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3063 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3064 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003065
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003066- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3067 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003068
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003069- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3070 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3071 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3072 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003073
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003074- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003075 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3076 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3077 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003078
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003079
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003080What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003081=================================
3082
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003083*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003084
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003085Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003086--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003087
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003088- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3089
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003090- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3091 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003092 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003093 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003094 a different meaning than before.
3095
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003096- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003097 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003098 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003099
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003100- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003101 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003102 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003103
3104- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3105 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3106 and deallocation.
3107
3108- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3109 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3110
3111- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3112 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3113 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3114 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3115 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3116
3117- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3118 now detected by the garbage collector.
3119
3120- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3121 [SF bug 519621]
3122
3123- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3124 identifier.
3125
3126- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3127 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3128 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3129 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3130 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3131 [SF bug 563060]
3132
3133- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3134 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3135 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3136 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3137 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3138
3139- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3140 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3141 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3142
3143- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3144
3145- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3146 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3147 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3148 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3149 state of the slots would be lost.)
3150
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003151Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003152-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003153
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003154- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003155 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3156 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3157 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3158 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003159 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3160 Jython 2.1.
3161
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003162- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003163 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003164 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3165 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3166 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3167 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3168 these, see PEP 302.
3169
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003170- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3171 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3172 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3173
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003174- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3175 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3176 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3177
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003178- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3179 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3180 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3181
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003182- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3183 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3184 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3185 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3186 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3187 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3188 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3189 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3190 releases or implementations.
3191
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003192- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003193 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3194 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003195
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003196- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3197 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3198
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003199- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3200 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3201 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3202
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003203- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3204 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3205
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003206- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3207 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003208 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3209 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003210
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003211- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3212 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3213 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3214 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3215 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3216
3217 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3218 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3219 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3220 pattern.
3221
3222 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3223 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3224 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3225 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3226
3227 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3228 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3229 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3230 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3231 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3232 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3233
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003234- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3235 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3236 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3237 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3238 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3239 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3240 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3241 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003242
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003243- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3244 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3245 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3246 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3247 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003248 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3249 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3250 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3251 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3252 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3253 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3254 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003255
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003256- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3257 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3258
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003259- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3260 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3261 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3262 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3263 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3264 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3265 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3266 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3267 to Zack Weinberg!
3268
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003269- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3270 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3271 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3272 type. This has been fixed now.
3273
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003274- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3275 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3276 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3277
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003278- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3279 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3280 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3281 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3282 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3283 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3284 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3285 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003286 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003287
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003288- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3289 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3290 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003291
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003292- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3293 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3294 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3295 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3296 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3297 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3298 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3299 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003300 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003301 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3302 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3303
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003304- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3305 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3306 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3307 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3308 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3309 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3310 this.)
3311
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003312- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3313 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003314 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003315 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003316 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3317 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003318 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3319 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003320
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003321- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3322 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3323 currently running.
3324
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003325- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3326 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3327 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3328 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3329
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003330- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3331 as directory names.
3332
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003333- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3334 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3335
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003336- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3337 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3338
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003339- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003340 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3341 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003342
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003343- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3344 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3345 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3346 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3347 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3348
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003349- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3350 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3351 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3352 removed.
3353
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003354- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3355 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3356 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3357
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003358- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3359 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3360 to __debug__.
3361
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003362- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3363 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3364 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3365
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003366- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3367 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3368 deprecated now.
3369
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003370- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3371 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3372 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003373
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003374- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3375 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3376 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3377 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3378 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003379
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003380- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3381 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3382
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003383- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3384 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3385 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003386 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003387 is backward compatible.
3388
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003389- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3390 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3391 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3392 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3393 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3394
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003395- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3396 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3397 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3398 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3399 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3400 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003401
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003402- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3403 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3404
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003405- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3406 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3407
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003408- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3409 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3410 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3411 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3412 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3413
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003414- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3415 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3416 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3417
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003418- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003419 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3420
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003421- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3422 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3423 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003424
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003425- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3426 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3427
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003428- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3429 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3430 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3431
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003432- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3433
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003434Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003435-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003436
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003437- Added three operators to the operator module:
3438 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3439 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3440 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3441
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003442- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3443
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003444- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3445 archives.
3446
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003447- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3448 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3449 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3450
3451 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3452
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003453- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3454 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3455 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003456 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003457
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003458- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3459 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3460 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3461 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003462 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3463 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3464 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3465 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003466
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003467- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3468 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003469
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003470- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3471
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003472- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3473 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3474
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003475- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3476 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3477 supported.
3478
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003479- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3480
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003481- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3482 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003483
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003484- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3485 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3486
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003487- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3488
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003489- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3490 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3491
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003492- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3493 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3494 functions but callable type objects.
3495
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003496- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003497 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003498 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003499
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003500- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3501 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003502
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003503- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3504 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003505
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003506- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3507 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3508 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3509 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3510
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003511- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3512 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003513
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003514- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3515 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3516 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3517 and __imul__.
3518
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003519- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003520 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3521 is called.
3522
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003523- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3524 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3525 interpreter was compiled.
3526
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003527- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3528 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3529 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003530 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003531 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3532 1, not 2.
3533
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003534- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3535 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3536 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3537 limit.
3538
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003539- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3540 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3541 bug #623464.
3542
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003543- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3544 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3545 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3546 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3547
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003548Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003549-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003550
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003551- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3552
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003553- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3554 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3555 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3556 with Python 2.3a2.
3557
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003558- os.path exposes getctime.
3559
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003560- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003561 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003562 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003563 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003564 unit tests of floating point results.
3565
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003566- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3567 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3568 has been increased.
3569
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003570- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3571 executed.
3572
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003573- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3574 postinstallation script.
3575
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003576- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3577 test the current module.
3578
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003579- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003580 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3581 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3582 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3583 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3584
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003585- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003586 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003587 Ward's Optik package.
3588
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003589- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3590 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3591 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3592 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3593
3594- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3595 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003596 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003597
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003598- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3599 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3600 shelf are binary pickles.
3601
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003602- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3603 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3604
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003605- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3606 modules are iterators now.
3607
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003608- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3609 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3610 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3611 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3612 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3613 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003614
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003615- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3616 with their entity value.
3617
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003618- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3619
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003620- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3621 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003622
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003623- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3624 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003625 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003626
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003627- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3628 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3629 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3630 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3631 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3632 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3633 main():
3634
3635 import locale
3636 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3637
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003638- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3639 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3640
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003641- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3642 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3643 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3644 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3645 to the new standard.
3646
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003647- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3648 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3649 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3650 an extension to the database.
3651
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003652- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3653 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3654 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3655 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003656 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003657
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003658- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003659 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003660
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003661- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3662 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3663 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3664 bounded integers.
3665
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003666- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3667 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3668 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3669 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3670 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3671 in existence.
3672
3673 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3674 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3675 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3676 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3677 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3678 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3679
3680 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3681 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3682 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3683 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3684
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003685- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3686 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3687 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3688
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003689- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3690
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003691- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3692 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3693 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3694 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3695
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003696- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3697 argument.
3698
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003699- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3700 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3701 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3702 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3703 [SF patch 560794].
3704
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003705- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3706 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3707 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003708 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3709 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3710 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003711
3712- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3713 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003714
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003715- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3716 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3717 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3718 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003719
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003720- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3721 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3722 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3723 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3724 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3725
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003726- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003727
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003728- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3729
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003730- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3731 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3732 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3733 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3734 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3735 identical to None.
3736
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003737- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3738 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3739 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3740 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3741 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3742 results now.
3743
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003744- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3745 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3746
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003747- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3748 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3749 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3750 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3751 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3752 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3753 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3754 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3755
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003756- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3757
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003758- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3759 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3760
3761- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3762 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3763 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3764 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3765 and other systems.
3766
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003767- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3768 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3769 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3770 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 +00003771 work well with these.
3772
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003773- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3774
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003775- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003776 connections.
3777
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003778- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3779 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3780 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3781
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003782- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3783 sets
3784
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003785- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3786 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3787 name.
3788
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003789- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3790 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3791 passed in.
3792
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003793- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003794 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003795 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3796 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003797
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003798- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3799
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003800- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3801
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003802- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3803 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3804 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3805
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003806- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3807 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3808 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3809 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003810 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003811
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003812- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003813 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003814 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003815
3816- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3817 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3818 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3819
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003820- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00003821 the value of its expression argument.
3822
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003823- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
3824 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
3825 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
3826
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00003827- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
3828 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
3829 skipstone browser was included.
3830
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00003831- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
3832 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
3833
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003834Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003835-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003836
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003837- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3838 names in addition to accepting file names.
3839
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003840- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3841 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3842 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3843 still used and useful.)
3844
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003845- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3846 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3847 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3848 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003849
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003850- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3851 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3852 the generated binary.
3853
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003854Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003855-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003856
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003857- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3858
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003859- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3860 except in the hands of experts.
3861
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003862- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003863 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3864 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3865 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003866
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003867- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3868 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3869 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3870 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3871 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3872 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3873 builds.
3874
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003875- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3876 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3877 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3878 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3879 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3880 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3881 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3882 new type.
3883
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003884- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003885
3886 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3887 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3888 positive infinities.
3889
3890 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3891 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3892 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3893 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3894 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3895 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3896 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3897
3898 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3899
3900 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3901
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003902- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3903 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3904 size of the executable.
3905
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003906- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
3907 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
3908 configure script. On other platforms, remove
3909 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00003910
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00003911- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
3912
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00003913- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
3914 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
3915 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00003916
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00003917- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
3918 well as Unix.
3919
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00003920- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
3921 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
3922 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
3923 modules in the README file for details.
3924
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003925C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003926-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003927
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003928- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
3929 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003930 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00003931 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003932 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003933
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003934- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
3935 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
3936 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
3937 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
3938 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
3939 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003940 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003941 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
3942 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
3943 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
3944 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
3945 aligned.)
3946
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00003947- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
3948 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
3949 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
3950
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003951- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
3952 level.
3953
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00003954- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
3955 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
3956 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
3957 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
3958 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
3959
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00003960- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
3961 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
3962 code.
3963
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00003964- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
3965 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
3966 adjusting for negative indices.
3967
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003968- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
3969 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
3970 object.
3971
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00003972- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
3973 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
3974 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
3975
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003976- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
3977 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00003978
3979- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
3980
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00003981- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
3982 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
3983 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
3984 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
3985
3986- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
3987
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00003988- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003989
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003990- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00003991 without going through the buffer API.
3992
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003993- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00003994
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00003995- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
3996 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
3997 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
3998 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
3999
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004000- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4001 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4002
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004003- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004004 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4005
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004006New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004007-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004008
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004009- OpenVMS is now supported.
4010
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004011- AtheOS is now supported.
4012
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004013- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4014
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004015- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4016
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004017Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004018-----
4019
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004020- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4021 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4022 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004023
4024Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004025-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004026
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004027- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4028 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4029 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4030 bugs.
4031 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004032 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004033 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4034 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004035 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004036
4037- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004038 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004039
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004040- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4041 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4042
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004043- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4044 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004045 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004046 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4047
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004048- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4049 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4050 use files" uninstall option).
4051
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004052- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4053
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004054- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4055 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4056
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004057- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4058 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4059 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4060
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004061- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4062 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4063 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4064 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4065 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004066 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4067 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4068 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004069
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004070- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004071 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004072 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4073 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4074 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4075 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4076 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4077 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4078 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4079 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4080 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4081 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4082 work around.
4083
4084- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4085 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4086 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4087 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4088 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4089 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4090 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4091 specified with O_CREAT too).
4092
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004093Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004094----
4095
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004096- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004097
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004098- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4099 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4100 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4101
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004102- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4103 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4104 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4105
4106- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4107 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4108 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4109 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4110 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4111 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4112 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4113 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004114
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004115- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4116 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4117 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004118
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004119- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4120 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4121 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4122 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4123 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004124
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004125- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4126 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4127 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004128
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004129- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4130 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004131
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004132- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4133 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4134 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4135 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4136 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004137
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004138- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4139 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4140 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4141
4142- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4143 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4144 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004145
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004146- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4147 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4148 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4149 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004150 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004151
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004152- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4153 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004154
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004155- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4156 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004157
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004158- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004159 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004160 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4161 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004162
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004163
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004164What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004165===============================
4166
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004167*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4168
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004169Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004170--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004171
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004172- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4173 with a custom metaclass.
4174
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004175Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004176-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004177
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004178- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4179 are proxies.
4180
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004181Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004182-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004183
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004184- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4185 very short strings.
4186
4187- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4188 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4189 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4190 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4191 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4192
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004193Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004194-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004195
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004196- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4197 close or delete time).
4198
4199- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4200 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4201
4202- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4203
4204- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004205 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004206
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004207Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004208-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004209
4210Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004211-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004212
4213C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004214-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004215
4216New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004217-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004218
4219Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004220-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004221
4222Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004223-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004224
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004225- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4226
4227- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4228 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4229
4230- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4231 deleted at process exit time.
4232
4233- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4234 in backslash.
4235
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004236Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004237----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004238
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004239- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4240 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4241 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4242
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004243
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004244What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004245===========================
4246
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004247*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4248
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004249Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004250--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004251
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004252- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4253 been extensively updated. See
4254
4255 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4256
4257 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4258
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004259- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4260 deleted!
4261
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004262- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4263 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4264 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4265 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4266 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4267
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004268- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4269
4270 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4271 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4272
4273 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4274 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4275 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4276 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4277 supported anyway.
4278
4279 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4280 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4281
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004282- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4283 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4284 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4285 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4286 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004287
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004288- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4289 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4290 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4291
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004292Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004293-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004294
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004295- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4296 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4297 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4298 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4299 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4300 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004301 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4302 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4303 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4304 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004305
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004306- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4307 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4308 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4309
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004310Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004311-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004312
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004313- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4314
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004315Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004316-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004317
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004318- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4319 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4320 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4321 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4322 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4323 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4324
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004325- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4326
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004327- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4328
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004329- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4330
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004331- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4332 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4333 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4334
4335- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4336
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004337Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004338-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004339
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004340- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4341 off a search on Google.
4342
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004343Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004344-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004345
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004346- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4347 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4348 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4349 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4350 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4351 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4352 other platforms should do likewise.
4353
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004354- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4355 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4356 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4357
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004358C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004359-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004360
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004361- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4362 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4363 producing key-value pairs.
4364
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004365- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004366 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004367 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4368 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4369 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4370 previously went unchallenged.
4371
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004372New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004373-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004374
4375Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004376-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004377
4378Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004379-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004380
4381Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004382----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004383
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004384- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4385 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004386
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004387- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4388 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4389 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4390 home.
4391
4392
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004393What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004394===========================
4395
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004396*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4397
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004398Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004399--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004400
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004401- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4402 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004403
4404 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004405 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004406
4407 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4408 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004409 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004410 This needs to be documented.
4411
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004412- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4413 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4414
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004415- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4416 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4417 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4418
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004419- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4420 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4421
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004422- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4423 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4424 class forbids it).
4425
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004426- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4427 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4428 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4429
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004430- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4431
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004432Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004433-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004434
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004435- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4436 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004437 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004438
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004439- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4440 (like 1 + '').
4441
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004442Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004443-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004444
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004445- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4446 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4447 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4448 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004449 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004450 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4451
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004452- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4453 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4454 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4455 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4456
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004457- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4458 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004459 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4460 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4461 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004462
4463- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4464 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004465
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004466- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4467 bytes on its input.
4468
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004469Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004470-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004471
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004472- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004473 convenience function.
4474
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004475- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4476 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4477 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004478 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4479 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4480 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4481 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4482 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4483 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004484
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004485- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4486 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4487 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4488 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4489
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004490- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4491 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4492 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4493
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004494- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4495 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4496 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4497 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4498
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004499- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4500 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004501 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004502 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4503 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4504 new -l and -e options.
4505
4506- statcache is now deprecated.
4507
4508- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4509 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004510 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004511 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4512 time properly taken into account.
4513
4514- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4515 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4516 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4517 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4518
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004519Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004520-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004521
4522Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004523-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004524
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004525- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4526 is built with libdb3 if available.
4527
4528- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4529
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004530C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004531-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004532
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004533- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4534 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4535 PySequence_Size().
4536
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004537- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4538
4539- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4540 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4541 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4542
4543- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4544 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4545
4546- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4547 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4548
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004549New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004550-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004551
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004552- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4553 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4554
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004555- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4556 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4557
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004558- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4559
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004560Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004561-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004562
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004563- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4564 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4565
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004566Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004567-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004568
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004569Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004570----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004571
4572- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4573 removed completely in the next release.
4574
4575- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4576 OSX.
4577
4578- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4579 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4580
4581- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4582
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004583
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004584What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004585===========================
4586
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004587*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4588
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004589Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004590--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004591
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004592- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004593 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004594 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004595 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4596 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004597 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4598 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004599 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4600 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004601
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004602- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4603 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4604
4605- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4606 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4607
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004608Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004609-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004610
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004611- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4612 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4613 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4614 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4615 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4616 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4617 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4618 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4619
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004620- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4621 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4622 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4623 example).
4624
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004625- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004626 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004627 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004628 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004629
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004630- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4631 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4632 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004633 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004634
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004635- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4636 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4637 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4638 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4639 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4640 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4641
4642 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4643
4644 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4645
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004646Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004647-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004648
4649- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4650
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004651- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4652
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004653- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4654 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004655
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004656- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4657 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4658 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4659 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4660 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4661 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004662 attributes.
4663
4664- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4665 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4666 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004667
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004668- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4669 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4670 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004671
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004672- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4673 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4674 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004675 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4676 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4677
4678- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4679 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004680
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004681Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004682-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004683
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004684- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4685 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4686
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004687- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4688 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4689 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4690 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4691
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004692- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4693 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4694 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4695 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4696
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004697 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4698 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4699 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4700 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4701 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4702 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4703 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4704 without losing information).
4705
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004706- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004707 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4708 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4709 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4710 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4711 module).
4712
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004713 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004714 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4715 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4716 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4717 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004718
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004719- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004720 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4721 encoding.
4722
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004723- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4724 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4725
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004726- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004727 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4728
4729- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4730 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4731 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4732 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4733
4734- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4735
4736- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4737 ON, and OFF.
4738
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004739- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4740 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4741
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004742Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004743-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004744
4745- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4746 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4747 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004748
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004749- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4750 been added: -X and -E.
4751
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004752Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004753-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004754
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004755- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4756 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4757
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004758C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004759-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004760
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004761- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4762 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4763 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4764 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4765 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4766
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004767- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4768 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4769 as long) arguments.
4770
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004771- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4772 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4773 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4774 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4775 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4776 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4777
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004778- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4779 input.
4780
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004781New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004782-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004783
4784Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004785-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004786
4787Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004788-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004789
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004790- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4791 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4792 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4793
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004794- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4795 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4796 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004797 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004798
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004799 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4800 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4801 import signal
4802 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004803
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004804 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004805 while 1:
4806 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004807 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004808 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4809 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4810 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4811 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004812
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004813
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004814What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4815===========================
4816
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004817*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4818
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004819Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004820--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004821
4822- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
4823 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
4824 documentation for all operations on list objects.
4825
4826- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
4827 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
4828 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
4829 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
4830 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
4831 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
4832 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004833
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004834- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004835 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004836 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4837 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4838 associate a docstring with a property.
4839
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004840- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4841 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4842 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4843 other built-in object types.
4844
4845- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4846 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4847 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4848 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4849 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4850
4851- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4852 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4853
4854- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4855 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004856 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004857 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4858 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4859 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4860 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4861 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4862
4863- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4864 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4865 class.
4866
4867- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4868 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4869 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4870 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4871
4872- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4873 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4874 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4875 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4876
4877- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4878 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4879
4880- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4881 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4882 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4883 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4884 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004885 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004886 with the same value as s.
4887
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004888- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4889
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004890Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004891----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004892
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004893- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4894
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004895- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4896 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4897 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4898 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4899 objects.
4900
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004901- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4902 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004903 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4904 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
4905
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004906- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
4907 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
4908 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
4909
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004910Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004911-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004912
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00004913- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4914 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
4915 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
4916 by the instances.
4917
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00004918- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
4919 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
4920 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
4921
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004922- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
4923 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
4924 before the entire comparison is complete.
4925
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00004926- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4927 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
4928 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
4929
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00004930- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
4931 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
4932 getwriter().
4933
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004934- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
4935 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
4936
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00004937- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004938 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
4939 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
4940
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00004941- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
4942 iterable object.
4943
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004944- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
4945 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004946
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004947- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
4948 authentication.
4949
4950- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
4951 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004952
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004953- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00004954 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
4955 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
4956 a sample driver.)
4957
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004958Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004959-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004960
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004961- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
4962 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
4963 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
4964 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
4965 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
4966 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
4967 kernel has large file support.
4968
4969- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
4970 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
4971 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
4972 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
4973 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
4974
4975- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
4976 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
4977 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
4978
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004979C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004980-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004981
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004982- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
4983 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
4984
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004985New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004986-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004987
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004988- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
4989 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
4990
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004991Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004992-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004993
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004994- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
4995 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
4996 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
4997 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
4998 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
4999
5000- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5001 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5002 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5003 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5004
5005- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5006 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5007
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005008Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005009-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005010
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005011- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005012 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5013 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005014
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005015
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005016What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5017===========================
5018
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005019*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5020
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005021Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005022----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005023
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005024- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5025 big to represent as a C double.
5026
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005027- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5028 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5029 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5030 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5031 restriction).
5032
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005033- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5034 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5035 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5036 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5037 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5038
5039 >>> dir([])
5040 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5041 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5042 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5043 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5044 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5045 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5046 'reverse', 'sort']
5047
5048 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5049
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005050- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005051 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5052 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5053 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5054 OverflowError exception.
5055
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005056- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005057 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005058 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5059 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5060 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5061 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5062 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005063 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005064 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5065 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5066
5067 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5068 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5069 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5070 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005071
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005072- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005073 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5074 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5075 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5076 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5077 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5078 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5079 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5080 once it is created.
5081
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005082- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5083 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5084 (key, value) pairs.
5085
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005086- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005087 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5088 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5089
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005090- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5091 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5092 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5093 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5094 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005095
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005096- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005097 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5098 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5099
5100 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5101
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005102- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005103 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5104
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005105Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005106-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005107
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005108- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005109 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5110 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005111
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005112- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5113 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5114 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5115 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5116 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5117 in this area anymore).
5118
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005119- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5120 threading.Timer.
5121
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005122- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5123 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5124
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005125- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005126 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5127
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005128- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005129 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5130 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5131 converted to Python longs.
5132
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005133- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005134 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5135
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005136- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5137 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5138 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5139
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005140Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005141-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005142
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005143- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5144 division operators as per PEP 238.
5145
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005146Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005147-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005148
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005149- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5150 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5151 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5152 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5153
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005154C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005155-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005156
5157- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005158
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005159- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5160 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005161 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005162
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005163 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5164 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005165 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005166 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005167
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005168- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005169 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5170 module:
5171
5172 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005173
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005174 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5175 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005176
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005177 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5178 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005179
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005180 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5181
5182 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5183
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005184- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005185 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5186 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5187 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005188
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005189New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005190-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005191
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005192- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5193 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5194 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5195 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5196 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005197
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005198Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005199-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005200
5201Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005202-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005203
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005204- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5205 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5206 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5207 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005208 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5209 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5210 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5211 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5212 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005213
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005214- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005215 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5216
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005217
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005218What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5219===========================
5220
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005221*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5222
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005223Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005224-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005225
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005226- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5227 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5228
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005229- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5230 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5231 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005232
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005233- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5234 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5235 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5236 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005237
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005238- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5239
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005240- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005241
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005242Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005243-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005244
5245- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005246 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005247 the module docstring for details.
5248
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005249Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005250-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005251
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005252- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005253 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5254 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5255 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005256
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005257- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5258 Nick Mathewson.
5259
5260Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005261----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005262
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005263- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5264 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5265 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5266 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5267 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5268 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5269 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5270 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5271
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005272- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5273 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5274 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5275 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5276
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005277- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5278 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5279 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5280 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5281 come a long way).
5282
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005283- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5284 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5285 write filters for these warnings).
5286
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005287- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5288 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5289 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5290 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5291 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5292
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005293- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5294 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5295 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5296 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5297 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5298 older distribution.
5299
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005300Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005301-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005302
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005303- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5304 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005305 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005306
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005307- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5308 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5309 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5310
5311- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5312
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005313- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5314
5315- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5316
5317- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5318
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005319- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005320
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005321- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5322
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005323New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005324-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005325
5326C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005327-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005328
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005329- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5330 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5331 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5332 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5333 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5334 against buffer overruns.
5335
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005336- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005337 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5338 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005339 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5340 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5341 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5342
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005343- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5344 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5345 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5346 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5347 deprecated.
5348
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005349Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005350-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005351
5352- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5353 relevant is found.
5354
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005355
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005356What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005357===========================
5358
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005359*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5360
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005361Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005362----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005363
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005364- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5365 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5366 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5367 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5368 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5369 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5370 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5371 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005372 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005373 repaired.
5374
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005375- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005376 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005377 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5378 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5379 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5380 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5381 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5382 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5383 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5384 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5385
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005386- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5387 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5388 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5389 leading BMO character).
5390
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005391- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5392 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5393 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5394
5395 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5396 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5397 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005398
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005399 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5400 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5401 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5402 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5403 for various simple to use conversions.
5404
5405 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5406 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5407
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005408 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5409 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5410 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5411 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5412 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5413 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5414 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5415 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5416 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5417 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5418 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5419 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5420 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5421 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5422 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005423
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005424- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5425 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5426 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005427 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005428 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005429
5430 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005431 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5432 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5433 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5434 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5435 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005436 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5437 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005438
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005439 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5440 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5441 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005442 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005443
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005444- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5445 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5446 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5447 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5448 floating arithmetic,
5449
5450 x = 9007199254740992.0
5451 print long(x)
5452
5453 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5454 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5455 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5456 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5457 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5458 functions are of good quality).
5459
5460 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5461 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5462 algorithms to break.
5463
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005464- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5465 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5466 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5467 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5468 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5469 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5470 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5471 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5472 order.
5473
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005474- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5475 operation along the most common code paths.
5476
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005477- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5478 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5479
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005480- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5481 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5482 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5483 {}.update(UserDict())
5484
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005485- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5486 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5487 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5488 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5489 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5490 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5491 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5492 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5493
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005494- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005495 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005496
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005497 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005498 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5499 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005500 join() method of strings
5501 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005502 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5503 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005504 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005505 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005506
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005507- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5508 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5509
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005510- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5511 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5512
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005513- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5514 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5515 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5516 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5517
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005518- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5519 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005520 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005521 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5522 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005523
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005524- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5525
5526
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005527Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005528-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005529
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005530- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005531 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005532 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5533 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5534
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005535- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5536 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5537
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005538- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5539 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5540 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5541 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5542
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005543- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5544 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5545 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5546
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005547- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5548
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005549- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5550
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005551- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5552 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5553 that are still imported into string.py).
5554
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005555- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5556
5557- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5558 Now it does.
5559
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005560- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5561
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005562- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5563 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5564 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5565 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5566 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005567 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5568 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005569
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005570- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5571 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5572 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5573 'help(object)'.
5574
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005575Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005576-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005577
5578- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005579 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005580 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5581 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5582
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005583- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005584 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5585 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005586
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005587C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005588-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005589
5590- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5591 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005592
5593----
5594
5595**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**