blob: f24adc55a98db7f79c84a55a5e69faf0188a63e6 [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Skip Montanaro4a385832002-09-20 17:08:52 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00007What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
10*Release date: DD-MMM-YYYY*
11
12Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +000015- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
16 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
17 be there.
18
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +000019- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
20 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
21 the LC_NUMERIC category.
22
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +000023- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
24 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
25 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
26
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +000027- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
28
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +000029- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
30 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
31 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +000032
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +000033- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
34 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
35
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +000036- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
37
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +000038- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
39 new documentation and modified profiler and bdb modules for more details
40
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +000041- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
42
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +000043- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
44
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +000045- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
46 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
47
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +000048- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
49 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
50 Fixes bug #858016 .
51
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +000052- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
53 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
54 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
55
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +000056- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
57 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
58 improves their performance (about 35%).
59
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +000060- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
61 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
62 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
63
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +000064- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
65 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
66 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
67 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
68
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +000069- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
70 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
71 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
72 length is not known).
73
74- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
75 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +000076 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
77 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +000078 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
79
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +000080- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
81 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
82
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +000083- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
84 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
85 keyword arguments.
86
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +000087- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
88 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
89 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
90
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +000091- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
92 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
93 cases.
94
95- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
96 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
97 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
98 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
99 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
100 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
101 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
102 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
103 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
104 a release build.
105
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +0000106- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
107 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
108
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +0000109- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +0000110 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +0000111
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +0000112- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
113 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
114 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
115 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
116 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
117 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
118 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
119 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
120 destroyed.
121
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +0000122- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
123 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
124 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
125 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
126 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
127 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
128 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
129 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
130
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +0000131- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
132 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
133 character other than a space.
134
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +0000135- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
136 by the function object or by the method object, the function
137 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
138 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
139 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
140 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
141 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
142 attributes with the same name.
143
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000144- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
145 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
146 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
147 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
148 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
149 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
150 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
151 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
152 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
153 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
154 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
155 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
156 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
157 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +0000158
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +0000159- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
160 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
161 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
162 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
163 This has been repaired.
164
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000165- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
166
167- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
168
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +0000169- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
170 over a sequence.
171
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +0000172- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000173 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +0000174
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +0000175- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
176
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +0000177- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
178 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
179 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
180 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
181 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
182 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
183 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
184 records with equal keys is unchanged).
185
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +0000186- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
187 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
188 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
189
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +0000190- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
191 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
192 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
193 freelist.
194
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +0000195- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
196 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
197
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +0000198- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
199 number.
200
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +0000201- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
202 a TypeError exception.
203
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +0000204- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
205 820195.
206
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +0000207- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
208 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
209 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
210
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +0000211- str and unicode builtin types now have rsplit() method that is
212 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
213 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +0000214
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +0000215- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
216 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
217 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
218
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000219- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
220 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000221 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000222
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000223- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +0000224 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
225 the first call.
226
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000227
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000228Extension modules
229-----------------
230
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +0000231- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
232 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
233 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
234 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
235 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
236 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
237 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +0000238
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +0000239- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
240
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +0000241- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
242
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +0000243- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
244 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
245
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +0000246- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
247 fewer false positives.
248
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +0000249- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
250 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
251
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +0000252- Bug #920575: A problem that _locale module segfaults on
253 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
254
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +0000255- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
256 scheme has been updated the same as for list objects. The improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +0000257 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
258 Also, array.extend() now accepts any iterable argument for repeated
259 appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +0000260
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +0000261- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
262 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
263 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
264 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
265
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +0000266- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
267 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
268 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
269 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
270 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
271 #897625.
272
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +0000273- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
274 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
275
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +0000276- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
277 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
278 and pops on either side of the deque.
279
280- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
281 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
282
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +0000283- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
284 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
285 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
286 other functions that expect a function argument.
287
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +0000288- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
289
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +0000290- os.getsid was added.
291
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +0000292- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
293 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
294 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
295
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +0000296- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
297
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +0000298- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
299
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +0000300- readline.clear_history was added.
301
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +0000302- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
303
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +0000304- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
305
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +0000306- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
307
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +0000308- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
309
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +0000310- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
311
312- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
313
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +0000314- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
315
316- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
317
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +0000318- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
319 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
320 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
321
322- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
323 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
324 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
325 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
326 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
327 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
328 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
329
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +0000330- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
331 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
332 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
333 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +0000334
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +0000335- itertools now has a new function, tee() which produces two independent
336 iterators from a single iterable.
337
338- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
339 of raising a TypeError exception.
340
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +0000341- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
342 as parameter.
343
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000344Library
345-------
346
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +0000347- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
348 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
349
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +0000350- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
351
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +0000352- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +0000353 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +0000354
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +0000355- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
356 that generate a *-debuginfo.rpm.
357
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +0000358- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
359
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +0000360- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
361 on cygwin and mingw32.
362
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +0000363- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
364
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +0000365- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
366 module.
367
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +0000368- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
369 installation scheme for all platforms.
370
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000371- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
372 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
373 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
374
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +0000375- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
376 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
377 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
378
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +0000379- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
380
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +0000381- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
382
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +0000383- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
384 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
385
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +0000386- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
387 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
388 type pattern with the same value exists.
389
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +0000390- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
391 when run from the command prompt).
392
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +0000393- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
394 not taken into consideration when caching value.
395
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +0000396- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
397 default sort).
398
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +0000399- Added global runctx function to profile module
400
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +0000401- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
402
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +0000403- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
404
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +0000405- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
406
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +0000407- The encodings package will now applies codec name aliases
408 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
409 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
410 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
411 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
412 accordingly.
413
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +0000414- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
415 decoding standards.
416
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +0000417- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
418 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
419 called for all requests.
420
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +0000421- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
422 they are passed to the compiler.
423
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +0000424- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
425 indent, width and depth.
426
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +0000427- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
428 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
429
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +0000430- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
431 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
432
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +0000433- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
434
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +0000435- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
436
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +0000437- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
438
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +0000439- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
440 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
441
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +0000442- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +0000443 for better performance.
444
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +0000445- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +0000446
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +0000447- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
448 a string).
449
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +0000450- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
451
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +0000452- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
453
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +0000454- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
455
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +0000456- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
457
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +0000458- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
459 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
460 list of fieldnames.
461
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +0000462- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
463 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
464
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +0000465- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
466
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +0000467- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
468 empty lists.
469
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +0000470- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
471 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
472 and shelves.
473
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +0000474- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
475 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
476
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +0000477- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +0000478 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
479 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +0000480
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +0000481- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
482 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +0000483 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +0000484
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +0000485- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +0000486 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
487 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
488
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +0000489- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
490 and removed in Py2.4.
491
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +0000492- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
493
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +0000494- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
495
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000496Tools/Demos
497-----------
498
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +0000499- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
500 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
501
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +0000502- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
503
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +0000504- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
505 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
506 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
507 destination in situations where both files are given.
508
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +0000509- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
510 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
511 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
512 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
513
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +0000514- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
515
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +0000516- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
517 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
518 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
519 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
520 now.
521
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000522- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
523 in effect
524
525- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
526 C-c C-h
527
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +0000528- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
529 -d option was given.
530
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000531Build
532-----
533
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +0000534- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
535 build under OS X.
536
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +0000537- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
538 --enable-profiling.
539
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +0000540- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
541 is configured --with-tsc.
542
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +0000543- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
544 on AMD64.
545
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +0000546- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
547 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
548
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +0000549- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
550 removed.
551
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +0000552- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
553 supported (see PEP 11).
554
555- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
556
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +0000557- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
558
559- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
560 (see PEP 11).
561
562- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
563 sizeof(char) must be 1.
564
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000565C API
566-----
567
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +0000568- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
569 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
570 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
571
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +0000572- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
573 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
574 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
575 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
576
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +0000577- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
578 generator objects.
579
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +0000580- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
581 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +0000582 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
583 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +0000584
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +0000585- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
586 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
587
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +0000588- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
589 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
590 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
591 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
592 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
593
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +0000594- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
595 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
596 about 10% faster.
597
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +0000598- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
599 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
600
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +0000601- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
602 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
603 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
604 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
605
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000606New platforms
607-------------
608
609Tests
610-----
611
612Windows
613-------
614
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +0000615- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
616 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
617 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
618 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
619
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +0000620- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
621 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
622 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
623
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000624Mac
625----
626
627
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000628What's New in Python 2.3 final?
629===============================
630
631*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
632
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000633IDLE
634----
635
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +0000636- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
637 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
638 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
639 context-menu actions.
640
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000641- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
642 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
643 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
644 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
645 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
646 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
647 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
648 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
649 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
650
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000651
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000652What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
653=============================================
654
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +0000655*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000656
657Core and builtins
658-----------------
659
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +0000660- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000661 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +0000662 comment at the end are still unsupported.
663
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000664Extension modules
665-----------------
666
667- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
668 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
669 than once. This has been fixed.
670
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +0000671- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
672 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
673 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
674 call.
675
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000676- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
677
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000678Library
679-------
680
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000681- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
682 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
683
684- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
685 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
686 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
687 restored.
688
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +0000689IDLE
690----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000691
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +0000692- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000693
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000694Build
695-----
696
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000697- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
698 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
699
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000700C API
701-----
702
703Windows
704-------
705
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +0000706- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
707 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
708
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000709- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
710
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000711Mac
712---
713
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000714- Various fixes to pimp.
715
716- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
717
718- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
719 more problems than it solves.
720
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000721
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000722What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
723=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000724
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +0000725*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
726
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000727Core and builtins
728-----------------
729
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +0000730- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
731 by sys.setcheckinterval().
732
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000733- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
734 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000735 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000736
737- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
738 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
739 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000740 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000741
742- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
743 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000744
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000745- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
746 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
747 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
748
749- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000750 770247.
751
752- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000753
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000754Extension modules
755-----------------
756
757- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
758 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
759
760- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
761
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +0000762- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
763
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +0000764- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
765 contained within the _strptime module.
766
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000767- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
768 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
769
770- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000771 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
772
773- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
774 the find_class attribute, if present.
775
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000776- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000777
778 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
779 (SF bug 763298).
780
781 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +0000782 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
783 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
784 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000785
786 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
787
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000788Library
789-------
790
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000791- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
792
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +0000793- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
794 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
795 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
796 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
797 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
798 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
799 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
800 or Tester().
801
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000802- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
803 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
804 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
805 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
806 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
807 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
808 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
809 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
810 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +0000811
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000812 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +0000813
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +0000814- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
815 weren't before was an oversight.
816
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000817- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
818 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
819
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +0000820- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
821 when there are no lines.
822
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +0000823- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
824 which could occur with Tk 8.4
825
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000826- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
827 to child processes.
828
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000829- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
830
831- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
832
833- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
834 xmlrpclib.
835
836- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
837 responses.
838
839- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
840 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
841
842- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
843 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
844 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
845
846- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
847 used as patterns.
848
849- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
850 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
851 than Tk 8.3.
852
853- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
854
855- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000856
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000857Tools/Demos
858-----------
859
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000860- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
861
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +0000862- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
863
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000864- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000865
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000866Build
867-----
868
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000869- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
870
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000871- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
872
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000873- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
874 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000875
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000876- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
877 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
878 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000879
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000880C API
881-----
882
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000883- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
884 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
885
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000886Windows
887-------
888
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000889- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
890 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
891 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
892 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
893 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
894 Python exception ::
895
896 thread.error: can't start new thread
897
898 is raised now.
899
900- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
901 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
902 instead of from DLL teardown.
903
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000904Mac
905---
906
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000907- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +0000908 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000909 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
910 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
911 the executable in the bundle.
912
913- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000914
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +0000915- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
916
917- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
918 on Panther.
919
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000920What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
921================================
922
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +0000923*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000924
925Core and builtins
926-----------------
927
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +0000928- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
929 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
930 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
931 with the -i option.
932
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +0000933- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
934 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
935
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +0000936- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
937 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
938
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +0000939- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
940 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
941 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
942 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
943 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
944 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
945 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
946 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
947 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
948 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
949 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
950 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
951 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +0000952
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000953- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
954 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
955 embedded in a lambda expression.
956
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +0000957- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
958 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
959 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
960 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
961 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
962
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000963- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
964 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
965 matches the restriction on classic classes.
966
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +0000967- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
968 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
969
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +0000970- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
971 It's writable again.
972
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +0000973- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
974 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
975 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +0000976 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +0000977
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000978- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
979 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
980 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
981
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000982Extension modules
983-----------------
984
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +0000985- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
986 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
987
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000988- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
989 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
990 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
991 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
992
993- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
994 collection.
995
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +0000996- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
997 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
998 unique within a single program run.
999
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00001000- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
1001 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
1002
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00001003- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
1004 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
1005
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00001006- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
1007 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00001008
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00001009- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
1010
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00001011- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
1012 Fixes SF bug #730685.
1013
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00001014- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
1015 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
1016 for many BSD-derived systems.
1017
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001018
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001019Library
1020-------
1021
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00001022- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
1023 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
1024 primary ones:
1025
1026 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
1027 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
1028 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
1029
1030 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
1031 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
1032 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
1033 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
1034 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
1035 framework features (which doctest lacks).
1036
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00001037- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
1038 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
1039 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
1040 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
1041 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
1042 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
1043 argument.
1044
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001045- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
1046 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
1047 in the archive.
1048
1049- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
1050 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
1051
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00001052- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
1053 569574).
1054
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001055- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
1056 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
1057 no more.
1058
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001059- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
1060 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
1061 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
1062 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
1063 code coverage.
1064
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001065- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
1066 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
1067 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001068 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
1069 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001070
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001071- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
1072 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
1073 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00001074 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001075
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00001076- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
1077
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00001078- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
1079 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
1080 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
1081 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
1082
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00001083- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
1084 handling.
1085
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00001086- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
1087 __doc__ of data descriptors.
1088
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00001089- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
1090 in socket.py.
1091
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00001092- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
1093
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00001094- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
1095 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
1096 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
1097 opener with proxy support.
1098
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001099- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
1100
1101- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
1102
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001103Tools/Demos
1104-----------
1105
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00001106- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
1107
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001108- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
1109
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001110- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
1111 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00001112
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00001113- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
1114 files.
1115
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001116Build
1117-----
1118
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001119- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00001120 different root directory.
1121
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001122C API
1123-----
1124
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00001125- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
1126 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
1127 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
1128 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
1129 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
1130 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
1131 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
1132 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
1133 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
1134 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
1135
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001136- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
1137 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
1138 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
1139 from Python.
1140
1141
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001142New platforms
1143-------------
1144
1145None this time.
1146
1147Tests
1148-----
1149
1150- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
1151 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
1152
1153Windows
1154-------
1155
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00001156- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
1157
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00001158- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
1159 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
1160 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
1161 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
1162 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
1163 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
1164 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
1165 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
1166 that's what it's for.
1167
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001168Mac
1169---
1170
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00001171- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
1172 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
1173 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
1174 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00001175- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
1176 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
1177- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001178
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001179SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
1180------------------------------------
1181
1182430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
1183598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
1184622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
1185661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
1186683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
1187697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
1188713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
1189724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
1190727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
1191729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
1192730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
1193731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
1194732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
1195733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
1196735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
1197740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
1198744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
1199745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
1200747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
1201749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
1202751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
1203753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
1204755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
1205757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
1206760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
1207
1208
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001209What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
1210================================
1211
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00001212*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001213
1214Core and builtins
1215-----------------
1216
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00001217- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
1218 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
1219
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00001220- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
1221 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
1222 and cannot be strings).
1223
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00001224- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
1225 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
1226 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
1227 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
1228
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00001229- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
1230 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
1231 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
1232 Python itself.
1233
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00001234- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
1235 the referenced object, if it has one.
1236
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00001237- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
1238 the thread started at
1239 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
1240
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00001241- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
1242 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
1243 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
1244 placed on a list index.
1245
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00001246- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
1247 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
1248 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
1249 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
1250
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001251- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
1252 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
1253 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
1254 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
1255 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
1256 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
1257 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
1258
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00001259- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
1260 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
1261 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
1262 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
1263 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
1264
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00001265- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
1266 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00001267
1268- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
1269 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
1270 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
1271 #693195.)
1272
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00001273- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
1274 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001275
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00001276- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00001277 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00001278 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
1279 interpreter executions, would fail.
1280
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00001281- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00001282 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00001283 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00001284
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001285Extension modules
1286-----------------
1287
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00001288- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
1289 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
1290 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
1291 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
1292
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00001293- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
1294 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
1295
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00001296- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
1297 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
1298 and Greg Chapman.)
1299
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00001300- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
1301 recursively.
1302
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00001303- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00001304 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
1305 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
1306 leaks.
1307
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00001308- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
1309
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00001310- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
1311 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
1312 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
1313 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
1314 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
1315 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
1316 #705836.
1317
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001318- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00001319 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
1320
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00001321- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
1322 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
1323 See SF bug #692416.
1324
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00001325- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
1326 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
1327
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00001328- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
1329 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
1330 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001331
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00001332- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00001333 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
1334 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
1335
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00001336- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
1337 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
1338 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
1339 timeouts to work properly.
1340
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001341Library
1342-------
1343
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00001344- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
1345 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
1346 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
1347 future release.
1348
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00001349- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
1350 for querying platform dependent features.
1351
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00001352- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00001353
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00001354- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
1355 pickle protocol versions.
1356
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00001357- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
1358 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
1359 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
1360
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00001361- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
1362
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00001363- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
1364 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
1365 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
1366 modules.
1367
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00001368- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
1369 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
1370 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
1371
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00001372- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
1373 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
1374
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00001375- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
1376 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
1377 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
1378
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001379- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00001380 MS Office extensions.
1381
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00001382- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
1383 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
1384
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00001385- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
1386 execution speed of expressions and statements.
1387
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001388- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
1389 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
1390 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
1391 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
1392 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
1393 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
1394
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00001395- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
1396 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
1397 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001398
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00001399- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
1400 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
1401 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
1402
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00001403- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
1404
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00001405- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
1406 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
1407 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
1408
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001409Tools/Demos
1410-----------
1411
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00001412- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
1413 See the module docstring for details.
1414
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001415Build
1416-----
1417
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00001418- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
1419 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001420
1421C API
1422-----
1423
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001424- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
1425
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00001426- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
1427 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
1428 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
1429
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001430- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
1431 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00001432
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001433 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
1434 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
1435 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00001436
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00001437- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00001438 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
1439
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00001440- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
1441 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
1442 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001443
1444New platforms
1445-------------
1446
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00001447None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001448
1449Tests
1450-----
1451
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00001452- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
1453 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001454
1455Windows
1456-------
1457
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00001458- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
1459 function.
1460
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00001461- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
1462 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001463
1464Mac
1465---
1466
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00001467- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
1468 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00001469
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00001470- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
1471 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001472
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00001473- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
1474 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
1475 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001476
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00001477- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00001478 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
1479 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001480
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00001481- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
1482 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001483
1484
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001485What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
1486=================================
1487
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00001488*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001489
1490Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00001491-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001492
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00001493- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
1494 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
1495 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
1496
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00001497- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
1498 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
1499 (SF patch #664376.)
1500
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00001501- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
1502 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
1503 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
1504 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
1505 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
1506 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00001507 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00001508
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00001509- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
1510 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
1511 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
1512 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001513 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00001514
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00001515- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
1516 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
1517 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
1518 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
1519 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
1520 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
1521 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
1522 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
1523 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
1524 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
1525 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
1526
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00001527- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
1528 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
1529 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
1530 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
1531 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
1532 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
1533
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00001534- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
1535 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
1536
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00001537- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
1538 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
1539 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
1540 case.)
1541
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00001542- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
1543 passed as unicode strings.
1544
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00001545- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
1546 See SF bug #683467.
1547
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00001548- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
1549 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
1550
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00001551- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
1552
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00001553- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
1554
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00001555- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
1556 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
1557 arguments.
1558
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00001559- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
1560 See SF bug #667147.
1561
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00001562- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001563 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00001564 See SF bug #676155.
1565
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00001566- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00001567 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00001568 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
1569 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
1570 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
1571 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
1572 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
1573 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00001574
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001575Extension modules
1576-----------------
1577
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00001578- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
1579 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
1580 tp_as_number pointer.
1581
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00001582- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
1583 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
1584 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
1585 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
1586 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
1587
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001588- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
1589
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00001590- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
1591
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00001592- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00001593 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00001594 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
1595 patch #678531.)
1596
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00001597- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
1598 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
1599
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00001600- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
1601 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
1602
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00001603- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
1604
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00001605- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
1606 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
1607 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
1608
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001609- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
1610
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00001611- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
1612 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
1613
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001614- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001615
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001616- datetime changes:
1617
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00001618 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
1619
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00001620 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
1621 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
1622 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
1623 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
1624 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
1625 now.
1626
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001627 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001628 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
1629 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001630
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001631 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001632 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001633 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
1634 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
1635 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
1636 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001637
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00001638 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
1639 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
1640 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001641 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
1642
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00001643 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
1644 by a later example coded by Guido.
1645
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001646 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001647 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
1648 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
1649 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001650 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
1651 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
1652
1653 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
1654 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
1655 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
1656 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
1657 tzinfo subclass instance.
1658
1659 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
1660 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
1661 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
1662 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
1663 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
1664 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
1665 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
1666 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001667
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001668 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
1669 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
1670 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
1671 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
1672 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001673 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
1674
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001675 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001676
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001677 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
1678 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
1679 as a naive datetime object.
1680
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00001681 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
1682 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
1683 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
1684
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00001685 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
1686 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
1687 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
1688 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
1689 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
1690 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
1691 comparison.
1692
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001693 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
1694 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
1695 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
1696 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001697 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001698
1699 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001700
1701 and ::
1702
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001703 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
1704
1705 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
1706 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
1707 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
1708 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
1709
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00001710 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
1711 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
1712 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
1713 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
1714 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
1715
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001716 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
1717 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00001718 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
1719 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001720
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001721Library
1722-------
1723
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001724- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
1725 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
1726
1727- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
1728 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
1729 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
1730 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
1731 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
1732 See PEP 307 for details.
1733
1734- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
1735 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
1736
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00001737- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
1738 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00001739 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001740 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
1741 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00001742 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00001743
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00001744- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
1745 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
1746
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001747- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
1748 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
1749 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
1750
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00001751- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
1752
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00001753- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
1754 exception.
1755
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00001756- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
1757 class.
1758
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00001759- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
1760 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
1761 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
1762
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00001763- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
1764 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
1765
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001766- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00001767 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
1768 See SF bug #659228.
1769
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00001770- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
1771 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
1772 See SF patch #651082.
1773
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00001774- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001775
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00001776- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
1777 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
1778
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00001779- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001780 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00001781
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00001782- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
1783 DOS paths from other platforms.
1784
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001785Tools/Demos
1786-----------
1787
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00001788- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
1789 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
1790 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
1791 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
1792 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
1793 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
1794 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
1795 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
1796 example:
1797
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00001798 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
1799 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00001800
1801 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
1802
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001803
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001804Build
1805-----
1806
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00001807- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
1808 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
1809 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001810 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
1811
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00001812 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
1813
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00001814- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
1815 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
1816 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
1817 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
1818 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
1819 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
1820 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
1821 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
1822 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
1823
1824- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
1825 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
1826 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
1827 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
1828
1829- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
1830 from the Tools/scripts directory.
1831
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001832C API
1833-----
1834
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001835- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
1836 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00001837
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00001838- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
1839 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
1840 tp_as_number pointer.
1841
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00001842- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
1843 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
1844 (SF #681367)
1845
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00001846- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
1847 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
1848 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
1849 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00001850
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001851Tests
1852-----
1853
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00001854- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001855 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
1856 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
1857 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
1858 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
1859 pydoc.)
1860
1861- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
1862
1863- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001864
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001865Windows
1866-------
1867
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00001868- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
1869 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
1870 time).
1871
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00001872- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
1873 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
1874
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00001875- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
1876 release without strong cryptography.
1877
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00001878- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001879 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00001880
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00001881- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
1882 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
1883
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001884Mac
1885---
1886
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00001887- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
1888 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001889
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00001890- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
1891 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
1892 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001893
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00001894- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
1895 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001896
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00001897- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
1898 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
1899 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
1900 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001901
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00001902- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00001903 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
1904 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
1905 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001906
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001907
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001908What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001909=================================
1910
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00001911*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001912
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001913Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001914--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001915
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00001916- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
1917
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001918- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
1919 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00001920 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001921 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00001922 a different meaning than before.
1923
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00001924- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001925 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00001926 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001927
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00001928- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00001929 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00001930 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00001931
1932- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
1933 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
1934 and deallocation.
1935
1936- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
1937 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
1938
1939- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
1940 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
1941 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
1942 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
1943 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
1944
1945- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
1946 now detected by the garbage collector.
1947
1948- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
1949 [SF bug 519621]
1950
1951- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
1952 identifier.
1953
1954- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
1955 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
1956 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
1957 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
1958 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
1959 [SF bug 563060]
1960
1961- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
1962 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
1963 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
1964 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
1965 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
1966
1967- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
1968 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
1969 not called. [SF bug #537450]
1970
1971- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
1972
1973- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
1974 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
1975 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
1976 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
1977 state of the slots would be lost.)
1978
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001979Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001980-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001981
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00001982- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00001983 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
1984 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
1985 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
1986 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00001987 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
1988 Jython 2.1.
1989
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001990- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00001991 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00001992 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
1993 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
1994 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
1995 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
1996 these, see PEP 302.
1997
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00001998- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
1999 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
2000 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
2001
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00002002- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
2003 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
2004 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
2005
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00002006- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
2007 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
2008 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
2009
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002010- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
2011 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
2012 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
2013 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
2014 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
2015 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
2016 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
2017 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
2018 releases or implementations.
2019
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002020- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002021 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
2022 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002023
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00002024- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
2025 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
2026
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002027- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
2028 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
2029 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
2030
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00002031- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
2032 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
2033
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002034- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
2035 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002036 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
2037 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002038
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00002039- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
2040 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
2041 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
2042 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
2043 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
2044
2045 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
2046 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
2047 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
2048 pattern.
2049
2050 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
2051 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
2052 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
2053 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
2054
2055 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
2056 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
2057 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
2058 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
2059 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
2060 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
2061
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00002062- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
2063 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
2064 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
2065 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
2066 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
2067 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
2068 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
2069 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00002070
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00002071- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
2072 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
2073 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
2074 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
2075 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002076 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
2077 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
2078 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
2079 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
2080 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
2081 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
2082 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002083
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00002084- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
2085 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
2086
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00002087- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
2088 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
2089 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
2090 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
2091 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
2092 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
2093 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
2094 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
2095 to Zack Weinberg!
2096
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00002097- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
2098 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
2099 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
2100 type. This has been fixed now.
2101
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00002102- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
2103 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
2104 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
2105
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002106- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
2107 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
2108 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
2109 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
2110 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
2111 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
2112 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
2113 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00002114 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002115
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00002116- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
2117 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
2118 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00002119
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002120- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
2121 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
2122 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
2123 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
2124 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
2125 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
2126 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
2127 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00002128 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002129 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
2130 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
2131
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00002132- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
2133 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
2134 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
2135 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
2136 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
2137 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
2138 this.)
2139
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002140- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
2141 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002142 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002143 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002144 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
2145 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00002146 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
2147 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002148
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002149- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
2150 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
2151 currently running.
2152
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00002153- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
2154 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
2155 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
2156 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
2157
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00002158- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
2159 as directory names.
2160
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00002161- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
2162 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
2163
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00002164- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
2165 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
2166
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00002167- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00002168 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
2169 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00002170
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00002171- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
2172 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
2173 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
2174 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
2175 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
2176
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00002177- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
2178 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
2179 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
2180 removed.
2181
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00002182- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
2183 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
2184 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
2185
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00002186- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
2187 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
2188 to __debug__.
2189
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00002190- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
2191 string to the left with zeros. For example,
2192 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
2193
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00002194- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
2195 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
2196 deprecated now.
2197
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00002198- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
2199 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
2200 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00002201
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00002202- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
2203 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
2204 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
2205 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
2206 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00002207
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00002208- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
2209 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
2210
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00002211- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
2212 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
2213 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002214 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00002215 is backward compatible.
2216
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00002217- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
2218 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
2219 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
2220 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
2221 could access a pointer to freed memory.
2222
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00002223- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
2224 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
2225 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
2226 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
2227 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
2228 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00002229
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00002230- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
2231 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
2232
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00002233- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
2234 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
2235
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00002236- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
2237 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
2238 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
2239 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
2240 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
2241
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00002242- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
2243 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
2244 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
2245
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002246- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00002247 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
2248
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00002249- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
2250 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
2251 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00002252
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00002253- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
2254 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
2255
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00002256- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
2257 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
2258 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
2259
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00002260- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
2261
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002262Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002263-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002264
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00002265- Added three operators to the operator module:
2266 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
2267 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
2268 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
2269
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00002270- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
2271
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002272- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
2273 archives.
2274
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00002275- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
2276 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
2277 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
2278
2279 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
2280
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00002281- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
2282 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
2283 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00002284 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00002285
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00002286- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
2287 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
2288 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
2289 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002290 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
2291 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
2292 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
2293 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00002294
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00002295- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
2296 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00002297
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00002298- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
2299
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00002300- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
2301 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
2302
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00002303- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
2304 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
2305 supported.
2306
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00002307- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
2308
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00002309- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
2310 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00002311
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00002312- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
2313 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
2314
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002315- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
2316
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00002317- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
2318 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
2319
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00002320- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
2321 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
2322 functions but callable type objects.
2323
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002324- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00002325 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002326 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00002327
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00002328- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
2329 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00002330
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00002331- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
2332 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00002333
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00002334- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
2335 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
2336 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
2337 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
2338
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00002339- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
2340 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00002341
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00002342- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
2343 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
2344 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
2345 and __imul__.
2346
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00002347- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00002348 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
2349 is called.
2350
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00002351- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
2352 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
2353 interpreter was compiled.
2354
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00002355- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
2356 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
2357 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00002358 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00002359 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
2360 1, not 2.
2361
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00002362- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
2363 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
2364 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
2365 limit.
2366
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00002367- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
2368 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
2369 bug #623464.
2370
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00002371- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
2372 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
2373 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
2374 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
2375
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002376Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002377-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002378
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00002379- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
2380
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00002381- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
2382 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
2383 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
2384 with Python 2.3a2.
2385
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00002386- os.path exposes getctime.
2387
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002388- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002389 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002390 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002391 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002392 unit tests of floating point results.
2393
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00002394- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
2395 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
2396 has been increased.
2397
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002398- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
2399 executed.
2400
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00002401- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
2402 postinstallation script.
2403
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00002404- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
2405 test the current module.
2406
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002407- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00002408 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
2409 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
2410 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
2411 this behavior needs to be controlled.
2412
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00002413- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002414 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00002415 Ward's Optik package.
2416
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00002417- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
2418 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
2419 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
2420 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
2421
2422- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
2423 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002424 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00002425
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00002426- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
2427 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
2428 shelf are binary pickles.
2429
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00002430- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
2431 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
2432
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00002433- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
2434 modules are iterators now.
2435
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00002436- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
2437 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
2438 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
2439 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
2440 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
2441 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00002442
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00002443- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
2444 with their entity value.
2445
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00002446- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
2447
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00002448- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
2449 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00002450
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00002451- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
2452 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00002453 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00002454
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00002455- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
2456 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
2457 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
2458 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
2459 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
2460 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
2461 main():
2462
2463 import locale
2464 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
2465
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00002466- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
2467 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
2468
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00002469- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
2470 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
2471 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
2472 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
2473 to the new standard.
2474
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00002475- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
2476 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
2477 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
2478 an extension to the database.
2479
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00002480- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
2481 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
2482 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
2483 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00002484 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00002485
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00002486- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002487 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00002488
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002489- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
2490 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
2491 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
2492 bounded integers.
2493
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00002494- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
2495 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
2496 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
2497 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
2498 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
2499 in existence.
2500
2501 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
2502 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
2503 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
2504 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
2505 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
2506 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
2507
2508 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
2509 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
2510 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
2511 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
2512
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00002513- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
2514 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
2515 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
2516
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00002517- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
2518
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00002519- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
2520 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
2521 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
2522 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
2523
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00002524- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
2525 argument.
2526
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00002527- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
2528 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
2529 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
2530 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
2531 [SF patch 560794].
2532
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00002533- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
2534 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
2535 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00002536 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
2537 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
2538 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00002539
2540- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
2541 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00002542
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00002543- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
2544 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
2545 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
2546 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00002547
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00002548- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
2549 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
2550 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
2551 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
2552 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
2553
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00002554- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00002555
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00002556- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
2557
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00002558- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
2559 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
2560 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
2561 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
2562 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
2563 identical to None.
2564
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00002565- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
2566 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
2567 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
2568 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
2569 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
2570 results now.
2571
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00002572- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
2573 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
2574
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002575- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
2576 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
2577 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
2578 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
2579 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
2580 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
2581 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
2582 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
2583
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00002584- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
2585
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00002586- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
2587 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
2588
2589- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
2590 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
2591 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
2592 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
2593 and other systems.
2594
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00002595- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
2596 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
2597 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
2598 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 +00002599 work well with these.
2600
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00002601- compileall now supports quiet operation.
2602
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002603- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00002604 connections.
2605
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00002606- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
2607 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
2608 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
2609
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00002610- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
2611 sets
2612
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00002613- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
2614 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
2615 name.
2616
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00002617- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
2618 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
2619 passed in.
2620
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002621- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00002622 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00002623 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
2624 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00002625
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00002626- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
2627
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00002628- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
2629
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00002630- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
2631 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
2632 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
2633
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00002634- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
2635 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
2636 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
2637 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00002638 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00002639
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002640- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00002641 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002642 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00002643
2644- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
2645 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
2646 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
2647
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002648- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00002649 the value of its expression argument.
2650
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00002651- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
2652 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
2653 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
2654
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00002655- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
2656 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
2657 skipstone browser was included.
2658
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00002659- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
2660 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
2661
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002662Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002663-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002664
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00002665- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
2666 names in addition to accepting file names.
2667
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00002668- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
2669 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
2670 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
2671 still used and useful.)
2672
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00002673- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
2674 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
2675 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
2676 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00002677
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00002678- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
2679 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
2680 the generated binary.
2681
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002682Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002683-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002684
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00002685- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
2686
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00002687- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
2688 except in the hands of experts.
2689
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002690- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00002691 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
2692 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
2693 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00002694
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00002695- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
2696 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
2697 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
2698 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
2699 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
2700 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
2701 builds.
2702
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00002703- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
2704 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
2705 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
2706 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
2707 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
2708 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
2709 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
2710 new type.
2711
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00002712- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00002713
2714 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
2715 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
2716 positive infinities.
2717
2718 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
2719 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
2720 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
2721 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
2722 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
2723 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
2724 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
2725
2726 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
2727
2728 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
2729
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00002730- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
2731 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
2732 size of the executable.
2733
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00002734- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
2735 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
2736 configure script. On other platforms, remove
2737 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00002738
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00002739- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
2740
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00002741- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
2742 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
2743 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00002744
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00002745- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
2746 well as Unix.
2747
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00002748- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
2749 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
2750 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
2751 modules in the README file for details.
2752
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002753C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002754-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002755
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00002756- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
2757 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00002758 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00002759 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00002760 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00002761
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002762- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
2763 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
2764 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
2765 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
2766 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
2767 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002768 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002769 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
2770 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
2771 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
2772 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
2773 aligned.)
2774
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00002775- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
2776 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
2777 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
2778
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00002779- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
2780 level.
2781
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00002782- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
2783 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
2784 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
2785 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
2786 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
2787
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00002788- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
2789 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
2790 code.
2791
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00002792- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
2793 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
2794 adjusting for negative indices.
2795
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00002796- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
2797 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
2798 object.
2799
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00002800- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
2801 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
2802 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
2803
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00002804- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
2805 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00002806
2807- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
2808
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00002809- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
2810 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
2811 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
2812 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
2813
2814- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
2815
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00002816- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00002817
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002818- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00002819 without going through the buffer API.
2820
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002821- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00002822
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00002823- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
2824 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
2825 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
2826 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
2827
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002828- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
2829 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
2830
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00002831- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00002832 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
2833
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002834New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002835-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002836
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00002837- OpenVMS is now supported.
2838
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00002839- AtheOS is now supported.
2840
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00002841- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
2842
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00002843- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
2844
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002845Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002846-----
2847
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00002848- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
2849 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
2850 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002851
2852Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002853-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002854
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002855- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
2856 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
2857 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
2858 bugs.
2859 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002860 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00002861 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
2862 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002863 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00002864
2865- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00002866 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002867
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00002868- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
2869 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
2870
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00002871- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
2872 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002873 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00002874 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
2875
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00002876- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
2877 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
2878 use files" uninstall option).
2879
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00002880- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
2881
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00002882- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
2883 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
2884
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00002885- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
2886 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
2887 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
2888
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00002889- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
2890 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
2891 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
2892 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
2893 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00002894 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
2895 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
2896 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00002897
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002898- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002899 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002900 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
2901 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
2902 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
2903 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
2904 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
2905 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
2906 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
2907 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
2908 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
2909 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
2910 work around.
2911
2912- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
2913 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
2914 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
2915 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
2916 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
2917 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
2918 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
2919 specified with O_CREAT too).
2920
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002921Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002922----
2923
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002924- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002925
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00002926- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
2927 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
2928 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
2929
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002930- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
2931 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
2932 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
2933
2934- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
2935 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
2936 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
2937 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
2938 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
2939 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
2940 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
2941 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002942
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00002943- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
2944 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
2945 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002946
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002947- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
2948 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
2949 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
2950 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
2951 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002952
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002953- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
2954 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
2955 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002956
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002957- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
2958 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002959
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002960- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
2961 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
2962 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
2963 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
2964 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002965
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002966- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
2967 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
2968 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
2969
2970- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
2971 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
2972 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002973
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002974- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
2975 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
2976 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
2977 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002978 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002979
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002980- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
2981 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002982
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002983- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
2984 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002985
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00002986- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00002987 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00002988 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
2989 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002990
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002991
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002992What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002993===============================
2994
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002995*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
2996
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002997Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002998--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002999
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003000- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
3001 with a custom metaclass.
3002
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003003Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003004-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003005
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003006- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
3007 are proxies.
3008
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003009Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003010-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003011
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003012- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
3013 very short strings.
3014
3015- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
3016 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
3017 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
3018 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
3019 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
3020
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003021Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003022-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003023
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003024- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
3025 close or delete time).
3026
3027- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
3028 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
3029
3030- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
3031
3032- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003033 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003034
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003035Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003036-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003037
3038Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003039-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003040
3041C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003042-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003043
3044New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003045-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003046
3047Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003048-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003049
3050Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003051-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003052
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003053- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
3054
3055- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
3056 instances are deleted at process exit time.
3057
3058- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
3059 deleted at process exit time.
3060
3061- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
3062 in backslash.
3063
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003064Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003065----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003066
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003067- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
3068 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
3069 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
3070
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003071
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00003072What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003073===========================
3074
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003075*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
3076
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003077Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003078--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003079
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003080- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
3081 been extensively updated. See
3082
3083 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
3084
3085 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
3086
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00003087- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
3088 deleted!
3089
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00003090- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
3091 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
3092 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
3093 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
3094 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
3095
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003096- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
3097
3098 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
3099 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
3100
3101 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
3102 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
3103 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
3104 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
3105 supported anyway.
3106
3107 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
3108 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
3109
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00003110- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
3111 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
3112 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
3113 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
3114 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003115
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00003116- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
3117 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
3118 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
3119
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003120Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003121-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003122
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003123- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
3124 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
3125 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
3126 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
3127 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
3128 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00003129 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
3130 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
3131 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
3132 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003133
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00003134- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
3135 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
3136 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
3137
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003138Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003139-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003140
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00003141- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
3142
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003143Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003144-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003145
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00003146- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
3147 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
3148 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
3149 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
3150 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
3151 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
3152
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00003153- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
3154
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00003155- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
3156
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00003157- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
3158
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003159- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
3160 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
3161 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
3162
3163- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
3164
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003165Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003166-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003167
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003168- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
3169 off a search on Google.
3170
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003171Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003172-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003173
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003174- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
3175 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
3176 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
3177 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
3178 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
3179 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
3180 other platforms should do likewise.
3181
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00003182- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
3183 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
3184 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
3185
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003186C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003187-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003188
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00003189- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
3190 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
3191 producing key-value pairs.
3192
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00003193- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00003194 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00003195 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
3196 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
3197 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
3198 previously went unchallenged.
3199
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003200New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003201-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003202
3203Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003204-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003205
3206Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003207-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003208
3209Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003210----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003211
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00003212- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
3213 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003214
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003215- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
3216 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
3217 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
3218 home.
3219
3220
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003221What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003222===========================
3223
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003224*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
3225
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003226Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003227--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003228
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00003229- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
3230 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003231
3232 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00003233 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003234
3235 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
3236 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003237 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003238 This needs to be documented.
3239
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00003240- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
3241 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
3242
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00003243- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
3244 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
3245 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
3246
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00003247- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
3248 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
3249
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003250- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
3251 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
3252 class forbids it).
3253
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00003254- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
3255 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
3256 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
3257
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003258- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
3259
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003260Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003261-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003262
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00003263- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
3264 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003265 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00003266
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003267- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
3268 (like 1 + '').
3269
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003270Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003271-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003272
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003273- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
3274 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
3275 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
3276 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003277 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003278 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
3279
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00003280- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
3281 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
3282 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
3283 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
3284
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003285- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
3286 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003287 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
3288 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
3289 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003290
3291- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
3292 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00003293
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00003294- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
3295 bytes on its input.
3296
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003297Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003298-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003299
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003300- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00003301 convenience function.
3302
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00003303- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
3304 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
3305 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003306 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
3307 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
3308 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
3309 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
3310 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
3311 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00003312
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00003313- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
3314 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
3315 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
3316 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
3317
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00003318- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
3319 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
3320 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
3321
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00003322- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
3323 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
3324 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
3325 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
3326
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003327- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
3328 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003329 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003330 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
3331 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
3332 new -l and -e options.
3333
3334- statcache is now deprecated.
3335
3336- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
3337 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003338 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003339 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
3340 time properly taken into account.
3341
3342- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
3343 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
3344 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
3345 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
3346
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003347Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003348-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003349
3350Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003351-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003352
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003353- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
3354 is built with libdb3 if available.
3355
3356- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
3357
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003358C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003359-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003360
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00003361- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
3362 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
3363 PySequence_Size().
3364
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003365- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
3366
3367- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
3368 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
3369 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
3370
3371- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
3372 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
3373
3374- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
3375 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
3376
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003377New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003378-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003379
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003380- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
3381 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
3382
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00003383- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
3384 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
3385
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00003386- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
3387
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003388Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003389-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003390
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00003391- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
3392 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
3393
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003394Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003395-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003396
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003397Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003398----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003399
3400- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
3401 removed completely in the next release.
3402
3403- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
3404 OSX.
3405
3406- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
3407 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
3408
3409- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
3410
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003411
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003412What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003413===========================
3414
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003415*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
3416
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003417Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003418--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003419
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003420- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003421 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003422 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003423 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
3424 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003425 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
3426 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003427 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
3428 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00003429
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00003430- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
3431 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
3432
3433- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
3434 class methods, static methods, and properties.
3435
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003436Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003437-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003438
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00003439- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
3440 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
3441 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
3442 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
3443 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
3444 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
3445 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
3446 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
3447
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003448- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
3449 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
3450 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
3451 example).
3452
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003453- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00003454 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003455 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003456 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00003457
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003458- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
3459 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
3460 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00003461 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003462
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003463- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
3464 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
3465 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
3466 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
3467 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
3468 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
3469
3470 isinstance(x, (A, B))
3471
3472 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
3473
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003474Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003475-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003476
3477- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
3478
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00003479- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
3480
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00003481- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
3482 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00003483
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00003484- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
3485 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
3486 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
3487 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
3488 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
3489 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00003490 attributes.
3491
3492- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
3493 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
3494 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00003495
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003496- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
3497 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
3498 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003499
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00003500- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
3501 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
3502 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003503 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
3504 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
3505
3506- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
3507 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00003508
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003509Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003510-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00003511
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00003512- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
3513 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
3514
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003515- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
3516 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
3517 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
3518 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
3519
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00003520- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
3521 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
3522 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
3523 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
3524
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00003525 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
3526 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
3527 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
3528 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
3529 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
3530 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
3531 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
3532 without losing information).
3533
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00003534- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00003535 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
3536 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
3537 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
3538 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
3539 module).
3540
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003541 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00003542 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
3543 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
3544 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
3545 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00003546
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00003547- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00003548 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
3549 encoding.
3550
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00003551- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
3552 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
3553
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003554- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003555 to allow saving the message body to a file.
3556
3557- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
3558 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
3559 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
3560 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
3561
3562- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
3563
3564- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
3565 ON, and OFF.
3566
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003567- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
3568 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
3569
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00003570Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003571-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00003572
3573- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
3574 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
3575 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003576
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003577- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
3578 been added: -X and -E.
3579
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003580Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003581-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003582
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003583- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
3584 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
3585
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003586C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003587-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003588
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00003589- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
3590 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
3591 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
3592 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
3593 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
3594
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00003595- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
3596 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
3597 as long) arguments.
3598
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00003599- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
3600 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
3601 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
3602 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
3603 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
3604 report any bugs or strange behavior).
3605
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003606- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
3607 input.
3608
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003609New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003610-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003611
3612Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003613-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003614
3615Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003616-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003617
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00003618- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
3619 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
3620 is created for .py and .pyw files.
3621
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003622- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
3623 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
3624 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003625 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003626
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003627 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
3628 # (SIGINT) behavior.
3629 import signal
3630 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003631
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003632 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003633 while 1:
3634 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003635 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003636 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
3637 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
3638 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
3639 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003640
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003641
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003642What's New in Python 2.2a4?
3643===========================
3644
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003645*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
3646
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003647Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003648--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003649
3650- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
3651 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
3652 documentation for all operations on list objects.
3653
3654- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
3655 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
3656 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
3657 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
3658 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
3659 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
3660 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003661
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00003662- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003663 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00003664 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
3665 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
3666 associate a docstring with a property.
3667
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003668- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
3669 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
3670 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
3671 other built-in object types.
3672
3673- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
3674 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
3675 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
3676 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
3677 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
3678
3679- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
3680 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
3681
3682- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
3683 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003684 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003685 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
3686 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
3687 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
3688 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
3689 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
3690
3691- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
3692 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
3693 class.
3694
3695- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
3696 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
3697 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
3698 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
3699
3700- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
3701 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
3702 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
3703 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
3704
3705- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
3706 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
3707
3708- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
3709 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
3710 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
3711 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
3712 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003713 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003714 with the same value as s.
3715
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00003716- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
3717
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003718Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003719----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003720
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00003721- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
3722
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00003723- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
3724 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
3725 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
3726 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
3727 objects.
3728
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003729- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
3730 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00003731 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
3732 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
3733
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003734- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
3735 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
3736 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
3737
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003738Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003739-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003740
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00003741- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
3742 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
3743 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
3744 by the instances.
3745
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00003746- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
3747 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
3748 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
3749
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003750- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
3751 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
3752 before the entire comparison is complete.
3753
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00003754- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
3755 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
3756 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
3757
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00003758- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
3759 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
3760 getwriter().
3761
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003762- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
3763 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
3764
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00003765- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003766 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
3767 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
3768
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00003769- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
3770 iterable object.
3771
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003772- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
3773 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00003774
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003775- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
3776 authentication.
3777
3778- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
3779 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00003780
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003781- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00003782 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
3783 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
3784 a sample driver.)
3785
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003786Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003787-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003788
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003789- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
3790 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
3791 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
3792 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
3793 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
3794 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
3795 kernel has large file support.
3796
3797- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
3798 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
3799 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
3800 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
3801 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
3802
3803- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
3804 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
3805 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
3806
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003807C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003808-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003809
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003810- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
3811 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
3812
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003813New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003814-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003815
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003816- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
3817 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
3818
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003819Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003820-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003821
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003822- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
3823 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
3824 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
3825 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
3826 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
3827
3828- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
3829 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
3830 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
3831 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
3832
3833- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
3834 especially in regard to reporting errors.
3835
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003836Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003837-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003838
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003839- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003840 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
3841 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003842
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003843
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003844What's New in Python 2.2a3?
3845===========================
3846
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003847*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
3848
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003849Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003850----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003851
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003852- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
3853 big to represent as a C double.
3854
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00003855- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
3856 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
3857 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
3858 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
3859 restriction).
3860
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00003861- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
3862 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
3863 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
3864 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
3865 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
3866
3867 >>> dir([])
3868 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
3869 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
3870 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
3871 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
3872 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
3873 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
3874 'reverse', 'sort']
3875
3876 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
3877
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003878- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003879 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
3880 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
3881 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
3882 OverflowError exception.
3883
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00003884- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003885 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003886 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
3887 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
3888 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
3889 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
3890 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003891 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003892 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
3893 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
3894
3895 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
3896 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
3897 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
3898 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003899
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003900- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003901 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
3902 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
3903 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
3904 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
3905 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
3906 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
3907 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
3908 once it is created.
3909
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00003910- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
3911 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
3912 (key, value) pairs.
3913
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003914- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003915 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
3916 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
3917
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00003918- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
3919 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
3920 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
3921 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
3922 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003923
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003924- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003925 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
3926 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
3927
3928 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
3929
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003930- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00003931 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
3932
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003933Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003934-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003935
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00003936- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00003937 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
3938 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00003939
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00003940- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
3941 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
3942 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
3943 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
3944 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
3945 in this area anymore).
3946
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00003947- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
3948 threading.Timer.
3949
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00003950- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
3951 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
3952
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003953- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00003954 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
3955
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003956- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00003957 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
3958 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
3959 converted to Python longs.
3960
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003961- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003962 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
3963
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00003964- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
3965 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
3966 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
3967
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003968Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003969-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003970
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003971- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
3972 division operators as per PEP 238.
3973
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003974Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003975-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003976
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003977- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
3978 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
3979 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
3980 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
3981
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00003982C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003983-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00003984
3985- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00003986
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003987- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
3988 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003989 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003990
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003991 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
3992 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003993 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003994 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003995
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003996- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003997 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
3998 module:
3999
4000 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004001
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004002 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
4003 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004004
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004005 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
4006 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004007
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004008 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
4009
4010 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
4011
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004012- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004013 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
4014 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
4015 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004016
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004017New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004018-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004019
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00004020- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
4021 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
4022 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
4023 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
4024 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004025
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004026Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004027-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004028
4029Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004030-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004031
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004032- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
4033 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
4034 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
4035 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00004036 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
4037 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
4038 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
4039 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
4040 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004041
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004042- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00004043 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
4044
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004045
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004046What's New in Python 2.2a2?
4047===========================
4048
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004049*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
4050
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004051Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004052-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004053
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00004054- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
4055 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
4056
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004057- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
4058 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
4059 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004060
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00004061- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
4062 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
4063 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
4064 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004065
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004066- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
4067
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004068- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004069
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004070Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004071-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004072
4073- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00004074 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004075 the module docstring for details.
4076
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004077Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004078-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004079
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004080- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004081 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
4082 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
4083 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004084
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004085- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
4086 Nick Mathewson.
4087
4088Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004089----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004090
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004091- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
4092 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
4093 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
4094 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
4095 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
4096 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
4097 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
4098 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
4099
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00004100- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
4101 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
4102 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
4103 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
4104
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00004105- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
4106 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
4107 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
4108 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
4109 come a long way).
4110
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004111- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
4112 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
4113 write filters for these warnings).
4114
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00004115- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
4116 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
4117 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
4118 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
4119 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
4120
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00004121- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
4122 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
4123 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
4124 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
4125 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
4126 older distribution.
4127
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004128Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004129-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004130
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004131- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
4132 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004133 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004134
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004135- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
4136 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
4137 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
4138
4139- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
4140
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004141- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
4142
4143- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
4144
4145- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
4146
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004147- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004148
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004149- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
4150
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004151New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004152-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004153
4154C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004155-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004156
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004157- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
4158 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
4159 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
4160 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
4161 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
4162 against buffer overruns.
4163
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00004164- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004165 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
4166 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00004167 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
4168 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
4169 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
4170
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004171- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
4172 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
4173 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
4174 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
4175 deprecated.
4176
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004177Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004178-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004179
4180- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
4181 relevant is found.
4182
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004183
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004184What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004185===========================
4186
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004187*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
4188
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004189Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004190----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004191
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00004192- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
4193 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
4194 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
4195 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
4196 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
4197 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
4198 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
4199 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004200 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00004201 repaired.
4202
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004203- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00004204 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004205 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
4206 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
4207 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
4208 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
4209 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
4210 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
4211 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
4212 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
4213
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00004214- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
4215 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
4216 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
4217 leading BMO character).
4218
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004219- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
4220 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
4221 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
4222
4223 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
4224 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
4225 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004226
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004227 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
4228 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
4229 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
4230 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
4231 for various simple to use conversions.
4232
4233 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
4234 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
4235
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004236 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4237 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
4238 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
4239 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
4240 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4241 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
4242 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4243 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
4244 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4245 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
4246 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4247 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
4248 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4249 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
4250 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004251
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004252- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
4253 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
4254 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004255 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004256 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004257
4258 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004259 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
4260 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
4261 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
4262 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
4263 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004264 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
4265 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004266
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004267 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
4268 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
4269 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004270 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004271
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00004272- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
4273 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
4274 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
4275 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
4276 floating arithmetic,
4277
4278 x = 9007199254740992.0
4279 print long(x)
4280
4281 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
4282 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
4283 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
4284 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
4285 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
4286 functions are of good quality).
4287
4288 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
4289 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
4290 algorithms to break.
4291
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00004292- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
4293 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
4294 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
4295 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
4296 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
4297 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
4298 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
4299 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
4300 order.
4301
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004302- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
4303 operation along the most common code paths.
4304
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00004305- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
4306 the same as dict.has_key(x).
4307
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00004308- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
4309 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
4310 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
4311 {}.update(UserDict())
4312
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00004313- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
4314 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
4315 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
4316 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
4317 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
4318 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
4319 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
4320 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
4321
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004322- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004323 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004324
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00004325 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00004326 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
4327 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00004328 join() method of strings
4329 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00004330 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
4331 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004332 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00004333 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00004334
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00004335- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
4336 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
4337
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00004338- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
4339 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
4340
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00004341- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
4342 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
4343 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
4344 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
4345
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004346- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
4347 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004348 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004349 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
4350 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00004351
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00004352- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
4353
4354
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004355Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004356-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004357
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00004358- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004359 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00004360 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
4361 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
4362
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00004363- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
4364 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
4365
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00004366- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
4367 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
4368 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
4369 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
4370
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00004371- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
4372 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
4373 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
4374
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00004375- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
4376
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00004377- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
4378
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00004379- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
4380 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
4381 that are still imported into string.py).
4382
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004383- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
4384
4385- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
4386 Now it does.
4387
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00004388- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
4389
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00004390- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
4391 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
4392 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
4393 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
4394 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004395 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
4396 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00004397
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00004398- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
4399 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
4400 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
4401 'help(object)'.
4402
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004403Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004404-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004405
4406- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004407 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004408 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
4409 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
4410
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004411- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00004412 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
4413 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004414
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00004415C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004416-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00004417
4418- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
4419 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004420
4421----
4422
4423**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**