blob: 8260e636efa924db75e545251793bf7f9f8a1e02 [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
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00007What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
8=================================
9
10*Release date: XX-XXX-2004*
11
12Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +000015- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
16PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
17
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +000018- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
19 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
20 which was missing for no apparent reason.
21
22- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
23 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
24 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
25
26Extension modules
27-----------------
28
29Library
30-------
31
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +000032- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
33 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
34 AM Kuchling.
35
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +000036- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
37 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
38 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
39
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +000040- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
41 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
42 instead of unsigned.
43
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +000044- decimal.py now only uses signals in the spec. The other conditions are
45 no longer part of the public API.
46
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +000047- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
48 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
49 string methods of the same name).
50
Andrew M. Kuchling64ed2982004-07-10 18:43:32 +000051- asyncore's dispatcher.set_reuse_addr() now works correctly on Windows.
52 SF patch 982681.
53
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +000054- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
55 SF patch 945642.
56
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +000057Tools/Demos
58-----------
59
60Build
61-----
62
63C API
64-----
65
66New platforms
67-------------
68
69Tests
70-----
71
72Windows
73-------
74
75Mac
76---
77
78
79
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +000080What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
81=================================
82
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +000083*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +000084
85Core and builtins
86-----------------
87
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +000088- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
89 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
90 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
91 objects now (one object instead of three).
92
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +000093- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
94 Windows DLLs.
95
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +000096- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval() now accepts any mapping type.
97
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +000098- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
99 a new .pyc magic.
100
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +0000101- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
102 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
103 be there.
104
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +0000105- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
106 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
107 the LC_NUMERIC category.
108
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +0000109- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
110 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
111 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
112
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +0000113- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
114
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +0000115- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
116 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
117 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +0000118
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +0000119- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
120 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
121
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +0000122- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
123
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000124- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000125 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +0000126
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +0000127- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
128
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +0000129- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
130
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +0000131- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
132 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
133
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +0000134- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
135 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
136 Fixes bug #858016 .
137
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +0000138- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
139 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
140 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
141
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +0000142- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
143 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
144 improves their performance (about 35%).
145
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +0000146- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
147 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
148 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
149
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +0000150- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
151 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
152 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
153 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
154
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000155- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
156 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
157 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
158 length is not known).
159
160- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
161 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +0000162 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
163 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +0000164 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
165
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +0000166- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
167 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
168
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +0000169- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
170 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
171 keyword arguments.
172
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +0000173- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
174 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
175 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
176
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +0000177- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
178 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
179 cases.
180
181- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
182 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
183 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
184 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
185 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
186 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
187 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
188 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
189 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
190 a release build.
191
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +0000192- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
193 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
194
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +0000195- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +0000196 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +0000197
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +0000198- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
199 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
200 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
201 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
202 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
203 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
204 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
205 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
206 destroyed.
207
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +0000208- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
209 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
210 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
211 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
212 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
213 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
214 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
215 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
216
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +0000217- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
218 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
219 character other than a space.
220
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +0000221- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
222 by the function object or by the method object, the function
223 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
224 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
225 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
226 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
227 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
228 attributes with the same name.
229
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000230- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
231 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
232 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
233 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
234 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
235 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
236 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
237 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
238 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
239 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
240 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
241 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
242 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
243 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +0000244
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +0000245- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
246 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
247 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
248 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
249 This has been repaired.
250
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000251- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
252
253- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
254
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +0000255- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
256 over a sequence.
257
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +0000258- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000259 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +0000260
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +0000261- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
262
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +0000263- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
264 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
265 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
266 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
267 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
268 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
269 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
270 records with equal keys is unchanged).
271
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +0000272- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
273 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
274 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
275
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +0000276- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
277 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
278 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
279 freelist.
280
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +0000281- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
282 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
283
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +0000284- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
285 number.
286
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +0000287- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
288 a TypeError exception.
289
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +0000290- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
291 820195.
292
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +0000293- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
294 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
295 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
296
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000297- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +0000298 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
299 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +0000300
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +0000301- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
302 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
303 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
304
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000305- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
306 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000307 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000308
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000309- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +0000310 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
311 the first call.
312
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000313
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000314Extension modules
315-----------------
316
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +0000317- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
318 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
319
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +0000320- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
321 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
322 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
323 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
324 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
325 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
326 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +0000327
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +0000328- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
329
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +0000330- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
331
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +0000332- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
333 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
334
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +0000335- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
336 fewer false positives.
337
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +0000338- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
339 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
340
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000341- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +0000342 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
343
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +0000344- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000345 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +0000346 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
347 Also, array.extend() now accepts any iterable argument for repeated
348 appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +0000349
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +0000350- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
351 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
352 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
353 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
354
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +0000355- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
356 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
357 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
358 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
359 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
360 #897625.
361
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +0000362- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
363 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
364
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +0000365- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
366 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
367 and pops on either side of the deque.
368
369- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
370 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
371
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +0000372- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
373 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
374 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
375 other functions that expect a function argument.
376
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +0000377- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
378
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +0000379- os.getsid was added.
380
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +0000381- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
382 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
383 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
384
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +0000385- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
386
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +0000387- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
388
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +0000389- readline.clear_history was added.
390
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +0000391- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
392
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +0000393- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
394
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +0000395- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
396
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +0000397- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
398
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +0000399- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
400
401- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
402
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +0000403- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
404
405- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
406
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +0000407- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
408 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
409 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
410
411- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
412 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
413 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
414 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
415 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
416 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
417 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
418
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +0000419- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
420 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
421 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
422 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +0000423
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000424- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +0000425 iterators from a single iterable.
426
427- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
428 of raising a TypeError exception.
429
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +0000430- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
431 as parameter.
432
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000433Library
434-------
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +0000435
436- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
437 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
438 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000439
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +0000440- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
441 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
442 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +0000443
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +0000444- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +0000445
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +0000446- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
447 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +0000448
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +0000449- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
450 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
451
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +0000452- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
453
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +0000454- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +0000455 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +0000456
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +0000457- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
458 that generate a *-debuginfo.rpm.
459
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +0000460- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
461
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +0000462- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
463 on cygwin and mingw32.
464
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +0000465- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
466
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +0000467- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
468 module.
469
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +0000470- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
471 installation scheme for all platforms.
472
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +0000473- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +0000474 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +0000475
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000476- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
477 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
478 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
479
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +0000480- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
481 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
482 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
483
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +0000484- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
485
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +0000486- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
487
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +0000488- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
489 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
490
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +0000491- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
492 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
493 type pattern with the same value exists.
494
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +0000495- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
496 when run from the command prompt).
497
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +0000498- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
499 not taken into consideration when caching value.
500
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +0000501- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
502 default sort).
503
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +0000504- Added global runctx function to profile module
505
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +0000506- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
507
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +0000508- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
509
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +0000510- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
511
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +0000512- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +0000513 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
514 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
515 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
516 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
517 accordingly.
518
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +0000519- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
520 decoding standards.
521
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +0000522- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
523 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
524 called for all requests.
525
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +0000526- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
527 they are passed to the compiler.
528
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +0000529- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
530 indent, width and depth.
531
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +0000532- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
533 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
534
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +0000535- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
536 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
537
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +0000538- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
539
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +0000540- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
541
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +0000542- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
543
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +0000544- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
545 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
546
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +0000547- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +0000548 for better performance.
549
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +0000550- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +0000551
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +0000552- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
553 a string).
554
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +0000555- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
556
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +0000557- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
558
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +0000559- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
560
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +0000561- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
562
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +0000563- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
564 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
565 list of fieldnames.
566
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +0000567- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
568 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
569
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +0000570- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
571
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +0000572- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
573 empty lists.
574
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +0000575- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
576 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
577 and shelves.
578
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +0000579- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
580 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
581
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +0000582- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +0000583 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
584 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +0000585
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +0000586- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
587 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +0000588 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +0000589
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +0000590- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +0000591 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
592 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
593
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +0000594- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
595 and removed in Py2.4.
596
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +0000597- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
598
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +0000599- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
600
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000601Tools/Demos
602-----------
603
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +0000604- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
605 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
606
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +0000607- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
608
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +0000609- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
610 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
611 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
612 destination in situations where both files are given.
613
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +0000614- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
615 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
616 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
617 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
618
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +0000619- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
620
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +0000621- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
622 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
623 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
624 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
625 now.
626
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000627- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
628 in effect
629
630- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
631 C-c C-h
632
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +0000633- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
634 -d option was given.
635
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000636Build
637-----
638
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +0000639- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
640 build under OS X.
641
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +0000642- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
643 --enable-profiling.
644
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +0000645- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
646 is configured --with-tsc.
647
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +0000648- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
649 on AMD64.
650
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +0000651- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
652 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
653
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +0000654- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
655 removed.
656
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +0000657- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
658 supported (see PEP 11).
659
660- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
661
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +0000662- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
663
664- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
665 (see PEP 11).
666
667- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
668 sizeof(char) must be 1.
669
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000670C API
671-----
672
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +0000673- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
674 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
675 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
676
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +0000677- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
678 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
679 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
680 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
681
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +0000682- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
683 generator objects.
684
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +0000685- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
686 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +0000687 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
688 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +0000689
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +0000690- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
691 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
692
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +0000693- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
694 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
695 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
696 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
697 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
698
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +0000699- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
700 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
701 about 10% faster.
702
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +0000703- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
704 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
705
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +0000706- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
707 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
708 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
709 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
710
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000711Windows
712-------
713
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +0000714- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
715 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
716 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
717 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
718
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +0000719- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
720 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
721 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
722
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000723
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000724What's New in Python 2.3 final?
725===============================
726
727*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
728
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000729IDLE
730----
731
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +0000732- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
733 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
734 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
735 context-menu actions.
736
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000737- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
738 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
739 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
740 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
741 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
742 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
743 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
744 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
745 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
746
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000747
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000748What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
749=============================================
750
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +0000751*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000752
753Core and builtins
754-----------------
755
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +0000756- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000757 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +0000758 comment at the end are still unsupported.
759
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000760Extension modules
761-----------------
762
763- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
764 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
765 than once. This has been fixed.
766
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +0000767- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
768 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
769 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
770 call.
771
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000772- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
773
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000774Library
775-------
776
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000777- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
778 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
779
780- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
781 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
782 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
783 restored.
784
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +0000785IDLE
786----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000787
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +0000788- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000789
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000790Build
791-----
792
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000793- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
794 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
795
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000796C API
797-----
798
799Windows
800-------
801
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +0000802- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
803 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
804
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000805- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
806
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000807Mac
808---
809
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000810- Various fixes to pimp.
811
812- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
813
814- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
815 more problems than it solves.
816
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000817
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000818What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
819=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000820
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +0000821*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
822
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000823Core and builtins
824-----------------
825
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +0000826- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
827 by sys.setcheckinterval().
828
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000829- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
830 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000831 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000832
833- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
834 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
835 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000836 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000837
838- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
839 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000840
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000841- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
842 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
843 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
844
845- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000846 770247.
847
848- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000849
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000850Extension modules
851-----------------
852
853- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
854 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
855
856- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
857
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +0000858- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
859
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +0000860- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
861 contained within the _strptime module.
862
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000863- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
864 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
865
866- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000867 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
868
869- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
870 the find_class attribute, if present.
871
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000872- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000873
874 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
875 (SF bug 763298).
876
877 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +0000878 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
879 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
880 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000881
882 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
883
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000884Library
885-------
886
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000887- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
888
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +0000889- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
890 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
891 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
892 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
893 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
894 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
895 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
896 or Tester().
897
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000898- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
899 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
900 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
901 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
902 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
903 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
904 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
905 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
906 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +0000907
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000908 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +0000909
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +0000910- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
911 weren't before was an oversight.
912
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000913- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
914 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
915
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +0000916- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
917 when there are no lines.
918
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +0000919- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
920 which could occur with Tk 8.4
921
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000922- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
923 to child processes.
924
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000925- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
926
927- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
928
929- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
930 xmlrpclib.
931
932- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
933 responses.
934
935- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
936 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
937
938- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
939 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
940 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
941
942- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
943 used as patterns.
944
945- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
946 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
947 than Tk 8.3.
948
949- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
950
951- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000952
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000953Tools/Demos
954-----------
955
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000956- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
957
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +0000958- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
959
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000960- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000961
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000962Build
963-----
964
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000965- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
966
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000967- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
968
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000969- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
970 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000971
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000972- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
973 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
974 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000975
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000976C API
977-----
978
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000979- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
980 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
981
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000982Windows
983-------
984
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000985- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
986 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
987 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
988 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
989 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
990 Python exception ::
991
992 thread.error: can't start new thread
993
994 is raised now.
995
996- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
997 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
998 instead of from DLL teardown.
999
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001000Mac
1001---
1002
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001003- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00001004 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001005 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
1006 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
1007 the executable in the bundle.
1008
1009- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001010
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00001011- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
1012
1013- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
1014 on Panther.
1015
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001016What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
1017================================
1018
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001019*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001020
1021Core and builtins
1022-----------------
1023
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00001024- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
1025 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
1026 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
1027 with the -i option.
1028
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00001029- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
1030 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
1031
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001032- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
1033 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
1034
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00001035- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
1036 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
1037 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
1038 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
1039 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
1040 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
1041 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
1042 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
1043 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
1044 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
1045 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
1046 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
1047 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00001048
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001049- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
1050 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
1051 embedded in a lambda expression.
1052
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00001053- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
1054 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
1055 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
1056 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
1057 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
1058
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001059- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
1060 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
1061 matches the restriction on classic classes.
1062
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00001063- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
1064 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
1065
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00001066- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
1067 It's writable again.
1068
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001069- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
1070 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
1071 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001072 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001073
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001074- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
1075 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
1076 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
1077
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001078Extension modules
1079-----------------
1080
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00001081- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
1082 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
1083
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001084- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
1085 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
1086 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
1087 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
1088
1089- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
1090 collection.
1091
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00001092- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
1093 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
1094 unique within a single program run.
1095
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00001096- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
1097 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
1098
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00001099- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
1100 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
1101
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00001102- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
1103 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00001104
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00001105- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
1106
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00001107- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
1108 Fixes SF bug #730685.
1109
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00001110- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
1111 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
1112 for many BSD-derived systems.
1113
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001114
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001115Library
1116-------
1117
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00001118- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
1119 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
1120 primary ones:
1121
1122 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
1123 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
1124 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
1125
1126 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
1127 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
1128 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
1129 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
1130 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
1131 framework features (which doctest lacks).
1132
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00001133- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
1134 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
1135 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
1136 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
1137 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
1138 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
1139 argument.
1140
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001141- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
1142 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
1143 in the archive.
1144
1145- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
1146 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
1147
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00001148- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
1149 569574).
1150
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001151- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
1152 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
1153 no more.
1154
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001155- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
1156 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
1157 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
1158 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
1159 code coverage.
1160
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001161- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
1162 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
1163 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001164 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
1165 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001166
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001167- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
1168 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
1169 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00001170 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001171
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00001172- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
1173
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00001174- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
1175 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
1176 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
1177 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
1178
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00001179- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
1180 handling.
1181
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00001182- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
1183 __doc__ of data descriptors.
1184
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00001185- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
1186 in socket.py.
1187
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00001188- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
1189
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00001190- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
1191 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
1192 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
1193 opener with proxy support.
1194
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001195- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
1196
1197- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
1198
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001199Tools/Demos
1200-----------
1201
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00001202- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
1203
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001204- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
1205
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001206- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
1207 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00001208
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00001209- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
1210 files.
1211
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001212Build
1213-----
1214
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001215- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00001216 different root directory.
1217
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001218C API
1219-----
1220
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00001221- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
1222 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
1223 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
1224 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
1225 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
1226 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
1227 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
1228 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
1229 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
1230 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
1231
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001232- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
1233 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
1234 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
1235 from Python.
1236
1237
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001238New platforms
1239-------------
1240
1241None this time.
1242
1243Tests
1244-----
1245
1246- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
1247 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
1248
1249Windows
1250-------
1251
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00001252- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
1253
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00001254- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
1255 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
1256 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
1257 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
1258 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
1259 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
1260 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
1261 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
1262 that's what it's for.
1263
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001264Mac
1265---
1266
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00001267- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
1268 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
1269 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
1270 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00001271- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
1272 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
1273- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001274
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001275SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
1276------------------------------------
1277
1278430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
1279598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
1280622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
1281661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
1282683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
1283697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
1284713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
1285724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
1286727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
1287729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
1288730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
1289731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
1290732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
1291733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
1292735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
1293740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
1294744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
1295745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
1296747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
1297749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
1298751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
1299753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
1300755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
1301757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
1302760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
1303
1304
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001305What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
1306================================
1307
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00001308*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001309
1310Core and builtins
1311-----------------
1312
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00001313- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
1314 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
1315
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00001316- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
1317 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
1318 and cannot be strings).
1319
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00001320- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
1321 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
1322 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
1323 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
1324
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00001325- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
1326 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
1327 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
1328 Python itself.
1329
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00001330- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
1331 the referenced object, if it has one.
1332
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00001333- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
1334 the thread started at
1335 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
1336
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00001337- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
1338 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
1339 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
1340 placed on a list index.
1341
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00001342- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
1343 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
1344 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
1345 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
1346
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001347- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
1348 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
1349 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
1350 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
1351 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
1352 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
1353 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
1354
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00001355- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
1356 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
1357 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
1358 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
1359 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
1360
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00001361- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
1362 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00001363
1364- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
1365 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
1366 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
1367 #693195.)
1368
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00001369- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
1370 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001371
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00001372- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00001373 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00001374 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
1375 interpreter executions, would fail.
1376
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00001377- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00001378 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00001379 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00001380
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001381Extension modules
1382-----------------
1383
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00001384- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
1385 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
1386 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
1387 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
1388
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00001389- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
1390 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
1391
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00001392- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
1393 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
1394 and Greg Chapman.)
1395
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00001396- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
1397 recursively.
1398
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00001399- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00001400 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
1401 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
1402 leaks.
1403
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00001404- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
1405
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00001406- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
1407 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
1408 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
1409 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
1410 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
1411 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
1412 #705836.
1413
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001414- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00001415 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
1416
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00001417- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
1418 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
1419 See SF bug #692416.
1420
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00001421- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
1422 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
1423
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00001424- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
1425 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
1426 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001427
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00001428- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00001429 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
1430 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
1431
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00001432- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
1433 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
1434 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
1435 timeouts to work properly.
1436
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001437Library
1438-------
1439
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00001440- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
1441 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
1442 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
1443 future release.
1444
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00001445- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
1446 for querying platform dependent features.
1447
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00001448- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00001449
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00001450- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
1451 pickle protocol versions.
1452
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00001453- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
1454 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
1455 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
1456
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00001457- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
1458
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00001459- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
1460 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
1461 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
1462 modules.
1463
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00001464- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
1465 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
1466 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
1467
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00001468- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
1469 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
1470
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00001471- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
1472 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
1473 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
1474
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001475- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00001476 MS Office extensions.
1477
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00001478- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
1479 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
1480
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00001481- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
1482 execution speed of expressions and statements.
1483
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001484- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
1485 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
1486 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
1487 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
1488 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
1489 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
1490
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00001491- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
1492 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
1493 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001494
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00001495- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
1496 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
1497 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
1498
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00001499- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
1500
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00001501- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
1502 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
1503 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
1504
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001505Tools/Demos
1506-----------
1507
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00001508- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
1509 See the module docstring for details.
1510
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001511Build
1512-----
1513
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00001514- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
1515 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001516
1517C API
1518-----
1519
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001520- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
1521
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00001522- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
1523 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
1524 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
1525
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001526- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
1527 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00001528
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001529 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
1530 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
1531 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00001532
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00001533- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00001534 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
1535
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00001536- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
1537 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
1538 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001539
1540New platforms
1541-------------
1542
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00001543None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001544
1545Tests
1546-----
1547
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00001548- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
1549 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001550
1551Windows
1552-------
1553
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00001554- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
1555 function.
1556
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00001557- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
1558 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001559
1560Mac
1561---
1562
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00001563- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
1564 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00001565
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00001566- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
1567 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001568
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00001569- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
1570 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
1571 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001572
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00001573- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00001574 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
1575 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001576
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00001577- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
1578 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001579
1580
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001581What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
1582=================================
1583
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00001584*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001585
1586Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00001587-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001588
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00001589- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
1590 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
1591 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
1592
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00001593- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
1594 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
1595 (SF patch #664376.)
1596
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00001597- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
1598 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
1599 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
1600 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
1601 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
1602 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00001603 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00001604
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00001605- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
1606 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
1607 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
1608 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001609 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00001610
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00001611- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
1612 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
1613 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
1614 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
1615 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
1616 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
1617 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
1618 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
1619 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
1620 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
1621 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
1622
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00001623- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
1624 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
1625 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
1626 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
1627 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
1628 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
1629
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00001630- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
1631 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
1632
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00001633- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
1634 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
1635 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
1636 case.)
1637
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00001638- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
1639 passed as unicode strings.
1640
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00001641- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
1642 See SF bug #683467.
1643
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00001644- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
1645 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
1646
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00001647- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
1648
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00001649- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
1650
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00001651- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
1652 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
1653 arguments.
1654
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00001655- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
1656 See SF bug #667147.
1657
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00001658- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001659 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00001660 See SF bug #676155.
1661
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00001662- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00001663 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00001664 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
1665 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
1666 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
1667 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
1668 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
1669 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00001670
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001671Extension modules
1672-----------------
1673
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00001674- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
1675 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
1676 tp_as_number pointer.
1677
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00001678- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
1679 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
1680 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
1681 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
1682 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
1683
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001684- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
1685
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00001686- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
1687
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00001688- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00001689 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00001690 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
1691 patch #678531.)
1692
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00001693- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
1694 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
1695
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00001696- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
1697 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
1698
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00001699- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
1700
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00001701- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
1702 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
1703 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
1704
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001705- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
1706
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00001707- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
1708 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
1709
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001710- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001711
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001712- datetime changes:
1713
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00001714 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
1715
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00001716 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
1717 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
1718 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
1719 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
1720 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
1721 now.
1722
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001723 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001724 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
1725 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001726
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001727 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001728 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001729 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
1730 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
1731 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
1732 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001733
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00001734 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
1735 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
1736 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001737 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
1738
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00001739 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
1740 by a later example coded by Guido.
1741
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001742 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001743 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
1744 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
1745 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001746 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
1747 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
1748
1749 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
1750 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
1751 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
1752 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
1753 tzinfo subclass instance.
1754
1755 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
1756 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
1757 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
1758 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
1759 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
1760 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
1761 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
1762 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001763
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001764 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
1765 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
1766 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
1767 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
1768 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001769 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
1770
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001771 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001772
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001773 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
1774 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
1775 as a naive datetime object.
1776
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00001777 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
1778 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
1779 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
1780
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00001781 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
1782 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
1783 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
1784 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
1785 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
1786 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
1787 comparison.
1788
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001789 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
1790 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
1791 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
1792 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001793 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001794
1795 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001796
1797 and ::
1798
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001799 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
1800
1801 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
1802 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
1803 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
1804 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
1805
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00001806 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
1807 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
1808 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
1809 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
1810 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
1811
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001812 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
1813 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00001814 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
1815 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001816
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001817Library
1818-------
1819
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001820- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
1821 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
1822
1823- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
1824 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
1825 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
1826 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
1827 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
1828 See PEP 307 for details.
1829
1830- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
1831 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
1832
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00001833- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
1834 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00001835 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001836 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
1837 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00001838 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00001839
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00001840- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
1841 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
1842
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001843- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
1844 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
1845 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
1846
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00001847- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
1848
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00001849- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
1850 exception.
1851
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00001852- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
1853 class.
1854
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00001855- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
1856 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
1857 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
1858
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00001859- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
1860 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
1861
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001862- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00001863 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
1864 See SF bug #659228.
1865
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00001866- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
1867 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
1868 See SF patch #651082.
1869
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00001870- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001871
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00001872- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
1873 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
1874
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00001875- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001876 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00001877
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00001878- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
1879 DOS paths from other platforms.
1880
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001881Tools/Demos
1882-----------
1883
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00001884- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
1885 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
1886 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
1887 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
1888 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
1889 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
1890 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
1891 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
1892 example:
1893
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00001894 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
1895 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00001896
1897 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
1898
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001899
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001900Build
1901-----
1902
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00001903- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
1904 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
1905 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001906 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
1907
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00001908 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
1909
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00001910- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
1911 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
1912 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
1913 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
1914 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
1915 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
1916 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
1917 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
1918 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
1919
1920- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
1921 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
1922 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
1923 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
1924
1925- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
1926 from the Tools/scripts directory.
1927
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001928C API
1929-----
1930
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001931- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
1932 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00001933
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00001934- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
1935 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
1936 tp_as_number pointer.
1937
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00001938- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
1939 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
1940 (SF #681367)
1941
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00001942- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
1943 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
1944 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
1945 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00001946
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001947Tests
1948-----
1949
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00001950- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001951 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
1952 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
1953 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
1954 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
1955 pydoc.)
1956
1957- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
1958
1959- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001960
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001961Windows
1962-------
1963
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00001964- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
1965 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
1966 time).
1967
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00001968- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
1969 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
1970
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00001971- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
1972 release without strong cryptography.
1973
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00001974- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001975 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00001976
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00001977- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
1978 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
1979
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001980Mac
1981---
1982
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00001983- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
1984 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001985
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00001986- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
1987 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
1988 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001989
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00001990- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
1991 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001992
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00001993- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
1994 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
1995 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
1996 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001997
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00001998- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00001999 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
2000 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
2001 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002002
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002003
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002004What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002005=================================
2006
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00002007*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002008
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002009Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002010--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002011
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00002012- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
2013
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002014- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
2015 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002016 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002017 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002018 a different meaning than before.
2019
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002020- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002021 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002022 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002023
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002024- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002025 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002026 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002027
2028- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
2029 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
2030 and deallocation.
2031
2032- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
2033 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
2034
2035- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
2036 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
2037 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
2038 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
2039 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
2040
2041- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
2042 now detected by the garbage collector.
2043
2044- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
2045 [SF bug 519621]
2046
2047- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
2048 identifier.
2049
2050- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
2051 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
2052 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
2053 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
2054 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
2055 [SF bug 563060]
2056
2057- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
2058 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
2059 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
2060 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
2061 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
2062
2063- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
2064 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
2065 not called. [SF bug #537450]
2066
2067- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
2068
2069- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
2070 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
2071 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
2072 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
2073 state of the slots would be lost.)
2074
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002075Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002076-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002077
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002078- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002079 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
2080 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
2081 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
2082 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002083 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
2084 Jython 2.1.
2085
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002086- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002087 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00002088 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
2089 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
2090 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
2091 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
2092 these, see PEP 302.
2093
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002094- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
2095 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
2096 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
2097
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00002098- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
2099 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
2100 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
2101
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00002102- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
2103 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
2104 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
2105
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002106- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
2107 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
2108 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
2109 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
2110 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
2111 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
2112 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
2113 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
2114 releases or implementations.
2115
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002116- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002117 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
2118 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002119
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00002120- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
2121 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
2122
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002123- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
2124 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
2125 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
2126
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00002127- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
2128 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
2129
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002130- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
2131 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002132 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
2133 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002134
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00002135- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
2136 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
2137 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
2138 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
2139 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
2140
2141 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
2142 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
2143 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
2144 pattern.
2145
2146 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
2147 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
2148 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
2149 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
2150
2151 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
2152 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
2153 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
2154 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
2155 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
2156 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
2157
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00002158- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
2159 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
2160 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
2161 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
2162 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
2163 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
2164 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
2165 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00002166
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00002167- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
2168 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
2169 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
2170 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
2171 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002172 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
2173 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
2174 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
2175 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
2176 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
2177 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
2178 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002179
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00002180- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
2181 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
2182
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00002183- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
2184 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
2185 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
2186 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
2187 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
2188 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
2189 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
2190 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
2191 to Zack Weinberg!
2192
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00002193- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
2194 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
2195 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
2196 type. This has been fixed now.
2197
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00002198- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
2199 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
2200 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
2201
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002202- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
2203 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
2204 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
2205 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
2206 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
2207 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
2208 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
2209 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00002210 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002211
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00002212- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
2213 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
2214 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00002215
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002216- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
2217 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
2218 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
2219 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
2220 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
2221 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
2222 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
2223 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00002224 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002225 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
2226 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
2227
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00002228- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
2229 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
2230 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
2231 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
2232 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
2233 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
2234 this.)
2235
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002236- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
2237 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002238 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002239 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002240 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
2241 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00002242 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
2243 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002244
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002245- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
2246 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
2247 currently running.
2248
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00002249- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
2250 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
2251 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
2252 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
2253
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00002254- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
2255 as directory names.
2256
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00002257- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
2258 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
2259
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00002260- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
2261 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
2262
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00002263- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00002264 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
2265 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00002266
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00002267- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
2268 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
2269 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
2270 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
2271 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
2272
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00002273- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
2274 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
2275 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
2276 removed.
2277
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00002278- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
2279 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
2280 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
2281
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00002282- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
2283 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
2284 to __debug__.
2285
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00002286- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
2287 string to the left with zeros. For example,
2288 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
2289
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00002290- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
2291 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
2292 deprecated now.
2293
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00002294- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
2295 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
2296 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00002297
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00002298- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
2299 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
2300 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
2301 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
2302 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00002303
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00002304- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
2305 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
2306
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00002307- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
2308 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
2309 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002310 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00002311 is backward compatible.
2312
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00002313- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
2314 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
2315 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
2316 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
2317 could access a pointer to freed memory.
2318
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00002319- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
2320 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
2321 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
2322 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
2323 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
2324 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00002325
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00002326- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
2327 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
2328
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00002329- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
2330 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
2331
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00002332- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
2333 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
2334 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
2335 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
2336 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
2337
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00002338- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
2339 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
2340 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
2341
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002342- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00002343 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
2344
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00002345- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
2346 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
2347 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00002348
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00002349- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
2350 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
2351
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00002352- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
2353 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
2354 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
2355
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00002356- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
2357
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002358Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002359-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002360
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00002361- Added three operators to the operator module:
2362 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
2363 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
2364 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
2365
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00002366- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
2367
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002368- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
2369 archives.
2370
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00002371- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
2372 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
2373 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
2374
2375 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
2376
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00002377- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
2378 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
2379 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00002380 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00002381
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00002382- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
2383 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
2384 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
2385 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002386 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
2387 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
2388 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
2389 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00002390
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00002391- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
2392 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00002393
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00002394- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
2395
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00002396- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
2397 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
2398
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00002399- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
2400 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
2401 supported.
2402
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00002403- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
2404
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00002405- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
2406 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00002407
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00002408- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
2409 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
2410
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002411- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
2412
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00002413- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
2414 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
2415
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00002416- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
2417 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
2418 functions but callable type objects.
2419
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002420- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00002421 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002422 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00002423
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00002424- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
2425 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00002426
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00002427- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
2428 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00002429
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00002430- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
2431 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
2432 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
2433 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
2434
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00002435- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
2436 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00002437
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00002438- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
2439 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
2440 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
2441 and __imul__.
2442
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00002443- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00002444 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
2445 is called.
2446
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00002447- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
2448 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
2449 interpreter was compiled.
2450
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00002451- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
2452 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
2453 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00002454 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00002455 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
2456 1, not 2.
2457
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00002458- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
2459 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
2460 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
2461 limit.
2462
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00002463- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
2464 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
2465 bug #623464.
2466
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00002467- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
2468 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
2469 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
2470 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
2471
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002472Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002473-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002474
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00002475- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
2476
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00002477- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
2478 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
2479 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
2480 with Python 2.3a2.
2481
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00002482- os.path exposes getctime.
2483
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002484- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002485 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002486 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002487 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002488 unit tests of floating point results.
2489
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00002490- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
2491 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
2492 has been increased.
2493
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002494- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
2495 executed.
2496
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00002497- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
2498 postinstallation script.
2499
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00002500- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
2501 test the current module.
2502
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002503- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00002504 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
2505 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
2506 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
2507 this behavior needs to be controlled.
2508
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00002509- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002510 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00002511 Ward's Optik package.
2512
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00002513- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
2514 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
2515 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
2516 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
2517
2518- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
2519 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002520 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00002521
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00002522- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
2523 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
2524 shelf are binary pickles.
2525
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00002526- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
2527 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
2528
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00002529- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
2530 modules are iterators now.
2531
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00002532- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
2533 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
2534 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
2535 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
2536 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
2537 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00002538
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00002539- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
2540 with their entity value.
2541
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00002542- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
2543
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00002544- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
2545 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00002546
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00002547- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
2548 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00002549 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00002550
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00002551- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
2552 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
2553 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
2554 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
2555 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
2556 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
2557 main():
2558
2559 import locale
2560 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
2561
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00002562- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
2563 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
2564
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00002565- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
2566 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
2567 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
2568 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
2569 to the new standard.
2570
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00002571- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
2572 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
2573 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
2574 an extension to the database.
2575
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00002576- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
2577 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
2578 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
2579 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00002580 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00002581
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00002582- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002583 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00002584
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002585- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
2586 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
2587 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
2588 bounded integers.
2589
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00002590- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
2591 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
2592 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
2593 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
2594 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
2595 in existence.
2596
2597 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
2598 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
2599 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
2600 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
2601 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
2602 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
2603
2604 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
2605 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
2606 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
2607 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
2608
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00002609- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
2610 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
2611 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
2612
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00002613- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
2614
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00002615- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
2616 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
2617 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
2618 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
2619
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00002620- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
2621 argument.
2622
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00002623- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
2624 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
2625 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
2626 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
2627 [SF patch 560794].
2628
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00002629- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
2630 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
2631 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00002632 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
2633 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
2634 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00002635
2636- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
2637 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00002638
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00002639- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
2640 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
2641 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
2642 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00002643
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00002644- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
2645 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
2646 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
2647 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
2648 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
2649
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00002650- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00002651
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00002652- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
2653
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00002654- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
2655 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
2656 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
2657 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
2658 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
2659 identical to None.
2660
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00002661- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
2662 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
2663 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
2664 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
2665 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
2666 results now.
2667
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00002668- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
2669 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
2670
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002671- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
2672 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
2673 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
2674 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
2675 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
2676 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
2677 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
2678 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
2679
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00002680- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
2681
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00002682- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
2683 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
2684
2685- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
2686 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
2687 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
2688 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
2689 and other systems.
2690
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00002691- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
2692 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
2693 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
2694 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 +00002695 work well with these.
2696
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00002697- compileall now supports quiet operation.
2698
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002699- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00002700 connections.
2701
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00002702- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
2703 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
2704 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
2705
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00002706- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
2707 sets
2708
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00002709- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
2710 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
2711 name.
2712
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00002713- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
2714 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
2715 passed in.
2716
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002717- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00002718 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00002719 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
2720 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00002721
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00002722- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
2723
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00002724- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
2725
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00002726- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
2727 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
2728 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
2729
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00002730- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
2731 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
2732 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
2733 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00002734 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00002735
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002736- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00002737 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002738 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00002739
2740- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
2741 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
2742 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
2743
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002744- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00002745 the value of its expression argument.
2746
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00002747- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
2748 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
2749 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
2750
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00002751- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
2752 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
2753 skipstone browser was included.
2754
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00002755- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
2756 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
2757
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002758Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002759-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002760
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00002761- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
2762 names in addition to accepting file names.
2763
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00002764- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
2765 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
2766 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
2767 still used and useful.)
2768
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00002769- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
2770 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
2771 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
2772 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00002773
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00002774- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
2775 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
2776 the generated binary.
2777
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002778Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002779-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002780
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00002781- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
2782
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00002783- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
2784 except in the hands of experts.
2785
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002786- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00002787 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
2788 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
2789 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00002790
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00002791- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
2792 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
2793 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
2794 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
2795 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
2796 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
2797 builds.
2798
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00002799- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
2800 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
2801 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
2802 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
2803 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
2804 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
2805 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
2806 new type.
2807
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00002808- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00002809
2810 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
2811 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
2812 positive infinities.
2813
2814 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
2815 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
2816 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
2817 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
2818 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
2819 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
2820 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
2821
2822 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
2823
2824 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
2825
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00002826- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
2827 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
2828 size of the executable.
2829
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00002830- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
2831 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
2832 configure script. On other platforms, remove
2833 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00002834
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00002835- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
2836
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00002837- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
2838 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
2839 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00002840
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00002841- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
2842 well as Unix.
2843
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00002844- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
2845 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
2846 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
2847 modules in the README file for details.
2848
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002849C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002850-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002851
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00002852- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
2853 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00002854 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00002855 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00002856 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00002857
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002858- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
2859 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
2860 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
2861 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
2862 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
2863 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002864 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002865 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
2866 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
2867 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
2868 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
2869 aligned.)
2870
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00002871- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
2872 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
2873 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
2874
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00002875- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
2876 level.
2877
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00002878- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
2879 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
2880 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
2881 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
2882 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
2883
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00002884- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
2885 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
2886 code.
2887
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00002888- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
2889 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
2890 adjusting for negative indices.
2891
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00002892- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
2893 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
2894 object.
2895
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00002896- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
2897 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
2898 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
2899
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00002900- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
2901 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00002902
2903- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
2904
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00002905- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
2906 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
2907 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
2908 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
2909
2910- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
2911
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00002912- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00002913
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002914- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00002915 without going through the buffer API.
2916
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002917- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00002918
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00002919- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
2920 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
2921 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
2922 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
2923
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002924- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
2925 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
2926
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00002927- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00002928 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
2929
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002930New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002931-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002932
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00002933- OpenVMS is now supported.
2934
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00002935- AtheOS is now supported.
2936
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00002937- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
2938
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00002939- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
2940
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002941Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002942-----
2943
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00002944- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
2945 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
2946 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002947
2948Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002949-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002950
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002951- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
2952 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
2953 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
2954 bugs.
2955 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002956 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00002957 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
2958 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002959 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00002960
2961- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00002962 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002963
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00002964- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
2965 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
2966
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00002967- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
2968 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002969 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00002970 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
2971
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00002972- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
2973 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
2974 use files" uninstall option).
2975
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00002976- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
2977
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00002978- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
2979 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
2980
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00002981- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
2982 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
2983 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
2984
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00002985- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
2986 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
2987 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
2988 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
2989 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00002990 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
2991 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
2992 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00002993
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002994- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002995 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002996 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
2997 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
2998 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
2999 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
3000 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
3001 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
3002 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
3003 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
3004 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
3005 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
3006 work around.
3007
3008- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
3009 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
3010 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
3011 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
3012 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
3013 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
3014 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
3015 specified with O_CREAT too).
3016
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003017Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003018----
3019
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003020- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003021
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00003022- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
3023 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
3024 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
3025
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003026- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
3027 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
3028 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
3029
3030- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
3031 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
3032 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
3033 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
3034 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
3035 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
3036 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
3037 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003038
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00003039- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
3040 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
3041 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003042
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003043- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
3044 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
3045 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
3046 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
3047 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003048
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003049- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
3050 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
3051 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003052
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003053- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
3054 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003055
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003056- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
3057 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
3058 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
3059 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
3060 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003061
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003062- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
3063 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
3064 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
3065
3066- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
3067 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
3068 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003069
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003070- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
3071 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
3072 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
3073 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003074 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003075
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003076- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
3077 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003078
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003079- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
3080 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003081
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003082- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00003083 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00003084 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
3085 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003086
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003087
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003088What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003089===============================
3090
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003091*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
3092
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003093Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003094--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003095
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003096- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
3097 with a custom metaclass.
3098
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003099Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003100-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003101
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003102- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
3103 are proxies.
3104
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003105Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003106-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003107
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003108- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
3109 very short strings.
3110
3111- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
3112 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
3113 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
3114 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
3115 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
3116
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003117Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003118-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003119
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003120- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
3121 close or delete time).
3122
3123- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
3124 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
3125
3126- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
3127
3128- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003129 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003130
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003131Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003132-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003133
3134Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003135-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003136
3137C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003138-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003139
3140New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003141-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003142
3143Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003144-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003145
3146Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003147-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003148
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003149- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
3150
3151- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
3152 instances are deleted at process exit time.
3153
3154- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
3155 deleted at process exit time.
3156
3157- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
3158 in backslash.
3159
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003160Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003161----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003162
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003163- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
3164 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
3165 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
3166
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003167
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00003168What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003169===========================
3170
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003171*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
3172
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003173Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003174--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003175
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003176- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
3177 been extensively updated. See
3178
3179 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
3180
3181 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
3182
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00003183- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
3184 deleted!
3185
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00003186- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
3187 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
3188 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
3189 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
3190 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
3191
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003192- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
3193
3194 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
3195 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
3196
3197 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
3198 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
3199 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
3200 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
3201 supported anyway.
3202
3203 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
3204 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
3205
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00003206- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
3207 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
3208 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
3209 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
3210 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003211
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00003212- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
3213 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
3214 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
3215
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003216Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003217-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003218
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003219- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
3220 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
3221 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
3222 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
3223 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
3224 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00003225 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
3226 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
3227 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
3228 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003229
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00003230- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
3231 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
3232 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
3233
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003234Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003235-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003236
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00003237- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
3238
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003239Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003240-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003241
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00003242- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
3243 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
3244 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
3245 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
3246 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
3247 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
3248
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00003249- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
3250
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00003251- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
3252
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00003253- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
3254
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003255- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
3256 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
3257 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
3258
3259- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
3260
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003261Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003262-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003263
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003264- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
3265 off a search on Google.
3266
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003267Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003268-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003269
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003270- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
3271 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
3272 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
3273 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
3274 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
3275 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
3276 other platforms should do likewise.
3277
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00003278- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
3279 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
3280 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
3281
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003282C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003283-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003284
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00003285- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
3286 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
3287 producing key-value pairs.
3288
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00003289- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00003290 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00003291 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
3292 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
3293 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
3294 previously went unchallenged.
3295
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003296New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003297-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003298
3299Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003300-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003301
3302Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003303-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003304
3305Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003306----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003307
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00003308- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
3309 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003310
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003311- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
3312 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
3313 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
3314 home.
3315
3316
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003317What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003318===========================
3319
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003320*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
3321
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003322Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003323--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003324
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00003325- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
3326 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003327
3328 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00003329 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003330
3331 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
3332 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003333 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003334 This needs to be documented.
3335
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00003336- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
3337 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
3338
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00003339- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
3340 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
3341 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
3342
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00003343- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
3344 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
3345
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003346- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
3347 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
3348 class forbids it).
3349
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00003350- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
3351 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
3352 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
3353
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003354- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
3355
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003356Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003357-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003358
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00003359- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
3360 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003361 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00003362
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003363- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
3364 (like 1 + '').
3365
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003366Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003367-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003368
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003369- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
3370 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
3371 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
3372 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003373 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003374 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
3375
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00003376- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
3377 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
3378 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
3379 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
3380
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003381- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
3382 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003383 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
3384 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
3385 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003386
3387- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
3388 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00003389
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00003390- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
3391 bytes on its input.
3392
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003393Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003394-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003395
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003396- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00003397 convenience function.
3398
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00003399- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
3400 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
3401 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003402 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
3403 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
3404 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
3405 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
3406 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
3407 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00003408
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00003409- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
3410 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
3411 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
3412 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
3413
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00003414- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
3415 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
3416 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
3417
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00003418- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
3419 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
3420 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
3421 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
3422
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003423- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
3424 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003425 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003426 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
3427 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
3428 new -l and -e options.
3429
3430- statcache is now deprecated.
3431
3432- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
3433 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003434 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003435 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
3436 time properly taken into account.
3437
3438- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
3439 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
3440 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
3441 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
3442
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003443Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003444-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003445
3446Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003447-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003448
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003449- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
3450 is built with libdb3 if available.
3451
3452- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
3453
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003454C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003455-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003456
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00003457- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
3458 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
3459 PySequence_Size().
3460
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003461- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
3462
3463- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
3464 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
3465 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
3466
3467- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
3468 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
3469
3470- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
3471 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
3472
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003473New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003474-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003475
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003476- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
3477 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
3478
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00003479- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
3480 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
3481
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00003482- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
3483
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003484Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003485-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003486
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00003487- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
3488 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
3489
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003490Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003491-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003492
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003493Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003494----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003495
3496- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
3497 removed completely in the next release.
3498
3499- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
3500 OSX.
3501
3502- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
3503 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
3504
3505- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
3506
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003507
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003508What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003509===========================
3510
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003511*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
3512
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003513Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003514--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003515
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003516- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003517 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003518 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003519 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
3520 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003521 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
3522 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003523 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
3524 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00003525
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00003526- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
3527 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
3528
3529- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
3530 class methods, static methods, and properties.
3531
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003532Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003533-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003534
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00003535- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
3536 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
3537 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
3538 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
3539 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
3540 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
3541 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
3542 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
3543
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003544- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
3545 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
3546 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
3547 example).
3548
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003549- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00003550 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003551 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003552 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00003553
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003554- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
3555 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
3556 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00003557 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003558
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003559- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
3560 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
3561 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
3562 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
3563 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
3564 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
3565
3566 isinstance(x, (A, B))
3567
3568 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
3569
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003570Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003571-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003572
3573- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
3574
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00003575- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
3576
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00003577- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
3578 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00003579
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00003580- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
3581 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
3582 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
3583 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
3584 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
3585 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00003586 attributes.
3587
3588- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
3589 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
3590 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00003591
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003592- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
3593 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
3594 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003595
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00003596- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
3597 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
3598 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003599 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
3600 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
3601
3602- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
3603 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00003604
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003605Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003606-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00003607
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00003608- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
3609 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
3610
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003611- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
3612 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
3613 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
3614 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
3615
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00003616- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
3617 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
3618 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
3619 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
3620
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00003621 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
3622 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
3623 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
3624 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
3625 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
3626 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
3627 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
3628 without losing information).
3629
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00003630- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00003631 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
3632 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
3633 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
3634 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
3635 module).
3636
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003637 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00003638 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
3639 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
3640 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
3641 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00003642
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00003643- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00003644 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
3645 encoding.
3646
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00003647- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
3648 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
3649
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003650- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003651 to allow saving the message body to a file.
3652
3653- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
3654 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
3655 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
3656 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
3657
3658- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
3659
3660- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
3661 ON, and OFF.
3662
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003663- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
3664 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
3665
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00003666Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003667-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00003668
3669- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
3670 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
3671 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003672
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003673- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
3674 been added: -X and -E.
3675
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003676Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003677-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003678
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003679- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
3680 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
3681
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003682C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003683-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003684
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00003685- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
3686 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
3687 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
3688 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
3689 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
3690
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00003691- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
3692 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
3693 as long) arguments.
3694
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00003695- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
3696 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
3697 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
3698 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
3699 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
3700 report any bugs or strange behavior).
3701
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003702- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
3703 input.
3704
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003705New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003706-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003707
3708Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003709-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003710
3711Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003712-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003713
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00003714- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
3715 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
3716 is created for .py and .pyw files.
3717
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003718- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
3719 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
3720 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003721 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003722
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003723 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
3724 # (SIGINT) behavior.
3725 import signal
3726 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003727
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003728 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003729 while 1:
3730 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003731 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003732 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
3733 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
3734 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
3735 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003736
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003737
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003738What's New in Python 2.2a4?
3739===========================
3740
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003741*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
3742
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003743Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003744--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003745
3746- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
3747 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
3748 documentation for all operations on list objects.
3749
3750- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
3751 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
3752 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
3753 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
3754 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
3755 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
3756 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003757
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00003758- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003759 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00003760 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
3761 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
3762 associate a docstring with a property.
3763
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003764- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
3765 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
3766 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
3767 other built-in object types.
3768
3769- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
3770 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
3771 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
3772 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
3773 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
3774
3775- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
3776 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
3777
3778- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
3779 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003780 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003781 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
3782 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
3783 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
3784 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
3785 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
3786
3787- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
3788 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
3789 class.
3790
3791- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
3792 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
3793 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
3794 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
3795
3796- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
3797 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
3798 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
3799 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
3800
3801- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
3802 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
3803
3804- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
3805 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
3806 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
3807 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
3808 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003809 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003810 with the same value as s.
3811
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00003812- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
3813
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003814Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003815----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003816
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00003817- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
3818
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00003819- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
3820 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
3821 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
3822 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
3823 objects.
3824
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003825- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
3826 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00003827 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
3828 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
3829
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003830- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
3831 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
3832 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
3833
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003834Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003835-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003836
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00003837- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
3838 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
3839 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
3840 by the instances.
3841
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00003842- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
3843 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
3844 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
3845
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003846- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
3847 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
3848 before the entire comparison is complete.
3849
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00003850- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
3851 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
3852 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
3853
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00003854- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
3855 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
3856 getwriter().
3857
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003858- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
3859 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
3860
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00003861- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003862 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
3863 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
3864
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00003865- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
3866 iterable object.
3867
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003868- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
3869 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00003870
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003871- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
3872 authentication.
3873
3874- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
3875 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00003876
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003877- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00003878 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
3879 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
3880 a sample driver.)
3881
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003882Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003883-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003884
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003885- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
3886 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
3887 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
3888 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
3889 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
3890 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
3891 kernel has large file support.
3892
3893- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
3894 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
3895 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
3896 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
3897 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
3898
3899- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
3900 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
3901 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
3902
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003903C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003904-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003905
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003906- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
3907 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
3908
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003909New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003910-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003911
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003912- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
3913 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
3914
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003915Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003916-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003917
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003918- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
3919 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
3920 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
3921 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
3922 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
3923
3924- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
3925 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
3926 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
3927 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
3928
3929- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
3930 especially in regard to reporting errors.
3931
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003932Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003933-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003934
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003935- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003936 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
3937 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003938
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003939
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003940What's New in Python 2.2a3?
3941===========================
3942
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003943*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
3944
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003945Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003946----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003947
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003948- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
3949 big to represent as a C double.
3950
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00003951- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
3952 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
3953 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
3954 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
3955 restriction).
3956
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00003957- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
3958 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
3959 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
3960 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
3961 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
3962
3963 >>> dir([])
3964 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
3965 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
3966 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
3967 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
3968 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
3969 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
3970 'reverse', 'sort']
3971
3972 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
3973
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003974- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003975 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
3976 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
3977 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
3978 OverflowError exception.
3979
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00003980- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003981 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003982 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
3983 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
3984 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
3985 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
3986 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003987 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003988 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
3989 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
3990
3991 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
3992 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
3993 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
3994 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003995
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003996- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003997 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
3998 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
3999 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
4000 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
4001 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
4002 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
4003 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
4004 once it is created.
4005
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00004006- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
4007 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
4008 (key, value) pairs.
4009
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004010- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004011 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
4012 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
4013
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00004014- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
4015 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
4016 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
4017 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
4018 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004019
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004020- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004021 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
4022 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
4023
4024 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
4025
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004026- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00004027 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
4028
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004029Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004030-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004031
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004032- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00004033 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
4034 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004035
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00004036- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
4037 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
4038 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
4039 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
4040 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
4041 in this area anymore).
4042
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00004043- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
4044 threading.Timer.
4045
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00004046- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
4047 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
4048
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004049- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004050 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
4051
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004052- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00004053 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
4054 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
4055 converted to Python longs.
4056
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004057- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004058 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
4059
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00004060- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
4061 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
4062 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
4063
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004064Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004065-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004066
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004067- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
4068 division operators as per PEP 238.
4069
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004070Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004071-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004072
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004073- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
4074 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
4075 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
4076 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
4077
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004078C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004079-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00004080
4081- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004082
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004083- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
4084 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004085 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004086
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004087 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
4088 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004089 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004090 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004091
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004092- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004093 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
4094 module:
4095
4096 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004097
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004098 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
4099 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004100
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004101 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
4102 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004103
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004104 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
4105
4106 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
4107
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004108- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004109 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
4110 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
4111 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004112
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004113New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004114-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004115
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00004116- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
4117 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
4118 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
4119 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
4120 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004121
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004122Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004123-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004124
4125Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004126-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004127
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004128- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
4129 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
4130 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
4131 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00004132 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
4133 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
4134 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
4135 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
4136 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004137
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004138- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00004139 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
4140
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004141
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004142What's New in Python 2.2a2?
4143===========================
4144
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004145*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
4146
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004147Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004148-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004149
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00004150- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
4151 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
4152
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004153- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
4154 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
4155 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004156
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00004157- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
4158 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
4159 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
4160 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004161
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004162- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
4163
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004164- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004165
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004166Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004167-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004168
4169- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00004170 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004171 the module docstring for details.
4172
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004173Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004174-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004175
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004176- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004177 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
4178 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
4179 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004180
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004181- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
4182 Nick Mathewson.
4183
4184Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004185----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004186
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004187- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
4188 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
4189 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
4190 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
4191 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
4192 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
4193 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
4194 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
4195
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00004196- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
4197 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
4198 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
4199 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
4200
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00004201- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
4202 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
4203 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
4204 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
4205 come a long way).
4206
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004207- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
4208 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
4209 write filters for these warnings).
4210
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00004211- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
4212 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
4213 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
4214 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
4215 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
4216
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00004217- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
4218 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
4219 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
4220 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
4221 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
4222 older distribution.
4223
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004224Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004225-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004226
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004227- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
4228 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004229 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004230
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004231- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
4232 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
4233 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
4234
4235- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
4236
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004237- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
4238
4239- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
4240
4241- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
4242
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004243- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004244
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004245- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
4246
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004247New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004248-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004249
4250C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004251-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004252
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004253- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
4254 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
4255 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
4256 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
4257 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
4258 against buffer overruns.
4259
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00004260- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004261 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
4262 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00004263 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
4264 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
4265 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
4266
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004267- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
4268 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
4269 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
4270 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
4271 deprecated.
4272
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004273Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004274-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004275
4276- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
4277 relevant is found.
4278
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004279
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004280What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004281===========================
4282
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004283*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
4284
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004285Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004286----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004287
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00004288- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
4289 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
4290 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
4291 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
4292 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
4293 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
4294 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
4295 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004296 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00004297 repaired.
4298
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004299- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00004300 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004301 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
4302 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
4303 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
4304 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
4305 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
4306 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
4307 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
4308 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
4309
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00004310- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
4311 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
4312 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
4313 leading BMO character).
4314
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004315- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
4316 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
4317 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
4318
4319 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
4320 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
4321 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004322
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004323 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
4324 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
4325 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
4326 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
4327 for various simple to use conversions.
4328
4329 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
4330 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
4331
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004332 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4333 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
4334 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
4335 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
4336 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4337 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
4338 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4339 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
4340 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4341 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
4342 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4343 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
4344 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4345 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
4346 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004347
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004348- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
4349 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
4350 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004351 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004352 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004353
4354 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004355 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
4356 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
4357 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
4358 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
4359 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004360 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
4361 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004362
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004363 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
4364 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
4365 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004366 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004367
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00004368- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
4369 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
4370 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
4371 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
4372 floating arithmetic,
4373
4374 x = 9007199254740992.0
4375 print long(x)
4376
4377 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
4378 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
4379 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
4380 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
4381 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
4382 functions are of good quality).
4383
4384 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
4385 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
4386 algorithms to break.
4387
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00004388- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
4389 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
4390 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
4391 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
4392 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
4393 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
4394 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
4395 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
4396 order.
4397
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004398- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
4399 operation along the most common code paths.
4400
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00004401- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
4402 the same as dict.has_key(x).
4403
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00004404- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
4405 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
4406 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
4407 {}.update(UserDict())
4408
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00004409- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
4410 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
4411 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
4412 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
4413 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
4414 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
4415 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
4416 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
4417
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004418- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004419 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004420
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00004421 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00004422 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
4423 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00004424 join() method of strings
4425 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00004426 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
4427 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004428 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00004429 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00004430
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00004431- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
4432 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
4433
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00004434- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
4435 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
4436
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00004437- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
4438 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
4439 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
4440 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
4441
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004442- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
4443 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004444 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004445 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
4446 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00004447
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00004448- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
4449
4450
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004451Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004452-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004453
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00004454- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004455 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00004456 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
4457 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
4458
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00004459- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
4460 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
4461
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00004462- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
4463 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
4464 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
4465 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
4466
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00004467- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
4468 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
4469 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
4470
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00004471- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
4472
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00004473- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
4474
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00004475- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
4476 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
4477 that are still imported into string.py).
4478
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004479- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
4480
4481- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
4482 Now it does.
4483
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00004484- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
4485
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00004486- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
4487 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
4488 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
4489 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
4490 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004491 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
4492 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00004493
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00004494- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
4495 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
4496 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
4497 'help(object)'.
4498
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004499Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004500-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004501
4502- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004503 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004504 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
4505 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
4506
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004507- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00004508 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
4509 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004510
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00004511C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004512-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00004513
4514- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
4515 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004516
4517----
4518
4519**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**