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Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Neal Norwitzfc76d632006-01-10 06:03:13 +000015- Patch #1400181, fix unicode string formatting to not use the locale.
16 This is how string objects work. u'%f' could use , instead of .
17 for the decimal point. Now both strings and unicode always use periods.
18
Neal Norwitz671b9e32006-01-09 07:07:12 +000019- Bug #1244610, #1392915, fix build problem on OpenBSD 3.7 and 3.8.
20 configure would break checking curses.h.
21
Georg Brandlcd4d1e82005-12-27 17:37:07 +000022- Bug #959576: The pwd module is now builtin. This allows Python to be
23 built on UNIX platforms without $HOME set.
24
Neal Norwitzc10978f2005-12-19 06:07:16 +000025- Bug #1072182, fix some potential problems if characters are signed.
26
Neal Norwitz5d0ad502005-12-19 04:27:42 +000027- Bug #889500, fix line number on SyntaxWarning for global declarations.
28
Neal Norwitzdb83eb32005-12-18 05:29:30 +000029- Bug #1378022, UTF-8 files with a leading BOM crashed the interpreter.
30
Neal Norwitze7214a12005-12-18 05:03:17 +000031- Support for converting hex strings to floats no longer works.
32 This was not portable. float('0x3') now raises a ValueError.
33
Barry Warsaw2a38a862005-12-18 01:27:35 +000034- Patch #1382163: Expose Subversion revision number to Python. New C API
35 function Py_GetBuildNumber(). New attribute sys.build_number. Build number
36 is now displayed in interactive prompt banner.
37
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000038- Implementation of PEP 341 - Unification of try/except and try/finally.
39 "except" clauses can now be written together with a "finally" clause in
Neal Norwitz11ca77e2005-12-17 22:24:12 +000040 one try statement instead of two nested ones. Patch #1355913.
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000041
Hye-Shik Chang835b2432005-12-17 04:38:31 +000042- Bug #1379994: Builtin unicode_escape and raw_unicode_escape codec
43 now encodes backslash correctly.
44
Martin v. Löwisb45b3152005-11-28 17:34:23 +000045- Patch #1350409: Work around signal handling bug in Visual Studio 2005.
46
Georg Brandlf06e30a2005-11-24 15:37:42 +000047- Bug #1281408: Py_BuildValue now works correct even with unsigned longs
48 and long longs.
49
Neal Norwitz67715f02005-11-09 06:59:35 +000050- SF Bug #1350188, "setdlopenflags" leads to crash upon "import"
51 It was possible dlerror() returns a NULL pointer, use a default error
52 message in this case.
53
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000054- Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the
55 new Unicode translate string feature in the builtin charmap
56 codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available
57 at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS
58 encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo)
59
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +000060- Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000061
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +000062- Speed up some Unicode operations.
63
64- A new AST parser implementation was completed.
65
Neal Norwitzb6570f52005-10-21 06:26:10 +000066- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +000067 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
68
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +000069- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
70
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +000071- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
72 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
73
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +000074- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
75
76- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
77
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +000078- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
79 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
80 was empty.
81
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +000082- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
83 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
84
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000085- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +000086 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000087
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +000088- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
89 codes.
90
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +000091- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
92 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
93 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
94
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +000095- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
96 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
97
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +000098- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +000099 (fixes bug #1119418).
100
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +0000101- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
102
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +0000103- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
104 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
105
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +0000106- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
107 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
108 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
109
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +0000110- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
111
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +0000112- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
113 reference counts in some error exit cases.
114
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000115- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
116 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
117 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
118 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
119 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
120 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
121 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
122 realloc.
123
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +0000124- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
125 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
126
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +0000127- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
128 like their int counterparts.
129
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +0000130- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
131 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
132 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
133 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
134 for a longer write-up of the problem).
135
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +0000136- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
137 serializing floats.
138
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +0000139- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
140 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
141 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
142
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +0000143- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
144 278.
145
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000146- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
147 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
148 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
149 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000150 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000151 PyNumber_*().
152 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
153
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000154- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
155 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
156 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
157 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
158
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000159- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
160 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
161 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
162 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
163 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
164
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000165- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
166 disabled caused a crash.
167
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000168- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
169 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
170
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000171- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000172 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
173
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000174- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
175
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000176- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000177 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
178 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
179 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000180
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000181- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
182
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000183- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
184 returning None.
185
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000186- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000187 ('\') with a specific error message.
188
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000189- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
190
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000191- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
192 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
193
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000194- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000195 an ferror() call.
196
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000197- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
198 list.sort().
199
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000200- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
201 (2+3) --> (5).
202
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000203- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
204
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000205- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
206 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000207
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000208- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
209 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
210 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
211
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000212- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
213 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
214 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
215
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000216Extension Modules
217-----------------
218
Neal Norwitz3b4fff82006-01-11 08:54:45 +0000219- Bug #1402308, (possible) segfault when using mmap.mmap(-1, ...)
220
Neal Norwitz88bbd732006-01-10 07:05:44 +0000221- Bug #1400822, _curses over{lay,write} doesn't work when passing 6 ints.
222 Also fix ungetmouse() which did not accept arguments properly.
223 The code now conforms to the documented signature.
224
Neal Norwitz5e3d8622006-01-09 06:24:35 +0000225- Bug #1400115, Fix segfault when calling curses.panel.userptr()
226 without prior setting of the userptr.
227
Neal Norwitz40c6b472006-01-05 05:43:35 +0000228- Fix 64-bit problems in bsddb.
229
Neal Norwitz8856fb72005-12-18 03:34:22 +0000230- Patch #1365916: fix some unsafe 64-bit mmap methods.
231
Hye-Shik Changc5c57e62005-12-12 11:48:32 +0000232- Bug #1290333: Added a workaround for cjkcodecs' _codecs_cn build
233 problem on AIX.
234
Georg Brandla13c2442005-11-22 19:30:31 +0000235- Bug #869197: os.setgroups rejects long integer arguments
236
Neal Norwitz0f46bbf2005-11-03 05:00:25 +0000237- Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint
238
Neal Norwitz7b631792005-11-02 05:26:07 +0000239- Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors
240
Neal Norwitzf3396542005-10-28 05:52:22 +0000241- Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract
242 REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs.
243
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000244- Get bsddb module to build with BSD DB version 3.2
245
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000246- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
247 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
248
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000249- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
250
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000251- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
252 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
253
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000254- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
255 returns in cStringIO.c.
256
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000257- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
258 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
259
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000260- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
261
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000262- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
263
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000264- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
265 the file system encoding.
266
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000267- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
268 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000269
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000270- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
271
272- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000273 line without newlines.
274
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000275- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
276 on Windows.
277
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000278- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000279 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
280
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000281- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
282 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
283 for large or negative values.
284
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000285- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000286 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000287
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000288- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
289
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000290- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
291 if available on the platform.
292
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000293- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
294 available on the platform.
295
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000296- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
297 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
298
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000299- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
300
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000301- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
302 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
303 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
304
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000305- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
306
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000307- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
308 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
309
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000310- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000311 file size.
312
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000313- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
314
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000315- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
316 {remove_history,replace_history}
317
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000318- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
319 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000320
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000321- stat_float_times is now True.
322
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000323- array.array objects are now picklable.
324
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000325- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
326 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
327
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000328- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
329 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
330 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
331
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000332- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
333 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000334
335Library
336-------
337
Neal Norwitzf60cd472006-01-14 07:05:13 +0000338- Bug #1394565: SimpleHTTPServer now doesn't choke on query parameters
Georg Brandl45ab2332006-01-13 17:05:56 +0000339 any more.
340
Georg Brandl4edd9892006-01-13 16:59:46 +0000341- Bug #1403410: The warnings module now doesn't get confused
342 when it can't find out the module name it generates a warning for.
343
Martin v. Löwis412ed3b2006-01-08 10:45:39 +0000344- Patch #1177307: Added a new codec utf_8_sig for UTF-8 with a BOM signature.
345
Neal Norwitzab86f8e2005-12-23 21:44:36 +0000346- Patch #1157027: cookielib mishandles RFC 2109 cookies in Netscape mode
347
Neal Norwitz338e7862005-12-23 21:27:46 +0000348- Patch #1117398: cookielib.LWPCookieJar and .MozillaCookieJar now raise
349 LoadError as documented, instead of IOError. For compatibility,
350 LoadError subclasses IOError.
351
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000352- Added the hashlib module. It provides secure hash functions for MD5 and
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000353 SHA1, 224, 256, 384, and 512. Note that recent developments make the
354 historic MD5 and SHA1 unsuitable for cryptographic-strength applications.
355 In <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-December/058850.html>
356 Ronald L. Rivest offered this advice for Python:
357
358 "The consensus of researchers in this area (at least as
359 expressed at the NIST Hash Function Workshop 10/31/05),
360 is that SHA-256 is a good choice for the time being, but
361 that research should continue, and other alternatives may
362 arise from this research. The larger SHA's also seem OK."
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000363
Fredrik Lundh7e0aef02005-12-12 18:54:55 +0000364- Added a subset of Fredrik Lundh's ElementTree package. Available
365 modules are xml.etree.ElementTree, xml.etree.ElementPath, and
366 xml.etree.ElementInclude, from ElementTree 1.2.6.
367
Martin v. Löwis307021f2005-11-27 16:59:04 +0000368- Patch #1162825: Support non-ASCII characters in IDLE window titles.
369
Georg Brandl1f663572005-11-26 16:50:44 +0000370- Bug #1365984: urllib now opens "data:" URLs again.
371
Brett Cannonad07ff22005-11-23 02:15:50 +0000372- Patch #1314396: prevent deadlock for threading.Thread.join() when an exception
373 is raised within the method itself on a previous call (e.g., passing in an
374 illegal argument)
375
Brett Cannon5d0bf942005-11-02 23:04:26 +0000376- Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there
377 is an error in the format string.
378
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000379- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
380
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000381- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000382 "parent" argument.
383
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000384- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
385 for padding.
386
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000387- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
388 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
389
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000390- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
391 to get the correct encoding.
392
393- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
394 languages.
395
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000396- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
397
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000398- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
399
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000400- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
401
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000402- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
403 functionality.
404
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000405- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
406
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000407- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
408 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
409
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000410- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
411 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
412 match the Content-Length header.
413
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000414- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
415
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000416- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
417 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000418 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000419
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000420- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
421
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000422- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
423
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000424- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
425 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
426
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000427- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
428 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
429 Tkdnd.
430
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000431- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
432 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
433
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000434- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
435 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
436
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000437- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000438 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
439
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000440- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
441 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
442
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000443- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
444 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
445
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000446- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000447 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000448
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000449- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
450
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000451- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
452 error messages.
453
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000454- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
455
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000456- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
457 Bug #1224621.
458
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000459- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
460 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
461 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
462 terminates by raising StopIteration.
463
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000464- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
465
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000466- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
467 component of the path.
468
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000469- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
470 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
471 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
472 class at all.
473
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000474- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
475 files to PyPI.
476
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000477- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
478 them to PyPI.
479
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000480- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
481 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
482 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
483 work as expected.
484
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000485- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
486 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
487
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000488- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000489 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
490
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000491- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
492
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000493- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
494 to build.
495
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000496- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
497 symbolic links on Windows.
498
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000499- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000500 profile.py if available.
501
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000502- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
503
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000504- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
505 in LWPCookieJar.
506
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000507- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
508
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000509- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
510
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000511- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
512
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000513- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
514
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000515- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
516
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000517- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
518
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000519- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
520
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000521- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
522
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000523- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
524 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
525 be exploited in various ways.
526
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000527- Bug #1222790: in SimpleXMLRPCServer, set the reuse-address and close-on-exec
Andrew M. Kuchling3a976052005-12-04 15:07:41 +0000528 flags on the HTTP listening socket.
529
Andrew M. Kuchlinge63fde72005-12-04 15:36:57 +0000530- Bug #792570: SimpleXMLRPCServer had problems if the request grew too large.
531 Fixed by reading the HTTP body in chunks instead of one big socket.read().
532
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000533- Patches #893642, #1039083: add allow_none, encoding arguments to constructors of
Andrew M. Kuchling10a16de2005-12-04 16:34:40 +0000534 SimpleXMLRPCServer and CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler.
535
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000536- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
537
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000538- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
539
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000540- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
541
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000542- Enhancements to the csv module:
543
544 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000545 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000546 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000547 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
548 reporting.
549 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
550 dictates.
551 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000552 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000553 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000554 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
555 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000556 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
557 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000558 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000559 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
560 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
561 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
562 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
563 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
564 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
565 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
566 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
567 without first creating a dialect class.
568 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
569 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
570 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000571 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000572 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
573 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000574 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
575 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
576 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
577 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000578 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
579 This has been fixed.
580
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000581- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
582 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
583 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
584 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
585
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000586- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
587
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000588- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
589 (Bug #951915).
590
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000591- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
592 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
593 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000594 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000595
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000596- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
597
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000598- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
599 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
600
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000601- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
602
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000603- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
604
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000605- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
606
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000607- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
608
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000609- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
610
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000611- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
612 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
613 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
614
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000615- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000616 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000617
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000618- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
619 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
620 tokenizer with very long source lines.
621
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000622- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called
623 immediately after creating the object, without any intervening
624 ``.decompress()`` calls.
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000625
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000626- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
627 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000628
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000629- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
630 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
631
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000632- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
633 correctly.
634
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000635- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
636 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
637 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
638 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
639 between two lines.
640
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000641- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
642 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
643 handlers.
644
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000645- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000646 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
647 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000648
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000649- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
650 considering it exactly like a '*'.
651
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000652- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
653 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000654
Walter Dörwald09f0dd52005-11-21 19:10:07 +0000655- ` uu.encode()`` and ``uu.decode()`` now support unicode filenames.
656
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000657Build
658-----
659
Martin v. Löwisfd9a72a2006-01-08 10:07:33 +0000660- Patch #881820: look for openpty and forkpty also in libbsd.
661
Martin v. Löwis64c33dd2006-01-03 07:42:14 +0000662- The sources of zlib are now part of the Python distribution (zlib 1.2.3).
663 The zlib module is now builtin on Windows.
664
Martin v. Löwisd5845ec2005-12-30 12:31:38 +0000665- Use -xcode=pic32 for CCSHARED on Solaris with SunPro.
666
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000667- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
668 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
669
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000670- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
671 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
672
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000673- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
674 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
675 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000676 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000677
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000678- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
679 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
680 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
681
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000682- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
683
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000684- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
685 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
686
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000687- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
688 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
689 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
690 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
691 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
692 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
693 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
694 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
695
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000696- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
697 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
698 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
699 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
700
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000701C API
702-----
703
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000704- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
705
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000706- Removed PyRange_New().
707
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000708- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
709 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
710 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
711 mappings.
712
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000713
714Tests
715-----
716
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000717- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000718
Hye-Shik Changaaa2f1d2005-12-10 17:44:27 +0000719- Patch #1276356: New resource "urlfetch" is implemented. This enables
720 even impatient people to run tests that require remote files.
721
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000722
723Documentation
724-------------
725
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000726- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
727
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000728- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
729
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000730- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
731
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000732- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
733
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000734- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
735
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000736- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
737
738- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
739
740- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
741
742- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
743
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000744- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
745 Closes bug #1166582.
746
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000747- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
748 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
749 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
750
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000751Mac
752---
753
754
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000755New platforms
756-------------
757
758- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
759
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000760
761Tools/Demos
762-----------
763
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000764- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
765 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
766 source files that need an encoding declaration.
767 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
768
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000769- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
770
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000771- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000772
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000773- Fixed a display glitch in Pynche, which could cause the right arrow to
774 wiggle over by a pixel.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000775
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000776What's New in Python 2.4 final?
777===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000778
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000779*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000780
781Core and builtins
782-----------------
783
784- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
785 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
786 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
787
788
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000789What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
790==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000791
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000792*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000793
794Core and builtins
795-----------------
796
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000797- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
798 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
799 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
800
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000801
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000802Library
803-------
804
805- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
806 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
807 raised is re-raised.
808
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000809- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
810 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
811
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000812- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
813 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
814 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
815 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
816 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
817 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
818 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
819 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
820 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
821 by the slice are recomputed now.
822
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000823- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000824
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000825Build
826-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000827
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000828- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
829 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
830 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000831
832C API
833-----
834
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000835- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
836
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000837
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000838What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
839================================
840
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000841*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000842
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000843License
844-------
845
846The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
847is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
848changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
849Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
850intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
851durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
852the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
853License::
854
855 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
856
857says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
858to Python 2.1.1.
859
860The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
861License Version 2.
862
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000863Core and builtins
864-----------------
865
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000866- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
867 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
868 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
869 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
870 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
871 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
872 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
Andrew M. Kuchlingb2a739d2005-11-22 15:14:44 +0000873 ``AttributeError`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000874 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
875 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
876
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000877- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000878
879Extension Modules
880-----------------
881
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000882- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
883 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
884 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
885 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000886
887Library
888-------
889
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000890- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
891 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
892 returned.
893
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000894- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
895
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000896- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
897 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
898
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000899- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
900
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000901- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
902 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000903
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000904- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
905
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000906- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
907
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000908- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000909 the source code is updated and reloaded.
910
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000911Build
912-----
913
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000914- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000915
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000916What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
917================================
918
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000919*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000920
921Core and builtins
922-----------------
923
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000924- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000925 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
926
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000927- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
928 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
929 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
930 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
931
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000932- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
933 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
934
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000935- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
936 constant.
937
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000938- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
939 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
940 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
941 large), and to anomalies such as
942 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
943 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
944 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
945 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000946
947Extension modules
948-----------------
949
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000950- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
951 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000952 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
953 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
954 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000955
956Library
957-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000958
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000959- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000960 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000961 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
962 --swig-cpp.
963
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000964- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
965 it is set.
966
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000967- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000968
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000969- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
970 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
971 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
972 Closes bug #1039270.
973
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000974- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000975
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000976 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000977 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
978 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
979 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
980 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
981 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
982 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
983 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
984 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
985 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
986 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
987 + Updates to documentation.
988
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000989- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
990 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
991 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
992 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
993
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000994- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000995
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000996- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
997 applications should use the getmember function.
998
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000999- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
1000
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +00001001- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
1002 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
1003 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
1004 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
1005 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
1006 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
1007 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
1008 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
1009 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
1010
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001011- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
1012 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +00001013 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001014
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001015- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
1016 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
1017 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
1018 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
1019 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
1020 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
1021 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
1022 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001023
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001024- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
1025 the new public features (of which there are many).
1026
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +00001027- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001028 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
1029 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
1030 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
1031 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001032 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001033
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +00001034- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
1035
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +00001036- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
1037 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
1038 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
1039 options.
1040
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +00001041- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
1042 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
1043 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
1044 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
1045 conditions under which non-string values work.
1046
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001047Build
1048-----
1049
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +00001050- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
1051 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
1052 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
1053
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +00001054- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
1055 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
1056 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
1057 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
1058 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001059
1060C API
1061-----
1062
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +00001063- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
1064 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
1065
1066- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
1067
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +00001068- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1069 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
1070 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
1071 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
1072 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
1073 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
1074 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
1075 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1076 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
1077
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001078- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
1079
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001080- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
1081 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
1082 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001083
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001084Tests
1085-----
1086
1087- test__locale ported to unittest
1088
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001089Mac
1090---
1091
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +00001092- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
1093 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
1094 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001095
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001096Tools/Demos
1097-----------
1098
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +00001099- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
1100 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
1101 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
1102 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
1103 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001104
1105
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001106What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
1107=================================
1108
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +00001109*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001110
1111Core and builtins
1112-----------------
1113
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001114- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001115 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
1116
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001117- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
1118 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
1119 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
1120 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
1121 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
1122 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
1123 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
1124 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001125 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
1126 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
1127 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
1128 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
1129 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001130
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +00001131- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
1132 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
1133 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
1134 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
1135 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
1136
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +00001137- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
1138
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +00001139- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
1140 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
1141
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001142- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1143 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1144 modified the list.
1145
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001146- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1147 functions is now writable.
1148
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001149- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1150 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1151 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1152 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1153
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001154- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1155 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1156 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1157 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1158 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001159
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001160- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1161 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1162
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001163Extension modules
1164-----------------
1165
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001166- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1167
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001168- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1169 data.
1170
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001171- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1172 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1173 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1174 supposed to have been truncated away.
1175
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001176- Added socket.socketpair().
1177
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001178- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1179 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1180
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001181- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001182 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1183
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001184Library
1185-------
1186
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001187- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001188 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001189
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001190- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1191 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1192
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001193- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1194 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1195
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001196- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1197
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001198- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1199 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001200
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001201- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1202 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1203
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001204- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1205
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001206- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1207
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001208- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1209
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001210- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1211 Percivall.
1212
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001213- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1214 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1215
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001216- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1217 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1218 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001219 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001220
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001221- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1222 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1223 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1224 and exponent.
1225
1226- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1227
1228- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001229 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001230 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1231
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001232- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1233 to the readline module.
1234
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001235- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001236 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1237 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001238
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001239- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1240 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1241 contains symlinks.
1242
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001243- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1244 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1245
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001246- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1247 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1248 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1249
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001250- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1251 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1252 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1253 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1254 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1255 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1256 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1257 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1258 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1259 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1260 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1261 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1262 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1263
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001264- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1265
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001266Tools/Demos
1267-----------
1268
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001269- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1270 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1271
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001272- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1273
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001274Build
1275-----
1276
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001277- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1278 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1279 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1280 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1281 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1282 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1283 plans to do so.
1284
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001285- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1286 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1287
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001288- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1289 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1290
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001291- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1292 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1293
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001294- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1295 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1296
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001297- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1298 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1299
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001300C API
1301-----
1302
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001303..
1304
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001305Documentation
1306-------------
1307
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001308- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1309 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1310
1311- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1312 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1313 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001314
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001315New platforms
1316-------------
1317
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001318- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1319
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001320Tests
1321-----
1322
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001323..
1324
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001325Windows
1326-------
1327
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001328- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1329 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1330 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1331 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1332 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1333 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1334 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1335 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1336 the problem.
1337
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001338Mac
1339---
1340
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001341..
1342
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001343
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001344What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1345=================================
1346
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001347*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001348
1349Core and builtins
1350-----------------
1351
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001352- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1353 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1354 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1355 sensitive code.
1356
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001357- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001358 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001359
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001360 @staticmethod
1361 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001362
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001363 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001364
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001365- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1366 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1367 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1368 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1369 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1370 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1371 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1372 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1373 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1374 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1375 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1376
1377 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1378 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1379 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1380 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1381 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1382 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1383 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1384
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001385- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1386 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1387
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001388- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001389 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001390
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001391- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001392 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001393 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1394
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001395- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001396 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1397 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1398
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001399- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1400 types that support garbage collection.
1401
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001402- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1403
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001404- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1405 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1406 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1407 Jython.
1408
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001409- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1410
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001411- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1412 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1413
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001414- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1415 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1416 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001417
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001418- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1419 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1420 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1421
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001422Extension modules
1423-----------------
1424
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001425- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1426
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001427Library
1428-------
1429
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001430- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1431 TIS-620
1432
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001433- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1434 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1435 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1436 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1437 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1438 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1439 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1440 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1441 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1442 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1443
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001444- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1445
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001446- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1447 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1448 same as when the argument is omitted).
1449 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1450
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001451- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1452
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001453- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1454 schemes are offered.
1455
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001456- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1457
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001458- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1459 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1460 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1461
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001462- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1463
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001464- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1465 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1466
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001467- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1468 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1469 when dummy_threading is being used.
1470
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001471- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1472 from a tarfile.
1473
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001474- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001475 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001476
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001477- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1478 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1479 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1480 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1481
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001482- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1483 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1484
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001485- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1486 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1487 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1488 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1489 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1490 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1491 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1492 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1493 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1494 by some other method in progress).
1495
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001496- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1497 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1498 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001499
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001500- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1501
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001502- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1503 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1504 AM Kuchling.
1505
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001506- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1507 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1508 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1509
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001510- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1511 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1512 instead of unsigned.
1513
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001514- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001515 no longer part of the public API.
1516
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001517- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1518 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1519 string methods of the same name).
1520
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001521- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001522 SF patch 945642.
1523
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001524- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1525
1526 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1527
1528 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1529 DocTestSuites.
1530
1531- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1532 that provide thread-local data.
1533
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001534- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1535 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1536
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001537- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1538
1539- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1540 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1541 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1542
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001543- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1544
1545 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1546 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1547 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001548
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001549 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1550 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1551 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1552 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1553
1554 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1555 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1556
1557 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1558 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1559 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1560 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1561
1562 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1563 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1564 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1565 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1566 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1567
1568 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1569 wrapping help output.
1570
1571 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1572 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1573 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001574
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001575C API
1576-----
1577
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001578- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1579 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1580 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1581 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1582 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1583 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1584 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1585 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1586 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1587 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1588 its visible semantics have not changed.
1589
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001590- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1591 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1592
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001593Documentation
1594-------------
1595
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001596- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001597
1598 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001599 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001600
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001601 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001602
1603 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1604
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001605- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001606
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001607Tests
1608-----
1609
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001610- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001611 platforms that use the Makefile.
1612
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001613- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1614 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1615 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1616
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001617
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001618What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1619=================================
1620
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001621*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001622
1623Core and builtins
1624-----------------
1625
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001626- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1627 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1628 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1629 objects now (one object instead of three).
1630
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001631- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1632 Windows DLLs.
1633
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001634- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1635 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001636
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001637- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1638 a new .pyc magic.
1639
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001640- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1641 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1642 be there.
1643
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001644- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1645 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1646 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1647
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001648- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1649 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1650 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1651
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001652- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1653
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001654- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1655 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1656 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001657
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001658- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1659 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1660
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001661- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1662
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001663- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001664 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001665
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001666- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1667
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001668- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1669
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001670- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1671 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1672
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001673- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1674 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1675 Fixes bug #858016 .
1676
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001677- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1678 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1679 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1680
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001681- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1682 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1683 improves their performance (about 35%).
1684
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001685- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1686 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1687 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1688
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001689- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1690 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1691 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1692 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1693
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001694- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1695 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001696 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001697 length is not known).
1698
1699- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1700 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001701 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1702 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001703 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1704
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001705- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1706 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1707
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001708- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1709 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1710 keyword arguments.
1711
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001712- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1713 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1714 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1715
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001716- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1717 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1718 cases.
1719
1720- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1721 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1722 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1723 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1724 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1725 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1726 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1727 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1728 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1729 a release build.
1730
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001731- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1732 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1733
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001734- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001735 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001736
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001737- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1738 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1739 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1740 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1741 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1742 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1743 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1744 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1745 destroyed.
1746
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001747- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1748 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1749 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1750 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1751 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1752 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1753 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1754 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1755
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001756- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1757 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1758 character other than a space.
1759
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001760- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1761 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1762 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1763 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1764 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1765 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1766 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1767 attributes with the same name.
1768
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001769- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1770 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1771 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1772 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1773 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1774 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1775 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1776 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1777 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1778 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1779 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1780 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1781 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1782 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001783
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001784- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1785 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1786 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1787 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1788 This has been repaired.
1789
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001790- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1791
1792- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1793
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001794- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1795 over a sequence.
1796
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001797- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001798 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001799
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001800- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1801
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001802- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1803 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1804 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1805 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1806 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1807 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1808 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1809 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1810
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001811- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1812 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1813 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1814
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001815- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1816 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1817 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1818 freelist.
1819
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001820- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1821 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1822
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001823- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1824 number.
1825
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001826- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1827 a TypeError exception.
1828
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001829- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1830 820195.
1831
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001832- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1833 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1834 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1835
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001836- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001837 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1838 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001839
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001840- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1841 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1842 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1843
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001844- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1845 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001846 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001847
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001848- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001849 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1850 the first call.
1851
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001852
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001853Extension modules
1854-----------------
1855
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001856- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1857 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1858
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001859- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1860 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1861 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1862 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1863 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1864 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1865 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001866
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001867- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1868
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001869- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1870
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001871- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1872 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1873
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001874- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1875 fewer false positives.
1876
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001877- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1878 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1879
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001880- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001881 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1882
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001883- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001884 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001885 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001886 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1887 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001888
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001889- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1890 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1891 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1892 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1893
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001894- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1895 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1896 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1897 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1898 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1899 #897625.
1900
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001901- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1902 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1903
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001904- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1905 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1906 and pops on either side of the deque.
1907
1908- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1909 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1910
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001911- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1912 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1913 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1914 other functions that expect a function argument.
1915
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001916- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1917
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001918- os.getsid was added.
1919
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001920- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1921 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1922 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1923
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001924- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1925
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001926- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1927
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001928- readline.clear_history was added.
1929
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001930- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1931
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001932- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1933
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001934- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1935
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001936- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1937
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001938- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1939
1940- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1941
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001942- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1943
1944- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1945
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001946- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1947 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1948 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1949
1950- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1951 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1952 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1953 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1954 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1955 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1956 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1957
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001958- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1959 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1960 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1961 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001962
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001963- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001964 iterators from a single iterable.
1965
1966- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1967 of raising a TypeError exception.
1968
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001969- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1970 as parameter.
1971
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001972Library
1973-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001974
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00001975- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
1976
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001977- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1978 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1979 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001980
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001981- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1982 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1983 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001984
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001985- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001986
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001987- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1988 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001989
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001990- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1991 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1992
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001993- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1994
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001995- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001996 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001997
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001998- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001999 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002000
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00002001- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
2002
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00002003- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
2004 on cygwin and mingw32.
2005
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00002006- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
2007
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00002008- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
2009 module.
2010
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00002011- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
2012 installation scheme for all platforms.
2013
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002014- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00002015 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002016
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002017- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
2018 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
2019 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
2020
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00002021- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
2022 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
2023 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
2024
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00002025- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
2026
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00002027- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
2028
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00002029- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
2030 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
2031
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00002032- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
2033 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
2034 type pattern with the same value exists.
2035
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00002036- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
2037 when run from the command prompt).
2038
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002039- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
2040 not taken into consideration when caching value.
2041
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00002042- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
2043 default sort).
2044
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00002045- Added global runctx function to profile module
2046
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00002047- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
2048
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00002049- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
2050
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00002051- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
2052
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002053- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00002054 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
2055 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
2056 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
2057 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
2058 accordingly.
2059
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00002060- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
2061 decoding standards.
2062
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00002063- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
2064 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
2065 called for all requests.
2066
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00002067- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
2068 they are passed to the compiler.
2069
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00002070- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
2071 indent, width and depth.
2072
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00002073- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
2074 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
2075
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00002076- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
2077 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
2078
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00002079- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
2080
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00002081- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
2082
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002083- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
2084
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00002085- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
2086 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
2087
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00002088- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00002089 for better performance.
2090
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002091- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00002092
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00002093- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
2094 a string).
2095
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00002096- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
2097
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00002098- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
2099
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00002100- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
2101
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00002102- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
2103
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00002104- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
2105 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
2106 list of fieldnames.
2107
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00002108- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
2109 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
2110
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00002111- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
2112
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00002113- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
2114 empty lists.
2115
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00002116- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
2117 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
2118 and shelves.
2119
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00002120- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
2121 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
2122
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002123- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00002124 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
2125 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002126
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00002127- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
2128 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00002129 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00002130
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002131- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00002132 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
2133 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
2134
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002135- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
2136 and removed in Py2.4.
2137
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00002138- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
2139
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00002140- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
2141
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002142Tools/Demos
2143-----------
2144
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002145- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2146 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2147
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002148- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2149
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002150- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2151 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2152 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2153 destination in situations where both files are given.
2154
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002155- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2156 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2157 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2158 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2159
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002160- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2161
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002162- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2163 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2164 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2165 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2166 now.
2167
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002168- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2169 in effect
2170
2171- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2172 C-c C-h
2173
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002174- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2175 -d option was given.
2176
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002177Build
2178-----
2179
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002180- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2181 build under OS X.
2182
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002183- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2184 --enable-profiling.
2185
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002186- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2187 is configured --with-tsc.
2188
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002189- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2190 on AMD64.
2191
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002192- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2193 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2194
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002195- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2196 removed.
2197
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002198- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2199 supported (see PEP 11).
2200
2201- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2202
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002203- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2204
2205- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2206 (see PEP 11).
2207
2208- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2209 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2210
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002211C API
2212-----
2213
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002214- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2215 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2216 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2217
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002218- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2219 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2220 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2221 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2222
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002223- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2224 generator objects.
2225
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002226- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2227 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002228 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2229 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002230
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002231- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2232 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2233
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002234- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2235 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2236 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2237 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2238 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2239
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002240- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2241 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2242 about 10% faster.
2243
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002244- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2245 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2246
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002247- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2248 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2249 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2250 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2251
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002252Windows
2253-------
2254
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002255- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2256 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2257 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2258 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2259
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002260- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2261 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2262 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2263
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002264
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002265What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2266===============================
2267
2268*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2269
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002270IDLE
2271----
2272
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002273- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2274 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2275 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2276 context-menu actions.
2277
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002278- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2279 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2280 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2281 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2282 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2283 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2284 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2285 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2286 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2287
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002288
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002289What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2290=============================================
2291
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002292*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002293
2294Core and builtins
2295-----------------
2296
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002297- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002298 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002299 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2300
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002301Extension modules
2302-----------------
2303
2304- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2305 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2306 than once. This has been fixed.
2307
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002308- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2309 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2310 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2311 call.
2312
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002313- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2314
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002315Library
2316-------
2317
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002318- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2319 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2320
2321- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2322 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2323 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2324 restored.
2325
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002326IDLE
2327----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002328
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002329- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002330
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002331Build
2332-----
2333
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002334- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2335 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2336
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002337C API
2338-----
2339
2340Windows
2341-------
2342
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002343- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2344 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2345
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002346- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2347
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002348Mac
2349---
2350
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002351- Various fixes to pimp.
2352
2353- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2354
2355- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2356 more problems than it solves.
2357
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002358
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002359What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2360=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002361
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002362*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2363
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002364Core and builtins
2365-----------------
2366
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002367- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2368 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2369
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002370- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2371 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002372 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002373
2374- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2375 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2376 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002377 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002378
2379- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2380 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002381
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002382- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2383 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2384 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2385
2386- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002387 770247.
2388
2389- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002390
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002391Extension modules
2392-----------------
2393
2394- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2395 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2396
2397- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2398
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002399- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2400
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002401- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2402 contained within the _strptime module.
2403
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002404- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2405 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2406
2407- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002408 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2409
2410- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2411 the find_class attribute, if present.
2412
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002413- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002414
2415 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2416 (SF bug 763298).
2417
2418 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002419 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2420 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2421 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002422
2423 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2424
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002425Library
2426-------
2427
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002428- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2429
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002430- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2431 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2432 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2433 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2434 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2435 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2436 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2437 or Tester().
2438
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002439- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2440 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2441 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2442 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2443 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2444 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2445 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2446 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2447 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002448
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002449 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002450
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002451- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2452 weren't before was an oversight.
2453
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002454- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2455 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2456
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002457- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2458 when there are no lines.
2459
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002460- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2461 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2462
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002463- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2464 to child processes.
2465
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002466- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2467
2468- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2469
2470- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2471 xmlrpclib.
2472
2473- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2474 responses.
2475
2476- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2477 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2478
2479- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2480 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2481 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2482
2483- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2484 used as patterns.
2485
2486- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2487 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2488 than Tk 8.3.
2489
2490- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2491
2492- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002493
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002494Tools/Demos
2495-----------
2496
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002497- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2498
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002499- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2500
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002501- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002502
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002503Build
2504-----
2505
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002506- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2507
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002508- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2509
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002510- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2511 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002512
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002513- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2514 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2515 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002516
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002517C API
2518-----
2519
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002520- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2521 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2522
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002523Windows
2524-------
2525
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002526- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2527 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2528 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2529 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2530 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2531 Python exception ::
2532
2533 thread.error: can't start new thread
2534
2535 is raised now.
2536
2537- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2538 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2539 instead of from DLL teardown.
2540
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002541Mac
2542---
2543
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002544- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002545 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002546 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2547 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2548 the executable in the bundle.
2549
2550- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002551
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002552- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2553
2554- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2555 on Panther.
2556
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002557What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2558================================
2559
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002560*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002561
2562Core and builtins
2563-----------------
2564
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002565- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2566 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2567 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2568 with the -i option.
2569
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002570- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2571 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2572
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002573- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2574 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2575
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002576- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2577 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2578 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2579 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2580 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2581 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2582 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2583 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2584 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2585 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2586 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2587 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2588 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002589
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002590- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2591 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2592 embedded in a lambda expression.
2593
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002594- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2595 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2596 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2597 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2598 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2599
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002600- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2601 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2602 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2603
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002604- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2605 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2606
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002607- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2608 It's writable again.
2609
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002610- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2611 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2612 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002613 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002614
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002615- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2616 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2617 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2618
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002619Extension modules
2620-----------------
2621
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002622- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2623 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2624
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002625- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2626 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2627 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2628 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2629
2630- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2631 collection.
2632
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002633- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2634 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2635 unique within a single program run.
2636
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002637- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2638 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2639
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002640- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2641 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2642
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002643- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2644 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002645
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002646- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2647
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002648- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2649 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2650
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002651- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2652 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2653 for many BSD-derived systems.
2654
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002655
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002656Library
2657-------
2658
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002659- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2660 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2661 primary ones:
2662
2663 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2664 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2665 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2666
2667 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2668 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2669 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2670 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2671 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2672 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2673
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002674- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2675 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2676 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2677 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2678 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2679 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2680 argument.
2681
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002682- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2683 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2684 in the archive.
2685
2686- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2687 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2688
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002689- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2690 569574).
2691
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002692- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2693 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2694 no more.
2695
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002696- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2697 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2698 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2699 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2700 code coverage.
2701
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002702- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2703 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2704 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002705 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2706 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002707
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002708- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2709 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2710 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002711 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002712
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002713- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2714
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002715- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2716 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2717 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2718 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2719
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002720- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2721 handling.
2722
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002723- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2724 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2725
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002726- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2727 in socket.py.
2728
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002729- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2730
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002731- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2732 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2733 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2734 opener with proxy support.
2735
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002736- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2737
2738- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2739
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002740Tools/Demos
2741-----------
2742
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002743- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2744
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002745- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2746
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002747- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2748 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002749
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002750- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2751 files.
2752
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002753Build
2754-----
2755
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002756- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002757 different root directory.
2758
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002759C API
2760-----
2761
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002762- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2763 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2764 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2765 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2766 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2767 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2768 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2769 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2770 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2771 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2772
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002773- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2774 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2775 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2776 from Python.
2777
2778
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002779New platforms
2780-------------
2781
2782None this time.
2783
2784Tests
2785-----
2786
2787- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2788 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2789
2790Windows
2791-------
2792
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002793- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2794
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002795- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2796 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2797 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2798 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2799 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2800 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2801 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2802 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2803 that's what it's for.
2804
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002805Mac
2806---
2807
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002808- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2809 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2810 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2811 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002812- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2813 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2814- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002815
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002816SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2817------------------------------------
2818
2819430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2820598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2821622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2822661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2823683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2824697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2825713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2826724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2827727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2828729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2829730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2830731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2831732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2832733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2833735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2834740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2835744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2836745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2837747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2838749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2839751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2840753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2841755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2842757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2843760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2844
2845
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002846What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2847================================
2848
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002849*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002850
2851Core and builtins
2852-----------------
2853
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002854- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2855 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2856
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002857- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2858 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2859 and cannot be strings).
2860
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002861- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2862 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2863 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2864 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2865
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002866- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2867 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2868 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2869 Python itself.
2870
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002871- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2872 the referenced object, if it has one.
2873
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002874- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2875 the thread started at
2876 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2877
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002878- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2879 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2880 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2881 placed on a list index.
2882
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002883- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2884 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2885 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2886 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2887
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002888- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2889 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2890 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2891 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2892 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2893 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2894 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2895
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002896- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2897 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2898 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2899 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2900 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2901
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002902- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2903 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002904
2905- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2906 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2907 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2908 #693195.)
2909
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002910- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2911 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002912
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002913- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002914 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002915 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2916 interpreter executions, would fail.
2917
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002918- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002919 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002920 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002921
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002922Extension modules
2923-----------------
2924
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002925- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2926 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2927 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2928 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2929
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002930- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2931 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2932
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002933- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2934 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2935 and Greg Chapman.)
2936
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002937- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2938 recursively.
2939
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002940- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002941 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2942 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2943 leaks.
2944
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002945- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2946
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002947- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2948 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2949 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2950 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2951 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2952 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2953 #705836.
2954
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002955- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002956 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2957
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002958- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2959 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2960 See SF bug #692416.
2961
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002962- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2963 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2964
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002965- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2966 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2967 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002968
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002969- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002970 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2971 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2972
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002973- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2974 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2975 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2976 timeouts to work properly.
2977
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002978Library
2979-------
2980
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002981- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2982 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2983 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2984 future release.
2985
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002986- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2987 for querying platform dependent features.
2988
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002989- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002990
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002991- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2992 pickle protocol versions.
2993
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002994- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2995 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2996 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2997
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002998- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2999
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00003000- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
3001 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
3002 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
3003 modules.
3004
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00003005- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
3006 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
3007 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
3008
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00003009- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
3010 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
3011
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00003012- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
3013 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
3014 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
3015
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003016- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00003017 MS Office extensions.
3018
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00003019- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
3020 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
3021
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00003022- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
3023 execution speed of expressions and statements.
3024
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003025- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
3026 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
3027 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
3028 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
3029 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
3030 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
3031
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003032- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
3033 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
3034 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003035
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00003036- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
3037 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
3038 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
3039
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00003040- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
3041
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00003042- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
3043 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
3044 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
3045
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003046Tools/Demos
3047-----------
3048
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00003049- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
3050 See the module docstring for details.
3051
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003052Build
3053-----
3054
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00003055- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
3056 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003057
3058C API
3059-----
3060
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003061- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
3062
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00003063- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
3064 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
3065 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
3066
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003067- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
3068 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003069
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003070 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
3071 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
3072 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00003073
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00003074- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00003075 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
3076
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00003077- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
3078 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
3079 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003080
3081New platforms
3082-------------
3083
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003084None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003085
3086Tests
3087-----
3088
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00003089- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
3090 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003091
3092Windows
3093-------
3094
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00003095- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
3096 function.
3097
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00003098- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
3099 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003100
3101Mac
3102---
3103
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003104- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
3105 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00003106
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00003107- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
3108 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003109
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00003110- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
3111 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
3112 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003113
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003114- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00003115 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
3116 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003117
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003118- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
3119 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003120
3121
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003122What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
3123=================================
3124
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003125*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003126
3127Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003128-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003129
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00003130- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
3131 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
3132 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
3133
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00003134- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
3135 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
3136 (SF patch #664376.)
3137
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003138- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
3139 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
3140 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
3141 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3142 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3143 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003144 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003145
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003146- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3147 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3148 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3149 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003150 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003151
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003152- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3153 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3154 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3155 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3156 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3157 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3158 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3159 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3160 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3161 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3162 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3163
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003164- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3165 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3166 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3167 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3168 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3169 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3170
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003171- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3172 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3173
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003174- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3175 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3176 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3177 case.)
3178
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003179- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3180 passed as unicode strings.
3181
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003182- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3183 See SF bug #683467.
3184
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003185- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3186 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3187
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003188- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3189
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003190- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3191
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003192- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3193 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3194 arguments.
3195
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003196- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3197 See SF bug #667147.
3198
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003199- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003200 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003201 See SF bug #676155.
3202
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003203- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003204 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003205 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3206 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3207 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3208 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3209 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3210 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003211
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003212Extension modules
3213-----------------
3214
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003215- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3216 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3217 tp_as_number pointer.
3218
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003219- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3220 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3221 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3222 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3223 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3224
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003225- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3226
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003227- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3228
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003229- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003230 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003231 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3232 patch #678531.)
3233
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003234- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3235 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3236
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003237- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3238 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3239
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003240- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3241
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003242- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3243 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3244 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3245
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003246- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3247
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003248- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3249 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3250
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003251- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003252
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003253- datetime changes:
3254
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003255 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3256
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003257 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3258 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3259 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3260 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3261 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3262 now.
3263
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003264 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003265 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3266 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003267
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003268 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003269 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003270 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3271 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3272 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3273 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003274
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003275 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3276 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3277 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003278 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3279
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003280 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3281 by a later example coded by Guido.
3282
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003283 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003284 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3285 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3286 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003287 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3288 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3289
3290 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3291 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3292 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3293 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3294 tzinfo subclass instance.
3295
3296 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3297 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3298 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3299 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3300 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3301 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3302 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3303 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003304
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003305 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3306 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3307 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3308 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3309 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003310 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3311
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003312 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003313
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003314 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3315 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3316 as a naive datetime object.
3317
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003318 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3319 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3320 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3321
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003322 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3323 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3324 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3325 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3326 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3327 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3328 comparison.
3329
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003330 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3331 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3332 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3333 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003334 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003335
3336 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003337
3338 and ::
3339
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003340 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3341
3342 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3343 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3344 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3345 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3346
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003347 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3348 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3349 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3350 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3351 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3352
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003353 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3354 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003355 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3356 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003357
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003358Library
3359-------
3360
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003361- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3362 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3363
3364- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3365 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3366 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3367 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3368 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3369 See PEP 307 for details.
3370
3371- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3372 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3373
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003374- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3375 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003376 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003377 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3378 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003379 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003380
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003381- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3382 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3383
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003384- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3385 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3386 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3387
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003388- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3389
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003390- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3391 exception.
3392
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003393- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3394 class.
3395
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003396- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3397 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3398 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3399
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003400- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3401 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3402
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003403- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003404 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3405 See SF bug #659228.
3406
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003407- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3408 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3409 See SF patch #651082.
3410
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003411- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003412
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003413- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3414 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3415
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003416- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003417 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003418
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003419- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3420 DOS paths from other platforms.
3421
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003422Tools/Demos
3423-----------
3424
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003425- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3426 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3427 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3428 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3429 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3430 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3431 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3432 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3433 example:
3434
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003435 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3436 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003437
3438 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3439
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003440
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003441Build
3442-----
3443
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003444- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3445 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3446 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003447 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3448
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003449 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3450
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003451- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3452 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3453 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3454 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3455 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3456 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3457 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3458 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3459 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3460
3461- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3462 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3463 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3464 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3465
3466- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3467 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3468
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003469C API
3470-----
3471
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003472- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3473 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003474
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003475- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3476 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3477 tp_as_number pointer.
3478
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003479- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3480 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3481 (SF #681367)
3482
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003483- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3484 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3485 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3486 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003487
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003488Tests
3489-----
3490
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003491- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003492 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3493 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3494 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3495 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3496 pydoc.)
3497
3498- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3499
3500- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003501
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003502Windows
3503-------
3504
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003505- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3506 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3507 time).
3508
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003509- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3510 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3511
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003512- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3513 release without strong cryptography.
3514
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003515- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003516 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003517
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003518- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3519 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3520
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003521Mac
3522---
3523
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003524- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3525 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003526
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003527- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3528 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3529 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003530
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003531- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3532 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003533
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003534- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3535 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3536 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3537 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003538
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003539- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003540 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3541 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3542 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003543
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003544
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003545What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003546=================================
3547
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003548*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003549
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003550Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003551--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003552
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003553- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3554
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003555- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3556 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003557 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003558 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003559 a different meaning than before.
3560
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003561- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003562 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003563 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003564
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003565- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003566 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003567 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003568
3569- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3570 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3571 and deallocation.
3572
3573- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3574 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3575
3576- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3577 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3578 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3579 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3580 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3581
3582- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3583 now detected by the garbage collector.
3584
3585- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3586 [SF bug 519621]
3587
3588- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3589 identifier.
3590
3591- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3592 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3593 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3594 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3595 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3596 [SF bug 563060]
3597
3598- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3599 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3600 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3601 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3602 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3603
3604- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3605 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3606 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3607
3608- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3609
3610- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3611 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3612 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3613 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3614 state of the slots would be lost.)
3615
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003616Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003617-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003618
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003619- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003620 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3621 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3622 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3623 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003624 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3625 Jython 2.1.
3626
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003627- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003628 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003629 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3630 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3631 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3632 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3633 these, see PEP 302.
3634
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003635- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3636 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3637 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3638
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003639- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3640 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3641 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3642
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003643- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3644 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3645 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3646
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003647- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3648 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3649 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3650 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3651 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3652 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3653 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3654 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3655 releases or implementations.
3656
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003657- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003658 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3659 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003660
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003661- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3662 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3663
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003664- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3665 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3666 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3667
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003668- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3669 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3670
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003671- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3672 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003673 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3674 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003675
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003676- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3677 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3678 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3679 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3680 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3681
3682 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3683 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3684 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3685 pattern.
3686
3687 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3688 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3689 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3690 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3691
3692 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3693 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3694 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3695 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3696 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3697 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3698
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003699- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3700 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3701 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3702 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3703 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3704 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3705 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3706 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003707
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003708- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3709 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3710 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3711 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3712 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003713 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3714 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3715 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3716 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3717 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3718 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3719 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003720
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003721- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3722 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3723
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003724- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3725 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3726 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3727 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3728 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3729 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3730 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3731 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3732 to Zack Weinberg!
3733
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003734- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3735 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3736 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3737 type. This has been fixed now.
3738
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003739- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3740 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3741 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3742
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003743- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3744 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3745 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3746 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3747 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3748 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3749 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3750 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003751 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003752
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003753- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3754 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3755 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003756
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003757- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3758 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3759 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3760 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3761 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3762 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3763 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3764 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003765 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003766 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3767 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3768
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003769- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3770 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3771 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3772 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3773 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3774 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3775 this.)
3776
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003777- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3778 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003779 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003780 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003781 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3782 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003783 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3784 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003785
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003786- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3787 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3788 currently running.
3789
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003790- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3791 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3792 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3793 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3794
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003795- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3796 as directory names.
3797
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003798- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3799 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3800
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003801- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3802 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3803
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003804- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003805 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3806 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003807
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003808- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3809 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3810 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3811 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3812 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3813
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003814- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3815 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3816 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3817 removed.
3818
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003819- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3820 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3821 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3822
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003823- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3824 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3825 to __debug__.
3826
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003827- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3828 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3829 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3830
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003831- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3832 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3833 deprecated now.
3834
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003835- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3836 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3837 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003838
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003839- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3840 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3841 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3842 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3843 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003844
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003845- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3846 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3847
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003848- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3849 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3850 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003851 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003852 is backward compatible.
3853
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003854- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3855 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3856 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3857 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3858 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3859
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003860- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3861 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3862 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3863 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3864 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3865 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003866
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003867- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3868 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3869
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003870- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3871 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3872
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003873- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3874 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3875 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3876 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3877 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3878
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003879- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3880 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3881 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3882
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003883- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003884 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3885
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003886- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3887 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3888 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003889
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003890- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3891 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3892
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003893- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3894 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3895 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3896
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003897- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3898
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003899Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003900-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003901
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003902- Added three operators to the operator module:
3903 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3904 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3905 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3906
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003907- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3908
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003909- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3910 archives.
3911
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003912- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3913 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3914 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3915
3916 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3917
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003918- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3919 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3920 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003921 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003922
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003923- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3924 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3925 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3926 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003927 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3928 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3929 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3930 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003931
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003932- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3933 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003934
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003935- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3936
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003937- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3938 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3939
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003940- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3941 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3942 supported.
3943
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003944- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3945
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003946- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3947 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003948
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003949- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3950 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3951
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003952- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3953
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003954- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3955 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3956
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003957- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3958 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3959 functions but callable type objects.
3960
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003961- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003962 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003963 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003964
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003965- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3966 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003967
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003968- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3969 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003970
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003971- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3972 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3973 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3974 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3975
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003976- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3977 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003978
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003979- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3980 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3981 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3982 and __imul__.
3983
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003984- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003985 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3986 is called.
3987
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003988- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3989 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3990 interpreter was compiled.
3991
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003992- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3993 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3994 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003995 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003996 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3997 1, not 2.
3998
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003999- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
4000 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
4001 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
4002 limit.
4003
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00004004- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
4005 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
4006 bug #623464.
4007
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00004008- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
4009 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
4010 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
4011 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
4012
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004013Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004014-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004015
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00004016- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
4017
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00004018- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
4019 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
4020 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
4021 with Python 2.3a2.
4022
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00004023- os.path exposes getctime.
4024
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004025- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004026 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004027 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004028 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004029 unit tests of floating point results.
4030
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00004031- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
4032 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
4033 has been increased.
4034
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00004035- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
4036 executed.
4037
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00004038- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
4039 postinstallation script.
4040
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00004041- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
4042 test the current module.
4043
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004044- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00004045 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
4046 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
4047 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
4048 this behavior needs to be controlled.
4049
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004050- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004051 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004052 Ward's Optik package.
4053
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004054- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
4055 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
4056 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
4057 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
4058
4059- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
4060 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004061 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004062
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00004063- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
4064 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
4065 shelf are binary pickles.
4066
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00004067- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
4068 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
4069
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00004070- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
4071 modules are iterators now.
4072
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00004073- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
4074 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
4075 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
4076 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
4077 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
4078 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004079
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00004080- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
4081 with their entity value.
4082
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00004083- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
4084
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004085- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
4086 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00004087
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004088- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
4089 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004090 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00004091
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00004092- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
4093 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
4094 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
4095 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
4096 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
4097 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
4098 main():
4099
4100 import locale
4101 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
4102
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00004103- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
4104 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
4105
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00004106- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
4107 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
4108 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
4109 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
4110 to the new standard.
4111
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00004112- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
4113 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
4114 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
4115 an extension to the database.
4116
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004117- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
4118 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
4119 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
4120 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00004121 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004122
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004123- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00004124 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004125
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00004126- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
4127 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
4128 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
4129 bounded integers.
4130
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00004131- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
4132 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
4133 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
4134 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
4135 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
4136 in existence.
4137
4138 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
4139 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
4140 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
4141 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4142 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4143 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4144
4145 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4146 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4147 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4148 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4149
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004150- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4151 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4152 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4153
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004154- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4155
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004156- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4157 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4158 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4159 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4160
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004161- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4162 argument.
4163
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004164- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4165 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4166 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4167 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4168 [SF patch 560794].
4169
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004170- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4171 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4172 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004173 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4174 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4175 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004176
4177- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4178 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004179
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004180- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4181 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4182 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4183 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004184
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004185- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4186 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4187 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4188 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4189 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4190
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004191- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004192
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004193- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4194
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004195- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4196 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4197 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4198 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4199 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4200 identical to None.
4201
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004202- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4203 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4204 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4205 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4206 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4207 results now.
4208
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004209- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4210 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4211
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004212- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4213 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4214 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4215 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4216 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4217 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4218 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4219 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4220
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004221- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4222
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004223- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4224 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4225
4226- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4227 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4228 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4229 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4230 and other systems.
4231
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004232- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4233 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4234 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4235 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 +00004236 work well with these.
4237
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004238- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4239
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004240- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004241 connections.
4242
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004243- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4244 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4245 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4246
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004247- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4248 sets
4249
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004250- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4251 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4252 name.
4253
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004254- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4255 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4256 passed in.
4257
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004258- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004259 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004260 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4261 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004262
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004263- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4264
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004265- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4266
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004267- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4268 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4269 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4270
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004271- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4272 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4273 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4274 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004275 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004276
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004277- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004278 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004279 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004280
4281- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4282 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4283 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4284
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004285- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004286 the value of its expression argument.
4287
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004288- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4289 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4290 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4291
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004292- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4293 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4294 skipstone browser was included.
4295
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004296- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4297 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4298
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004299Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004300-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004301
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004302- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4303 names in addition to accepting file names.
4304
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004305- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4306 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4307 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4308 still used and useful.)
4309
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004310- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4311 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4312 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4313 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004314
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004315- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4316 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4317 the generated binary.
4318
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004319Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004320-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004321
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004322- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4323
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004324- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4325 except in the hands of experts.
4326
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004327- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004328 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4329 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4330 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004331
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004332- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4333 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4334 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4335 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4336 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4337 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4338 builds.
4339
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004340- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4341 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4342 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4343 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4344 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4345 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4346 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4347 new type.
4348
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004349- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004350
4351 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4352 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4353 positive infinities.
4354
4355 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4356 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4357 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4358 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4359 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4360 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4361 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4362
4363 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4364
4365 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4366
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004367- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4368 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4369 size of the executable.
4370
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004371- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4372 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4373 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4374 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004375
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004376- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4377
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004378- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4379 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4380 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004381
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004382- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4383 well as Unix.
4384
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004385- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4386 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4387 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4388 modules in the README file for details.
4389
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004390C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004391-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004392
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004393- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4394 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004395 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004396 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004397 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004398
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004399- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4400 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4401 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4402 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4403 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4404 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004405 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004406 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4407 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4408 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4409 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4410 aligned.)
4411
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004412- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4413 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4414 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4415
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004416- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4417 level.
4418
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004419- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4420 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4421 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4422 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4423 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4424
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004425- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4426 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4427 code.
4428
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004429- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4430 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4431 adjusting for negative indices.
4432
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004433- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4434 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4435 object.
4436
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004437- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4438 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4439 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4440
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004441- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4442 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004443
4444- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4445
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004446- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4447 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4448 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4449 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4450
4451- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4452
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004453- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004454
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004455- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004456 without going through the buffer API.
4457
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004458- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004459
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004460- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4461 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4462 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4463 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4464
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004465- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4466 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4467
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004468- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004469 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4470
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004471New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004472-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004473
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004474- OpenVMS is now supported.
4475
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004476- AtheOS is now supported.
4477
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004478- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4479
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004480- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4481
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004482Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004483-----
4484
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004485- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4486 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4487 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004488
4489Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004490-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004491
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004492- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4493 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4494 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4495 bugs.
4496 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004497 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004498 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4499 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004500 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004501
4502- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004503 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004504
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004505- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4506 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4507
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004508- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4509 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004510 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004511 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4512
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004513- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4514 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4515 use files" uninstall option).
4516
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004517- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4518
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004519- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4520 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4521
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004522- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4523 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4524 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4525
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004526- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4527 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4528 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4529 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4530 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004531 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4532 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4533 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004534
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004535- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004536 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004537 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4538 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4539 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4540 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4541 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4542 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4543 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4544 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4545 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4546 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4547 work around.
4548
4549- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4550 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4551 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4552 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4553 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4554 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4555 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4556 specified with O_CREAT too).
4557
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004558Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004559----
4560
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004561- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004562
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004563- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4564 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4565 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4566
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004567- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4568 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4569 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4570
4571- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4572 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4573 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4574 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4575 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4576 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4577 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4578 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004579
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004580- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4581 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4582 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004583
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004584- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4585 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4586 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4587 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4588 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004589
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004590- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4591 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4592 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004593
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004594- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4595 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004596
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004597- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4598 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4599 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4600 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4601 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004602
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004603- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4604 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4605 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4606
4607- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4608 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4609 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004610
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004611- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4612 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4613 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4614 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004615 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004616
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004617- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4618 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004619
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004620- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4621 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004622
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004623- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004624 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004625 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4626 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004627
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004628
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004629What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004630===============================
4631
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004632*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4633
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004634Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004635--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004636
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004637- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4638 with a custom metaclass.
4639
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004640Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004641-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004642
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004643- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4644 are proxies.
4645
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004646Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004647-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004648
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004649- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4650 very short strings.
4651
4652- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4653 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4654 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4655 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4656 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4657
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004658Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004659-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004660
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004661- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4662 close or delete time).
4663
4664- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4665 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4666
4667- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4668
4669- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004670 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004671
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004672Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004673-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004674
4675Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004676-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004677
4678C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004679-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004680
4681New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004682-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004683
4684Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004685-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004686
4687Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004688-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004689
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004690- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4691
4692- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4693 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4694
4695- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4696 deleted at process exit time.
4697
4698- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4699 in backslash.
4700
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004701Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004702----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004703
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004704- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4705 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4706 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4707
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004708
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004709What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004710===========================
4711
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004712*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4713
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004714Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004715--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004716
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004717- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4718 been extensively updated. See
4719
4720 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4721
4722 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4723
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004724- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4725 deleted!
4726
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004727- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4728 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4729 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4730 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4731 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4732
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004733- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4734
4735 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4736 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4737
4738 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4739 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4740 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4741 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4742 supported anyway.
4743
4744 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4745 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4746
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004747- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4748 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4749 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4750 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4751 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004752
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004753- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4754 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4755 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4756
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004757Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004758-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004759
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004760- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4761 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4762 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4763 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4764 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4765 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004766 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4767 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4768 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4769 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004770
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004771- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4772 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4773 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4774
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004775Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004776-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004777
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004778- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4779
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004780Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004781-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004782
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004783- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4784 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4785 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4786 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4787 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4788 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4789
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004790- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4791
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004792- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4793
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004794- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4795
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004796- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4797 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4798 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4799
4800- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4801
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004802Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004803-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004804
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004805- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4806 off a search on Google.
4807
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004808Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004809-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004810
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004811- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4812 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4813 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4814 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4815 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4816 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4817 other platforms should do likewise.
4818
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004819- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4820 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4821 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4822
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004823C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004824-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004825
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004826- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4827 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4828 producing key-value pairs.
4829
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004830- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004831 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004832 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4833 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4834 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4835 previously went unchallenged.
4836
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004837New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004838-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004839
4840Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004841-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004842
4843Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004844-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004845
4846Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004847----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004848
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004849- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4850 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004851
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004852- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4853 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4854 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4855 home.
4856
4857
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004858What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004859===========================
4860
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004861*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4862
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004863Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004864--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004865
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004866- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4867 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004868
4869 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004870 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004871
4872 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4873 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004874 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004875 This needs to be documented.
4876
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004877- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4878 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4879
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004880- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4881 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4882 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4883
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004884- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4885 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4886
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004887- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4888 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4889 class forbids it).
4890
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004891- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4892 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4893 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4894
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004895- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4896
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004897Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004898-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004899
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004900- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4901 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004902 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004903
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004904- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4905 (like 1 + '').
4906
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004907Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004908-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004909
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004910- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4911 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4912 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4913 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004914 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004915 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4916
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004917- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4918 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4919 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4920 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4921
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004922- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4923 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004924 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4925 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4926 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004927
4928- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4929 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004930
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004931- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4932 bytes on its input.
4933
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004934Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004935-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004936
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004937- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004938 convenience function.
4939
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004940- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4941 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4942 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004943 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4944 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4945 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4946 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4947 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4948 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004949
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004950- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4951 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4952 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4953 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4954
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004955- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4956 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4957 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4958
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004959- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4960 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4961 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4962 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4963
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004964- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4965 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004966 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004967 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4968 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4969 new -l and -e options.
4970
4971- statcache is now deprecated.
4972
4973- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4974 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004975 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004976 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4977 time properly taken into account.
4978
4979- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4980 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4981 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4982 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4983
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004984Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004985-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004986
4987Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004988-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004989
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004990- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4991 is built with libdb3 if available.
4992
4993- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4994
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004995C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004996-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004997
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004998- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4999 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
5000 PySequence_Size().
5001
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005002- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
5003
5004- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
5005 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
5006 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
5007
5008- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
5009 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
5010
5011- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
5012 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
5013
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005014New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005015-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005016
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005017- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
5018 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
5019
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00005020- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
5021 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
5022
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005023- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
5024
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005025Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005026-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005027
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005028- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
5029 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
5030
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005031Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005032-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005033
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005034Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005035----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005036
5037- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
5038 removed completely in the next release.
5039
5040- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
5041 OSX.
5042
5043- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
5044 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
5045
5046- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
5047
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005048
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005049What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005050===========================
5051
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005052*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
5053
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005054Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005055--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005056
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005057- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005058 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005059 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005060 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
5061 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005062 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
5063 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005064 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
5065 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00005066
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00005067- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
5068 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
5069
5070- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
5071 class methods, static methods, and properties.
5072
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005073Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005074-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005075
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00005076- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
5077 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
5078 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
5079 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
5080 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
5081 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
5082 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
5083 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
5084
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005085- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
5086 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
5087 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
5088 example).
5089
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005090- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005091 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005092 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005093 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005094
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005095- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
5096 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
5097 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00005098 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005099
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005100- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
5101 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
5102 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
5103 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
5104 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
5105 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
5106
5107 isinstance(x, (A, B))
5108
5109 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
5110
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005111Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005112-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005113
5114- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
5115
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005116- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
5117
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005118- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
5119 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00005120
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005121- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
5122 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
5123 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
5124 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
5125 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
5126 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00005127 attributes.
5128
5129- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
5130 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
5131 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00005132
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005133- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
5134 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
5135 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005136
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005137- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
5138 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
5139 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005140 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
5141 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5142
5143- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5144 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005145
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005146Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005147-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005148
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005149- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5150 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5151
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005152- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5153 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5154 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5155 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5156
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005157- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5158 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5159 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5160 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5161
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005162 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5163 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5164 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5165 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5166 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5167 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5168 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5169 without losing information).
5170
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005171- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005172 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5173 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5174 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5175 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5176 module).
5177
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005178 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005179 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5180 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5181 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5182 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005183
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005184- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005185 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5186 encoding.
5187
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005188- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5189 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5190
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005191- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005192 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5193
5194- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5195 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5196 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5197 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5198
5199- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5200
5201- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5202 ON, and OFF.
5203
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005204- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5205 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5206
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005207Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005208-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005209
5210- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5211 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5212 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005213
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005214- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5215 been added: -X and -E.
5216
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005217Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005218-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005219
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005220- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5221 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5222
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005223C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005224-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005225
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005226- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5227 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5228 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5229 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5230 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5231
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005232- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5233 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5234 as long) arguments.
5235
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005236- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5237 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5238 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5239 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5240 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5241 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5242
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005243- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5244 input.
5245
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005246New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005247-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005248
5249Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005250-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005251
5252Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005253-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005254
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005255- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5256 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5257 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5258
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005259- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5260 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5261 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005262 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005263
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005264 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5265 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5266 import signal
5267 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005268
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005269 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005270 while 1:
5271 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005272 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005273 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5274 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5275 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5276 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005277
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005278
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005279What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5280===========================
5281
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005282*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5283
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005284Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005285--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005286
5287- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5288 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5289 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5290
5291- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5292 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5293 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5294 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5295 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5296 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5297 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005298
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005299- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005300 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005301 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5302 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5303 associate a docstring with a property.
5304
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005305- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5306 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5307 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5308 other built-in object types.
5309
5310- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5311 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5312 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5313 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5314 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5315
5316- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5317 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5318
5319- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5320 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005321 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005322 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5323 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5324 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5325 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5326 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5327
5328- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5329 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5330 class.
5331
5332- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5333 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5334 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5335 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5336
5337- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5338 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5339 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5340 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5341
5342- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5343 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5344
5345- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5346 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5347 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5348 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5349 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005350 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005351 with the same value as s.
5352
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005353- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5354
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005355Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005356----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005357
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005358- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5359
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005360- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5361 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5362 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5363 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5364 objects.
5365
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005366- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5367 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005368 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5369 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5370
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005371- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5372 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5373 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5374
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005375Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005376-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005377
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005378- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5379 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5380 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5381 by the instances.
5382
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005383- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5384 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5385 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5386
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005387- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5388 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5389 before the entire comparison is complete.
5390
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005391- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5392 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5393 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5394
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005395- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5396 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5397 getwriter().
5398
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005399- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5400 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5401
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005402- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005403 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5404 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5405
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005406- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5407 iterable object.
5408
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005409- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5410 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005411
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005412- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5413 authentication.
5414
5415- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5416 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005417
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005418- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005419 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5420 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5421 a sample driver.)
5422
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005423Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005424-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005425
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005426- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5427 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5428 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5429 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5430 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5431 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5432 kernel has large file support.
5433
5434- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5435 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5436 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5437 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5438 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5439
5440- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5441 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5442 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5443
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005444C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005445-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005446
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005447- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5448 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5449
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005450New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005451-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005452
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005453- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5454 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5455
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005456Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005457-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005458
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005459- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5460 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5461 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5462 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5463 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5464
5465- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5466 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5467 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5468 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5469
5470- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5471 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5472
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005473Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005474-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005475
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005476- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005477 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5478 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005479
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005480
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005481What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5482===========================
5483
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005484*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5485
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005486Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005487----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005488
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005489- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5490 big to represent as a C double.
5491
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005492- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5493 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5494 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5495 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5496 restriction).
5497
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005498- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5499 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5500 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5501 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5502 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5503
5504 >>> dir([])
5505 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5506 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5507 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5508 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5509 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5510 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5511 'reverse', 'sort']
5512
5513 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5514
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005515- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005516 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5517 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5518 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5519 OverflowError exception.
5520
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005521- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005522 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005523 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5524 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5525 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5526 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5527 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005528 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005529 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5530 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5531
5532 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5533 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5534 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5535 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005536
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005537- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005538 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5539 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5540 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5541 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5542 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5543 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5544 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5545 once it is created.
5546
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005547- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5548 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5549 (key, value) pairs.
5550
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005551- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005552 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5553 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5554
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005555- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5556 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5557 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5558 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5559 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005560
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005561- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005562 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5563 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5564
5565 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5566
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005567- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005568 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5569
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005570Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005571-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005572
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005573- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005574 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5575 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005576
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005577- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5578 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5579 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5580 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5581 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5582 in this area anymore).
5583
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005584- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5585 threading.Timer.
5586
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005587- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5588 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5589
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005590- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005591 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5592
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005593- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005594 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5595 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5596 converted to Python longs.
5597
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005598- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005599 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5600
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005601- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5602 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5603 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5604
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005605Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005606-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005607
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005608- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5609 division operators as per PEP 238.
5610
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005611Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005612-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005613
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005614- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5615 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5616 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5617 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5618
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005619C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005620-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005621
5622- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005623
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005624- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5625 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005626 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005627
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005628 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5629 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005630 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005631 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005632
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005633- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005634 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5635 module:
5636
5637 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005638
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005639 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5640 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005641
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005642 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5643 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005644
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005645 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5646
5647 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5648
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005649- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005650 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5651 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5652 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005653
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005654New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005655-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005656
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005657- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5658 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5659 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5660 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5661 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005662
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005663Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005664-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005665
5666Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005667-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005668
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005669- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5670 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5671 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5672 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005673 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5674 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5675 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5676 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5677 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005678
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005679- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005680 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5681
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005682
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005683What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5684===========================
5685
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005686*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5687
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005688Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005689-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005690
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005691- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5692 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5693
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005694- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5695 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5696 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005697
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005698- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5699 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5700 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5701 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005702
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005703- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5704
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005705- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005706
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005707Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005708-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005709
5710- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005711 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005712 the module docstring for details.
5713
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005714Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005715-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005716
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005717- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005718 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5719 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5720 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005721
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005722- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5723 Nick Mathewson.
5724
5725Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005726----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005727
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005728- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5729 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5730 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5731 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5732 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5733 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5734 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5735 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5736
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005737- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5738 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5739 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5740 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5741
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005742- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5743 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5744 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5745 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5746 come a long way).
5747
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005748- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5749 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5750 write filters for these warnings).
5751
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005752- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5753 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5754 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5755 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5756 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5757
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005758- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5759 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5760 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5761 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5762 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5763 older distribution.
5764
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005765Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005766-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005767
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005768- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5769 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005770 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005771
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005772- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5773 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5774 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5775
5776- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5777
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005778- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5779
5780- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5781
5782- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5783
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005784- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005785
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005786- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5787
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005788New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005789-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005790
5791C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005792-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005793
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005794- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5795 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5796 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5797 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5798 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5799 against buffer overruns.
5800
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005801- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005802 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5803 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005804 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5805 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5806 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5807
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005808- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5809 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5810 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5811 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5812 deprecated.
5813
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005814Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005815-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005816
5817- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5818 relevant is found.
5819
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005820
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005821What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005822===========================
5823
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005824*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5825
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005826Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005827----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005828
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005829- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5830 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5831 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5832 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5833 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5834 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5835 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5836 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005837 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005838 repaired.
5839
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005840- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005841 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005842 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5843 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5844 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5845 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5846 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5847 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5848 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5849 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5850
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005851- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5852 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5853 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5854 leading BMO character).
5855
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005856- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5857 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5858 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5859
5860 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5861 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5862 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005863
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005864 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5865 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5866 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5867 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5868 for various simple to use conversions.
5869
5870 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5871 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5872
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005873 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5874 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5875 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5876 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5877 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5878 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5879 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5880 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5881 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5882 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5883 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5884 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5885 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5886 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5887 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005888
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005889- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5890 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5891 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005892 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005893 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005894
5895 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005896 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5897 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5898 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5899 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5900 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005901 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5902 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005903
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005904 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5905 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5906 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005907 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005908
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005909- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5910 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5911 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5912 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5913 floating arithmetic,
5914
5915 x = 9007199254740992.0
5916 print long(x)
5917
5918 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5919 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5920 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5921 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5922 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5923 functions are of good quality).
5924
5925 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5926 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5927 algorithms to break.
5928
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005929- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5930 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5931 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5932 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5933 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5934 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5935 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5936 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5937 order.
5938
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005939- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5940 operation along the most common code paths.
5941
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005942- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5943 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5944
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005945- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5946 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5947 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5948 {}.update(UserDict())
5949
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005950- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5951 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5952 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5953 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5954 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5955 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5956 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5957 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5958
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005959- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005960 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005961
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005962 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005963 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5964 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005965 join() method of strings
5966 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005967 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5968 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005969 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005970 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005971
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005972- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5973 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5974
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005975- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5976 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5977
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005978- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5979 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5980 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5981 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5982
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005983- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5984 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005985 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005986 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5987 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005988
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005989- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5990
5991
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005992Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005993-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005994
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005995- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005996 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005997 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5998 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5999
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00006000- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
6001 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
6002
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00006003- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
6004 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
6005 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
6006 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
6007
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00006008- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
6009 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
6010 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
6011
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00006012- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
6013
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00006014- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
6015
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00006016- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
6017 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
6018 that are still imported into string.py).
6019
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006020- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
6021
6022- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
6023 Now it does.
6024
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006025- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
6026
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006027- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
6028 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
6029 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
6030 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
6031 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006032 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
6033 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006034
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00006035- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
6036 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
6037 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
6038 'help(object)'.
6039
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006040Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006041-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006042
6043- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006044 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006045 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
6046 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
6047
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006048- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006049 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
6050 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006051
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006052C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006053-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006054
6055- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
6056 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006057
6058----
6059
6060**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**