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Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Skip Montanaro4a385832002-09-20 17:08:52 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00007What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
10*Release date: DD-MMM-YYYY*
11
12Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +000015- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
16 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
17 be there.
18
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +000019- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
20 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
21 the LC_NUMERIC category.
22
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +000023- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
24 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
25 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
26
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +000027- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
28
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +000029- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
30 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
31 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +000032
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +000033- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
34 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
35
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +000036- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
37
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +000038- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
39 new documentation and modified profiler and bdb modules for more details
40
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +000041- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
42
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +000043- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
44
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +000045- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
46 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
47
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +000048- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
49 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
50 Fixes bug #858016 .
51
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +000052- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
53 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
54 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
55
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +000056- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
57 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
58 improves their performance (about 35%).
59
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +000060- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
61 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
62 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
63
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +000064- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
65 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
66 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
67 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
68
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +000069- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
70 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
71 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
72 length is not known).
73
74- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
75 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +000076 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
77 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +000078 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
79
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +000080- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
81 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
82
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +000083- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
84 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
85 keyword arguments.
86
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +000087- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
88 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
89 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
90
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +000091- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
92 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
93 cases.
94
95- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
96 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
97 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
98 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
99 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
100 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
101 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
102 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
103 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
104 a release build.
105
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +0000106- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
107 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
108
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +0000109- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +0000110 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +0000111
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +0000112- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
113 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
114 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
115 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
116 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
117 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
118 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
119 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
120 destroyed.
121
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +0000122- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
123 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
124 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
125 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
126 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
127 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
128 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
129 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
130
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +0000131- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
132 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
133 character other than a space.
134
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +0000135- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
136 by the function object or by the method object, the function
137 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
138 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
139 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
140 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
141 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
142 attributes with the same name.
143
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000144- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
145 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
146 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
147 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
148 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
149 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
150 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
151 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
152 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
153 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
154 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
155 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
156 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
157 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +0000158
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +0000159- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
160 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
161 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
162 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
163 This has been repaired.
164
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +0000165- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
166
167- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
168
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +0000169- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
170 over a sequence.
171
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +0000172- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000173 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +0000174
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +0000175- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
176
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +0000177- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
178 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
179 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
180 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
181 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
182 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
183 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
184 records with equal keys is unchanged).
185
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +0000186- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
187 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
188 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
189
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +0000190- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
191 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
192 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
193 freelist.
194
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +0000195- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
196 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
197
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +0000198- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
199 number.
200
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +0000201- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
202 a TypeError exception.
203
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +0000204- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
205 820195.
206
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +0000207- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
208 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
209 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
210
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +0000211- str and unicode builtin types now have rsplit() method that is
212 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
213 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +0000214
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +0000215- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
216 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
217 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
218
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000219- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
220 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000221 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000222
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000223- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +0000224 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
225 the first call.
226
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +0000227
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000228Extension modules
229-----------------
230
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +0000231- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
232 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
233 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
234 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
235 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
236 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
237 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +0000238
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +0000239- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
240
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +0000241- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
242
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +0000243- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
244 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
245
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +0000246- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
247 fewer false positives.
248
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +0000249- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
250 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
251
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +0000252- Bug #920575: A problem that _locale module segfaults on
253 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
254
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +0000255- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
256 scheme has been updated the same as for list objects. The improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +0000257 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
258 Also, array.extend() now accepts any iterable argument for repeated
259 appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +0000260
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +0000261- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
262 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
263 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
264 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
265
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +0000266- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
267 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
268 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
269 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
270 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
271 #897625.
272
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +0000273- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
274 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
275
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +0000276- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
277 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
278 and pops on either side of the deque.
279
280- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
281 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
282
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +0000283- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
284 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
285 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
286 other functions that expect a function argument.
287
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +0000288- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
289
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +0000290- os.getsid was added.
291
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +0000292- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
293 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
294 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
295
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +0000296- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
297
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +0000298- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
299
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +0000300- readline.clear_history was added.
301
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +0000302- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
303
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +0000304- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
305
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +0000306- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
307
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +0000308- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
309
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +0000310- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
311
312- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
313
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +0000314- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
315
316- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
317
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +0000318- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
319 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
320 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
321
322- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
323 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
324 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
325 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
326 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
327 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
328 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
329
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +0000330- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
331 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
332 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
333 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +0000334
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +0000335- itertools now has a new function, tee() which produces two independent
336 iterators from a single iterable.
337
338- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
339 of raising a TypeError exception.
340
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +0000341- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
342 as parameter.
343
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000344Library
345-------
346
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +0000347- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
348 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
349
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +0000350- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
351
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +0000352- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +0000353 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +0000354
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +0000355- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
356 that generate a *-debuginfo.rpm.
357
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +0000358- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
359
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +0000360- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
361 on cygwin and mingw32.
362
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +0000363- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
364
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +0000365- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
366 module.
367
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +0000368- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
369 installation scheme for all platforms.
370
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +0000371- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
372 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
373 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
374
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +0000375- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
376 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
377 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
378
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +0000379- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
380
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +0000381- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
382
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +0000383- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
384 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
385
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +0000386- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
387 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
388 type pattern with the same value exists.
389
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +0000390- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
391 when run from the command prompt).
392
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +0000393- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
394 not taken into consideration when caching value.
395
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +0000396- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
397 default sort).
398
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +0000399- Added global runctx function to profile module
400
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +0000401- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
402
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +0000403- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
404
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +0000405- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
406
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +0000407- The encodings package will now applies codec name aliases
408 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
409 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
410 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
411 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
412 accordingly.
413
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +0000414- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
415 decoding standards.
416
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +0000417- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
418 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
419 called for all requests.
420
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +0000421- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
422 they are passed to the compiler.
423
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +0000424- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
425 indent, width and depth.
426
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +0000427- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
428 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
429
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +0000430- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
431 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
432
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +0000433- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
434
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +0000435- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
436
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +0000437- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
438
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +0000439- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
440 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
441
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +0000442- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +0000443 for better performance.
444
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +0000445- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +0000446
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +0000447- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
448 a string).
449
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +0000450- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
451
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +0000452- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
453
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +0000454- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
455
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +0000456- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
457
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +0000458- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
459 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
460 list of fieldnames.
461
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +0000462- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
463 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
464
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +0000465- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
466
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +0000467- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
468 empty lists.
469
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +0000470- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
471 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
472 and shelves.
473
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +0000474- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
475 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
476
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +0000477- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +0000478 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
479 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +0000480
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +0000481- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
482 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +0000483 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +0000484
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +0000485- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +0000486 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
487 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
488
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +0000489- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
490 and removed in Py2.4.
491
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +0000492- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
493
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +0000494- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
495
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000496Tools/Demos
497-----------
498
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +0000499- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
500 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
501
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +0000502- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
503
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +0000504- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
505 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
506 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
507 destination in situations where both files are given.
508
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +0000509- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
510 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
511 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
512 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
513
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +0000514- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
515
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +0000516- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
517 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
518 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
519 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
520 now.
521
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000522- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
523 in effect
524
525- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
526 C-c C-h
527
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +0000528- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
529 -d option was given.
530
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000531Build
532-----
533
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +0000534- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
535 --enable-profiling.
536
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +0000537- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
538 is configured --with-tsc.
539
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +0000540- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
541 on AMD64.
542
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +0000543- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
544 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
545
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +0000546- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
547 removed.
548
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +0000549- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
550 supported (see PEP 11).
551
552- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
553
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +0000554- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
555
556- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
557 (see PEP 11).
558
559- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
560 sizeof(char) must be 1.
561
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000562C API
563-----
564
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +0000565- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
566 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
567 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
568
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +0000569- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
570 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
571 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
572 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
573
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +0000574- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
575 generator objects.
576
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +0000577- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
578 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +0000579 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
580 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +0000581
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +0000582- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
583 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
584
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +0000585- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
586 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
587 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
588 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
589 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
590
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +0000591- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
592 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
593 about 10% faster.
594
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +0000595- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
596 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
597
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +0000598- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
599 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
600 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
601 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
602
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000603New platforms
604-------------
605
606Tests
607-----
608
609Windows
610-------
611
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +0000612- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
613 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
614 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
615 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
616
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +0000617- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
618 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
619 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
620
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +0000621Mac
622----
623
624
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000625What's New in Python 2.3 final?
626===============================
627
628*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
629
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000630IDLE
631----
632
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +0000633- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
634 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
635 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
636 context-menu actions.
637
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000638- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
639 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
640 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
641 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
642 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
643 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
644 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
645 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
646 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
647
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +0000648
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000649What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
650=============================================
651
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +0000652*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000653
654Core and builtins
655-----------------
656
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +0000657- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000658 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +0000659 comment at the end are still unsupported.
660
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000661Extension modules
662-----------------
663
664- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
665 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
666 than once. This has been fixed.
667
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +0000668- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
669 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
670 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
671 call.
672
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000673- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
674
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000675Library
676-------
677
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000678- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
679 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
680
681- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
682 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
683 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
684 restored.
685
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +0000686IDLE
687----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000688
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +0000689- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000690
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000691Build
692-----
693
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000694- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
695 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
696
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000697C API
698-----
699
700Windows
701-------
702
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +0000703- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
704 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
705
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000706- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
707
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000708Mac
709---
710
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +0000711- Various fixes to pimp.
712
713- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
714
715- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
716 more problems than it solves.
717
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000718
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000719What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
720=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000721
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +0000722*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
723
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000724Core and builtins
725-----------------
726
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +0000727- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
728 by sys.setcheckinterval().
729
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000730- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
731 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000732 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000733
734- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
735 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
736 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000737 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000738
739- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
740 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000741
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000742- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
743 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
744 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
745
746- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000747 770247.
748
749- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000750
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000751Extension modules
752-----------------
753
754- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
755 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
756
757- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
758
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +0000759- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
760
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +0000761- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
762 contained within the _strptime module.
763
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000764- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
765 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
766
767- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000768 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
769
770- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
771 the find_class attribute, if present.
772
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +0000773- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000774
775 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
776 (SF bug 763298).
777
778 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +0000779 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
780 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
781 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000782
783 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
784
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000785Library
786-------
787
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000788- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
789
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +0000790- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
791 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
792 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
793 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
794 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
795 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
796 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
797 or Tester().
798
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000799- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
800 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
801 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
802 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
803 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
804 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
805 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
806 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
807 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +0000808
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000809 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +0000810
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +0000811- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
812 weren't before was an oversight.
813
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000814- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
815 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
816
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +0000817- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
818 when there are no lines.
819
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +0000820- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
821 which could occur with Tk 8.4
822
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000823- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
824 to child processes.
825
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000826- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
827
828- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
829
830- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
831 xmlrpclib.
832
833- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
834 responses.
835
836- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
837 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
838
839- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
840 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
841 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
842
843- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
844 used as patterns.
845
846- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
847 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
848 than Tk 8.3.
849
850- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
851
852- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000853
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000854Tools/Demos
855-----------
856
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000857- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
858
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +0000859- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
860
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000861- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000862
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000863Build
864-----
865
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000866- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
867
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000868- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
869
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000870- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
871 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000872
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000873- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
874 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
875 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +0000876
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000877C API
878-----
879
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000880- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
881 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
882
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000883Windows
884-------
885
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000886- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
887 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
888 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
889 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
890 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
891 Python exception ::
892
893 thread.error: can't start new thread
894
895 is raised now.
896
897- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
898 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
899 instead of from DLL teardown.
900
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000901Mac
902---
903
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000904- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +0000905 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +0000906 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
907 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
908 the executable in the bundle.
909
910- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +0000911
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +0000912- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
913
914- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
915 on Panther.
916
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000917What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
918================================
919
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +0000920*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000921
922Core and builtins
923-----------------
924
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +0000925- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
926 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
927 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
928 with the -i option.
929
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +0000930- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
931 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
932
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +0000933- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
934 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
935
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +0000936- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
937 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
938 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
939 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
940 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
941 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
942 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
943 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
944 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
945 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
946 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
947 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
948 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +0000949
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000950- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
951 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
952 embedded in a lambda expression.
953
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +0000954- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
955 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
956 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
957 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
958 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
959
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000960- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
961 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
962 matches the restriction on classic classes.
963
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +0000964- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
965 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
966
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +0000967- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
968 It's writable again.
969
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +0000970- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
971 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
972 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +0000973 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +0000974
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000975- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
976 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
977 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
978
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000979Extension modules
980-----------------
981
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +0000982- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
983 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
984
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000985- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
986 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
987 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
988 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
989
990- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
991 collection.
992
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +0000993- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
994 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
995 unique within a single program run.
996
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +0000997- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
998 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
999
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00001000- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
1001 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
1002
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00001003- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
1004 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00001005
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00001006- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
1007
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00001008- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
1009 Fixes SF bug #730685.
1010
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00001011- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
1012 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
1013 for many BSD-derived systems.
1014
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001015
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001016Library
1017-------
1018
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00001019- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
1020 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
1021 primary ones:
1022
1023 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
1024 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
1025 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
1026
1027 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
1028 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
1029 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
1030 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
1031 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
1032 framework features (which doctest lacks).
1033
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00001034- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
1035 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
1036 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
1037 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
1038 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
1039 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
1040 argument.
1041
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001042- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
1043 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
1044 in the archive.
1045
1046- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
1047 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
1048
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00001049- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
1050 569574).
1051
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001052- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
1053 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
1054 no more.
1055
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001056- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
1057 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
1058 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
1059 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
1060 code coverage.
1061
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001062- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
1063 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
1064 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001065 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
1066 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00001067
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001068- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
1069 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
1070 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00001071 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00001072
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00001073- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
1074
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00001075- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
1076 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
1077 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
1078 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
1079
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00001080- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
1081 handling.
1082
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00001083- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
1084 __doc__ of data descriptors.
1085
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00001086- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
1087 in socket.py.
1088
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00001089- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
1090
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00001091- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
1092 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
1093 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
1094 opener with proxy support.
1095
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001096- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
1097
1098- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
1099
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001100Tools/Demos
1101-----------
1102
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00001103- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
1104
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001105- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
1106
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001107- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
1108 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00001109
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00001110- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
1111 files.
1112
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001113Build
1114-----
1115
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001116- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00001117 different root directory.
1118
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001119C API
1120-----
1121
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00001122- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
1123 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
1124 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
1125 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
1126 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
1127 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
1128 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
1129 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
1130 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
1131 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
1132
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001133- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
1134 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
1135 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
1136 from Python.
1137
1138
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001139New platforms
1140-------------
1141
1142None this time.
1143
1144Tests
1145-----
1146
1147- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
1148 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
1149
1150Windows
1151-------
1152
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00001153- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
1154
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00001155- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
1156 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
1157 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
1158 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
1159 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
1160 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
1161 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
1162 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
1163 that's what it's for.
1164
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001165Mac
1166---
1167
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00001168- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
1169 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
1170 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
1171 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00001172- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
1173 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
1174- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001175
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00001176SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
1177------------------------------------
1178
1179430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
1180598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
1181622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
1182661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
1183683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
1184697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
1185713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
1186724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
1187727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
1188729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
1189730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
1190731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
1191732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
1192733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
1193735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
1194740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
1195744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
1196745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
1197747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
1198749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
1199751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
1200753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
1201755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
1202757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
1203760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
1204
1205
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001206What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
1207================================
1208
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00001209*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001210
1211Core and builtins
1212-----------------
1213
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00001214- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
1215 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
1216
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00001217- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
1218 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
1219 and cannot be strings).
1220
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00001221- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
1222 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
1223 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
1224 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
1225
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00001226- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
1227 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
1228 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
1229 Python itself.
1230
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00001231- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
1232 the referenced object, if it has one.
1233
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00001234- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
1235 the thread started at
1236 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
1237
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00001238- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
1239 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
1240 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
1241 placed on a list index.
1242
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00001243- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
1244 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
1245 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
1246 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
1247
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001248- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
1249 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
1250 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
1251 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
1252 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
1253 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
1254 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
1255
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00001256- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
1257 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
1258 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
1259 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
1260 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
1261
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00001262- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
1263 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00001264
1265- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
1266 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
1267 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
1268 #693195.)
1269
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00001270- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
1271 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001272
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00001273- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00001274 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00001275 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
1276 interpreter executions, would fail.
1277
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00001278- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00001279 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00001280 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00001281
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001282Extension modules
1283-----------------
1284
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00001285- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
1286 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
1287 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
1288 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
1289
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00001290- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
1291 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
1292
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00001293- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
1294 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
1295 and Greg Chapman.)
1296
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00001297- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
1298 recursively.
1299
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00001300- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00001301 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
1302 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
1303 leaks.
1304
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00001305- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
1306
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00001307- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
1308 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
1309 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
1310 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
1311 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
1312 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
1313 #705836.
1314
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001315- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00001316 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
1317
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00001318- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
1319 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
1320 See SF bug #692416.
1321
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00001322- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
1323 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
1324
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00001325- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
1326 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
1327 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001328
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00001329- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00001330 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
1331 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
1332
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00001333- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
1334 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
1335 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
1336 timeouts to work properly.
1337
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001338Library
1339-------
1340
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00001341- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
1342 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
1343 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
1344 future release.
1345
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00001346- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
1347 for querying platform dependent features.
1348
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00001349- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00001350
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00001351- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
1352 pickle protocol versions.
1353
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00001354- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
1355 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
1356 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
1357
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00001358- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
1359
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00001360- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
1361 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
1362 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
1363 modules.
1364
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00001365- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
1366 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
1367 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
1368
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00001369- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
1370 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
1371
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00001372- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
1373 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
1374 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
1375
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001376- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00001377 MS Office extensions.
1378
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00001379- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
1380 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
1381
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00001382- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
1383 execution speed of expressions and statements.
1384
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001385- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
1386 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
1387 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
1388 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
1389 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
1390 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
1391
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00001392- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
1393 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
1394 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001395
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00001396- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
1397 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
1398 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
1399
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00001400- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
1401
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00001402- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
1403 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
1404 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
1405
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001406Tools/Demos
1407-----------
1408
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00001409- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
1410 See the module docstring for details.
1411
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001412Build
1413-----
1414
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00001415- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
1416 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001417
1418C API
1419-----
1420
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001421- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
1422
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00001423- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
1424 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
1425 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
1426
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001427- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
1428 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00001429
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00001430 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
1431 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
1432 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00001433
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00001434- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00001435 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
1436
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00001437- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
1438 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
1439 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001440
1441New platforms
1442-------------
1443
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00001444None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001445
1446Tests
1447-----
1448
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00001449- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
1450 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001451
1452Windows
1453-------
1454
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00001455- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
1456 function.
1457
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00001458- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
1459 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001460
1461Mac
1462---
1463
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00001464- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
1465 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00001466
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00001467- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
1468 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001469
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00001470- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
1471 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
1472 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001473
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00001474- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00001475 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
1476 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00001477
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00001478- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
1479 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00001480
1481
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001482What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
1483=================================
1484
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00001485*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001486
1487Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00001488-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001489
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00001490- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
1491 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
1492 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
1493
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00001494- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
1495 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
1496 (SF patch #664376.)
1497
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00001498- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
1499 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
1500 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
1501 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
1502 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
1503 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00001504 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00001505
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00001506- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
1507 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
1508 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
1509 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001510 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00001511
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00001512- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
1513 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
1514 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
1515 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
1516 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
1517 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
1518 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
1519 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
1520 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
1521 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
1522 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
1523
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00001524- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
1525 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
1526 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
1527 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
1528 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
1529 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
1530
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00001531- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
1532 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
1533
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00001534- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
1535 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
1536 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
1537 case.)
1538
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00001539- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
1540 passed as unicode strings.
1541
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00001542- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
1543 See SF bug #683467.
1544
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00001545- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
1546 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
1547
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00001548- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
1549
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00001550- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
1551
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00001552- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
1553 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
1554 arguments.
1555
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00001556- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
1557 See SF bug #667147.
1558
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00001559- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001560 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00001561 See SF bug #676155.
1562
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00001563- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00001564 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00001565 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
1566 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
1567 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
1568 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
1569 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
1570 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00001571
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001572Extension modules
1573-----------------
1574
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00001575- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
1576 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
1577 tp_as_number pointer.
1578
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00001579- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
1580 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
1581 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
1582 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
1583 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
1584
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001585- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
1586
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00001587- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
1588
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00001589- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00001590 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00001591 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
1592 patch #678531.)
1593
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00001594- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
1595 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
1596
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00001597- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
1598 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
1599
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00001600- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
1601
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00001602- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
1603 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
1604 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
1605
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001606- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
1607
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00001608- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
1609 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
1610
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001611- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001612
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001613- datetime changes:
1614
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00001615 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
1616
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00001617 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
1618 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
1619 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
1620 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
1621 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
1622 now.
1623
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001624 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001625 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
1626 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00001627
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001628 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001629 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001630 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
1631 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
1632 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
1633 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001634
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00001635 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
1636 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
1637 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00001638 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
1639
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00001640 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
1641 by a later example coded by Guido.
1642
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001643 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001644 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
1645 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
1646 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00001647 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
1648 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
1649
1650 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
1651 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
1652 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
1653 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
1654 tzinfo subclass instance.
1655
1656 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
1657 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
1658 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
1659 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
1660 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
1661 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
1662 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
1663 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00001664
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001665 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
1666 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
1667 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
1668 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
1669 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001670 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
1671
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001672 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001673
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00001674 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
1675 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
1676 as a naive datetime object.
1677
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00001678 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
1679 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
1680 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
1681
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00001682 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
1683 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
1684 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
1685 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
1686 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
1687 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
1688 comparison.
1689
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001690 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
1691 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
1692 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
1693 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001694 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001695
1696 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001697
1698 and ::
1699
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001700 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
1701
1702 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
1703 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
1704 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
1705 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
1706
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00001707 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
1708 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
1709 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
1710 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
1711 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
1712
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001713 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
1714 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00001715 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
1716 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00001717
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001718Library
1719-------
1720
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001721- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
1722 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
1723
1724- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
1725 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
1726 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
1727 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
1728 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
1729 See PEP 307 for details.
1730
1731- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
1732 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
1733
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00001734- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
1735 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00001736 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001737 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
1738 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00001739 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00001740
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00001741- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
1742 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
1743
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001744- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
1745 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
1746 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
1747
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00001748- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
1749
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00001750- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
1751 exception.
1752
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00001753- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
1754 class.
1755
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00001756- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
1757 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
1758 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
1759
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00001760- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
1761 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
1762
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001763- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00001764 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
1765 See SF bug #659228.
1766
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00001767- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
1768 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
1769 See SF patch #651082.
1770
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00001771- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001772
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00001773- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
1774 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
1775
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00001776- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001777 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00001778
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00001779- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
1780 DOS paths from other platforms.
1781
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001782Tools/Demos
1783-----------
1784
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00001785- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
1786 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
1787 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
1788 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
1789 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
1790 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
1791 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
1792 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
1793 example:
1794
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00001795 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
1796 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00001797
1798 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
1799
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001800
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001801Build
1802-----
1803
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00001804- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
1805 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
1806 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001807 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
1808
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00001809 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
1810
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00001811- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
1812 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
1813 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
1814 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
1815 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
1816 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
1817 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
1818 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
1819 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
1820
1821- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
1822 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
1823 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
1824 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
1825
1826- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
1827 from the Tools/scripts directory.
1828
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001829C API
1830-----
1831
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00001832- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
1833 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00001834
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00001835- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
1836 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
1837 tp_as_number pointer.
1838
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00001839- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
1840 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
1841 (SF #681367)
1842
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00001843- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
1844 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
1845 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
1846 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00001847
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001848Tests
1849-----
1850
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00001851- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001852 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
1853 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
1854 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
1855 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
1856 pydoc.)
1857
1858- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
1859
1860- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001861
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001862Windows
1863-------
1864
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00001865- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
1866 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
1867 time).
1868
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00001869- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
1870 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
1871
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00001872- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
1873 release without strong cryptography.
1874
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00001875- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001876 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00001877
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00001878- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
1879 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
1880
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001881Mac
1882---
1883
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00001884- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
1885 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001886
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00001887- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
1888 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
1889 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001890
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00001891- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
1892 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001893
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00001894- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
1895 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
1896 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
1897 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001898
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00001899- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00001900 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
1901 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
1902 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001903
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001904
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001905What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001906=================================
1907
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00001908*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001909
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001910Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001911--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001912
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00001913- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
1914
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001915- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
1916 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00001917 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001918 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00001919 a different meaning than before.
1920
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00001921- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001922 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00001923 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001924
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00001925- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00001926 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00001927 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00001928
1929- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
1930 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
1931 and deallocation.
1932
1933- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
1934 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
1935
1936- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
1937 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
1938 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
1939 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
1940 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
1941
1942- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
1943 now detected by the garbage collector.
1944
1945- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
1946 [SF bug 519621]
1947
1948- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
1949 identifier.
1950
1951- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
1952 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
1953 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
1954 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
1955 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
1956 [SF bug 563060]
1957
1958- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
1959 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
1960 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
1961 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
1962 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
1963
1964- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
1965 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
1966 not called. [SF bug #537450]
1967
1968- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
1969
1970- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
1971 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
1972 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
1973 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
1974 state of the slots would be lost.)
1975
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001976Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001977-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001978
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00001979- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00001980 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
1981 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
1982 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
1983 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00001984 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
1985 Jython 2.1.
1986
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001987- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00001988 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00001989 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
1990 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
1991 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
1992 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
1993 these, see PEP 302.
1994
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00001995- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
1996 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
1997 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
1998
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00001999- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
2000 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
2001 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
2002
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00002003- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
2004 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
2005 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
2006
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002007- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
2008 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
2009 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
2010 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
2011 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
2012 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
2013 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
2014 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
2015 releases or implementations.
2016
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002017- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002018 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
2019 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00002020
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00002021- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
2022 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
2023
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002024- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
2025 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
2026 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
2027
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00002028- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
2029 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
2030
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002031- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
2032 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002033 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
2034 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00002035
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00002036- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
2037 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
2038 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
2039 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
2040 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
2041
2042 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
2043 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
2044 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
2045 pattern.
2046
2047 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
2048 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
2049 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
2050 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
2051
2052 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
2053 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
2054 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
2055 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
2056 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
2057 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
2058
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00002059- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
2060 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
2061 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
2062 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
2063 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
2064 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
2065 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
2066 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00002067
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00002068- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
2069 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
2070 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
2071 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
2072 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002073 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
2074 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
2075 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
2076 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
2077 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
2078 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
2079 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002080
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00002081- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
2082 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
2083
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00002084- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
2085 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
2086 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
2087 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
2088 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
2089 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
2090 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
2091 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
2092 to Zack Weinberg!
2093
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00002094- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
2095 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
2096 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
2097 type. This has been fixed now.
2098
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00002099- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
2100 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
2101 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
2102
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002103- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
2104 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
2105 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
2106 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
2107 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
2108 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
2109 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
2110 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00002111 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002112
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00002113- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
2114 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
2115 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00002116
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002117- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
2118 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
2119 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
2120 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
2121 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
2122 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
2123 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
2124 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00002125 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002126 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
2127 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
2128
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00002129- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
2130 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
2131 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
2132 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
2133 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
2134 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
2135 this.)
2136
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002137- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
2138 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002139 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002140 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00002141 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
2142 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00002143 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
2144 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00002145
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00002146- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
2147 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
2148 currently running.
2149
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00002150- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
2151 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
2152 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
2153 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
2154
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00002155- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
2156 as directory names.
2157
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00002158- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
2159 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
2160
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00002161- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
2162 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
2163
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00002164- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00002165 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
2166 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00002167
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00002168- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
2169 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
2170 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
2171 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
2172 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
2173
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00002174- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
2175 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
2176 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
2177 removed.
2178
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00002179- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
2180 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
2181 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
2182
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00002183- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
2184 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
2185 to __debug__.
2186
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00002187- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
2188 string to the left with zeros. For example,
2189 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
2190
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00002191- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
2192 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
2193 deprecated now.
2194
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00002195- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
2196 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
2197 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00002198
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00002199- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
2200 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
2201 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
2202 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
2203 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00002204
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00002205- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
2206 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
2207
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00002208- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
2209 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
2210 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002211 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00002212 is backward compatible.
2213
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00002214- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
2215 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
2216 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
2217 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
2218 could access a pointer to freed memory.
2219
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00002220- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
2221 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
2222 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
2223 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
2224 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
2225 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00002226
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00002227- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
2228 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
2229
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00002230- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
2231 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
2232
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00002233- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
2234 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
2235 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
2236 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
2237 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
2238
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00002239- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
2240 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
2241 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
2242
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002243- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00002244 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
2245
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00002246- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
2247 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
2248 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00002249
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00002250- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
2251 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
2252
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00002253- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
2254 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
2255 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
2256
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00002257- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
2258
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002259Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002260-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002261
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00002262- Added three operators to the operator module:
2263 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
2264 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
2265 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
2266
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00002267- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
2268
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00002269- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
2270 archives.
2271
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00002272- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
2273 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
2274 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
2275
2276 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
2277
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00002278- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
2279 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
2280 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00002281 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00002282
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00002283- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
2284 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
2285 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
2286 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002287 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
2288 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
2289 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
2290 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00002291
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00002292- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
2293 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00002294
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00002295- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
2296
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00002297- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
2298 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
2299
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00002300- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
2301 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
2302 supported.
2303
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00002304- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
2305
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00002306- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
2307 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00002308
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00002309- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
2310 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
2311
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00002312- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
2313
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00002314- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
2315 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
2316
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00002317- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
2318 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
2319 functions but callable type objects.
2320
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002321- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00002322 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002323 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00002324
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00002325- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
2326 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00002327
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00002328- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
2329 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00002330
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00002331- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
2332 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
2333 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
2334 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
2335
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00002336- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
2337 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00002338
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00002339- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
2340 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
2341 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
2342 and __imul__.
2343
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00002344- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00002345 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
2346 is called.
2347
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00002348- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
2349 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
2350 interpreter was compiled.
2351
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00002352- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
2353 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
2354 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00002355 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00002356 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
2357 1, not 2.
2358
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00002359- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
2360 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
2361 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
2362 limit.
2363
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00002364- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
2365 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
2366 bug #623464.
2367
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00002368- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
2369 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
2370 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
2371 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
2372
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002373Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002374-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002375
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00002376- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
2377
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00002378- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
2379 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
2380 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
2381 with Python 2.3a2.
2382
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00002383- os.path exposes getctime.
2384
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002385- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002386 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002387 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002388 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002389 unit tests of floating point results.
2390
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00002391- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
2392 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
2393 has been increased.
2394
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00002395- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
2396 executed.
2397
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00002398- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
2399 postinstallation script.
2400
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00002401- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
2402 test the current module.
2403
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002404- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00002405 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
2406 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
2407 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
2408 this behavior needs to be controlled.
2409
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00002410- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002411 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00002412 Ward's Optik package.
2413
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00002414- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
2415 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
2416 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
2417 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
2418
2419- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
2420 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002421 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00002422
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00002423- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
2424 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
2425 shelf are binary pickles.
2426
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00002427- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
2428 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
2429
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00002430- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
2431 modules are iterators now.
2432
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00002433- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
2434 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
2435 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
2436 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
2437 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
2438 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00002439
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00002440- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
2441 with their entity value.
2442
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00002443- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
2444
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00002445- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
2446 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00002447
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00002448- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
2449 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00002450 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00002451
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00002452- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
2453 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
2454 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
2455 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
2456 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
2457 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
2458 main():
2459
2460 import locale
2461 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
2462
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00002463- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
2464 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
2465
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00002466- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
2467 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
2468 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
2469 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
2470 to the new standard.
2471
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00002472- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
2473 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
2474 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
2475 an extension to the database.
2476
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00002477- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
2478 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
2479 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
2480 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00002481 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00002482
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00002483- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00002484 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00002485
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00002486- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
2487 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
2488 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
2489 bounded integers.
2490
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00002491- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
2492 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
2493 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
2494 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
2495 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
2496 in existence.
2497
2498 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
2499 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
2500 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
2501 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
2502 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
2503 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
2504
2505 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
2506 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
2507 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
2508 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
2509
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00002510- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
2511 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
2512 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
2513
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00002514- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
2515
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00002516- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
2517 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
2518 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
2519 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
2520
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00002521- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
2522 argument.
2523
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00002524- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
2525 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
2526 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
2527 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
2528 [SF patch 560794].
2529
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00002530- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
2531 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
2532 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00002533 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
2534 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
2535 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00002536
2537- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
2538 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00002539
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00002540- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
2541 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
2542 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
2543 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00002544
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00002545- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
2546 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
2547 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
2548 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
2549 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
2550
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00002551- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00002552
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00002553- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
2554
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00002555- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
2556 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
2557 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
2558 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
2559 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
2560 identical to None.
2561
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00002562- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
2563 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
2564 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
2565 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
2566 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
2567 results now.
2568
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00002569- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
2570 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
2571
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00002572- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
2573 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
2574 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
2575 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
2576 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
2577 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
2578 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
2579 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
2580
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00002581- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
2582
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00002583- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
2584 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
2585
2586- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
2587 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
2588 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
2589 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
2590 and other systems.
2591
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00002592- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
2593 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
2594 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
2595 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 +00002596 work well with these.
2597
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00002598- compileall now supports quiet operation.
2599
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002600- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00002601 connections.
2602
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00002603- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
2604 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
2605 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
2606
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00002607- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
2608 sets
2609
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00002610- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
2611 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
2612 name.
2613
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00002614- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
2615 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
2616 passed in.
2617
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002618- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00002619 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00002620 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
2621 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00002622
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00002623- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
2624
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00002625- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
2626
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00002627- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
2628 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
2629 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
2630
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00002631- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
2632 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
2633 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
2634 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00002635 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00002636
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002637- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00002638 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002639 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00002640
2641- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
2642 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
2643 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
2644
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002645- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00002646 the value of its expression argument.
2647
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00002648- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
2649 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
2650 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
2651
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00002652- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
2653 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
2654 skipstone browser was included.
2655
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00002656- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
2657 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
2658
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002659Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002660-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002661
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00002662- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
2663 names in addition to accepting file names.
2664
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00002665- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
2666 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
2667 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
2668 still used and useful.)
2669
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00002670- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
2671 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
2672 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
2673 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00002674
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00002675- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
2676 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
2677 the generated binary.
2678
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002679Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002680-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002681
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00002682- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
2683
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00002684- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
2685 except in the hands of experts.
2686
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00002687- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00002688 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
2689 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
2690 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00002691
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00002692- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
2693 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
2694 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
2695 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
2696 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
2697 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
2698 builds.
2699
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00002700- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
2701 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
2702 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
2703 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
2704 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
2705 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
2706 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
2707 new type.
2708
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00002709- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00002710
2711 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
2712 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
2713 positive infinities.
2714
2715 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
2716 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
2717 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
2718 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
2719 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
2720 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
2721 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
2722
2723 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
2724
2725 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
2726
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00002727- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
2728 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
2729 size of the executable.
2730
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00002731- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
2732 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
2733 configure script. On other platforms, remove
2734 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00002735
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00002736- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
2737
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00002738- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
2739 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
2740 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00002741
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00002742- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
2743 well as Unix.
2744
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00002745- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
2746 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
2747 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
2748 modules in the README file for details.
2749
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002750C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002751-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002752
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00002753- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
2754 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00002755 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00002756 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00002757 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00002758
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002759- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
2760 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
2761 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
2762 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
2763 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
2764 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002765 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00002766 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
2767 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
2768 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
2769 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
2770 aligned.)
2771
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00002772- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
2773 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
2774 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
2775
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00002776- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
2777 level.
2778
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00002779- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
2780 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
2781 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
2782 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
2783 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
2784
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00002785- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
2786 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
2787 code.
2788
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00002789- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
2790 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
2791 adjusting for negative indices.
2792
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00002793- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
2794 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
2795 object.
2796
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00002797- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
2798 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
2799 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
2800
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00002801- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
2802 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00002803
2804- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
2805
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00002806- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
2807 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
2808 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
2809 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
2810
2811- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
2812
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00002813- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00002814
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002815- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00002816 without going through the buffer API.
2817
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002818- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00002819
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00002820- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
2821 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
2822 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
2823 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
2824
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002825- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
2826 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
2827
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00002828- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00002829 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
2830
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002831New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002832-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002833
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00002834- OpenVMS is now supported.
2835
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00002836- AtheOS is now supported.
2837
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00002838- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
2839
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00002840- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
2841
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002842Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002843-----
2844
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00002845- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
2846 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
2847 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002848
2849Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002850-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002851
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002852- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
2853 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
2854 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
2855 bugs.
2856 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002857 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00002858 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
2859 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002860 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00002861
2862- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00002863 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00002864
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00002865- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
2866 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
2867
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00002868- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
2869 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002870 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00002871 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
2872
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00002873- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
2874 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
2875 use files" uninstall option).
2876
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00002877- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
2878
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00002879- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
2880 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
2881
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00002882- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
2883 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
2884 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
2885
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00002886- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
2887 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
2888 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
2889 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
2890 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00002891 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
2892 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
2893 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00002894
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002895- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002896 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002897 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
2898 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
2899 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
2900 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
2901 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
2902 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
2903 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
2904 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
2905 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
2906 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
2907 work around.
2908
2909- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
2910 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
2911 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
2912 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
2913 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
2914 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
2915 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
2916 specified with O_CREAT too).
2917
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002918Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002919----
2920
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002921- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002922
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00002923- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
2924 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
2925 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
2926
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002927- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
2928 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
2929 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
2930
2931- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
2932 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
2933 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
2934 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
2935 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
2936 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
2937 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
2938 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002939
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00002940- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
2941 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
2942 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002943
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002944- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
2945 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
2946 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
2947 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
2948 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002949
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002950- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
2951 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
2952 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002953
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002954- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
2955 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002956
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002957- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
2958 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
2959 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
2960 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
2961 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002962
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002963- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
2964 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
2965 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
2966
2967- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
2968 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
2969 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002970
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002971- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
2972 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
2973 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
2974 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002975 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002976
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002977- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
2978 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002979
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002980- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
2981 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002982
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00002983- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00002984 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00002985 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
2986 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002987
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002988
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002989What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002990===============================
2991
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002992*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
2993
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002994Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002995--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002996
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002997- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
2998 with a custom metaclass.
2999
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003000Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003001-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003002
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003003- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
3004 are proxies.
3005
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003006Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003007-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003008
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003009- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
3010 very short strings.
3011
3012- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
3013 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
3014 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
3015 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
3016 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
3017
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003018Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003019-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003020
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003021- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
3022 close or delete time).
3023
3024- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
3025 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
3026
3027- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
3028
3029- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003030 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003031
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003032Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003033-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003034
3035Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003036-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003037
3038C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003039-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003040
3041New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003042-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003043
3044Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003045-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003046
3047Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003048-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003049
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003050- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
3051
3052- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
3053 instances are deleted at process exit time.
3054
3055- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
3056 deleted at process exit time.
3057
3058- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
3059 in backslash.
3060
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003061Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003062----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003063
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00003064- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
3065 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
3066 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
3067
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00003068
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00003069What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003070===========================
3071
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003072*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
3073
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003074Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003075--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003076
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003077- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
3078 been extensively updated. See
3079
3080 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
3081
3082 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
3083
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00003084- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
3085 deleted!
3086
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00003087- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
3088 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
3089 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
3090 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
3091 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
3092
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003093- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
3094
3095 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
3096 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
3097
3098 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
3099 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
3100 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
3101 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
3102 supported anyway.
3103
3104 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
3105 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
3106
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00003107- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
3108 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
3109 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
3110 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
3111 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00003112
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00003113- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
3114 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
3115 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
3116
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003117Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003118-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003119
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003120- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
3121 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
3122 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
3123 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
3124 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
3125 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00003126 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
3127 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
3128 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
3129 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003130
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00003131- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
3132 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
3133 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
3134
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003135Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003136-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003137
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00003138- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
3139
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003140Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003141-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003142
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00003143- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
3144 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
3145 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
3146 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
3147 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
3148 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
3149
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00003150- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
3151
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00003152- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
3153
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00003154- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
3155
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003156- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
3157 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
3158 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
3159
3160- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
3161
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003162Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003163-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003164
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003165- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
3166 off a search on Google.
3167
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003168Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003169-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003170
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003171- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
3172 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
3173 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
3174 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
3175 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
3176 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
3177 other platforms should do likewise.
3178
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00003179- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
3180 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
3181 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
3182
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003183C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003184-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003185
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00003186- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
3187 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
3188 producing key-value pairs.
3189
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00003190- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00003191 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00003192 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
3193 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
3194 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
3195 previously went unchallenged.
3196
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003197New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003198-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003199
3200Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003201-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003202
3203Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003204-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003205
3206Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003207----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003208
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00003209- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
3210 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00003211
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00003212- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
3213 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
3214 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
3215 home.
3216
3217
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003218What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003219===========================
3220
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003221*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
3222
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003223Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003224--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003225
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00003226- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
3227 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003228
3229 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00003230 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003231
3232 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
3233 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003234 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00003235 This needs to be documented.
3236
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00003237- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
3238 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
3239
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00003240- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
3241 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
3242 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
3243
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00003244- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
3245 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
3246
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003247- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
3248 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
3249 class forbids it).
3250
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00003251- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
3252 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
3253 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
3254
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003255- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
3256
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003257Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003258-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003259
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00003260- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
3261 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003262 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00003263
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003264- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
3265 (like 1 + '').
3266
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003267Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003268-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003269
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003270- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
3271 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
3272 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
3273 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003274 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003275 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
3276
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00003277- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
3278 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
3279 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
3280 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
3281
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003282- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
3283 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003284 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
3285 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
3286 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00003287
3288- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
3289 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00003290
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00003291- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
3292 bytes on its input.
3293
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003294Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003295-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003296
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00003297- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00003298 convenience function.
3299
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00003300- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
3301 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
3302 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003303 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
3304 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
3305 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
3306 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
3307 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
3308 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00003309
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00003310- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
3311 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
3312 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
3313 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
3314
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00003315- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
3316 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
3317 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
3318
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00003319- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
3320 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
3321 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
3322 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
3323
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003324- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
3325 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003326 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003327 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
3328 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
3329 new -l and -e options.
3330
3331- statcache is now deprecated.
3332
3333- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
3334 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003335 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003336 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
3337 time properly taken into account.
3338
3339- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
3340 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
3341 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
3342 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
3343
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003344Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003345-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003346
3347Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003348-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003349
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003350- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
3351 is built with libdb3 if available.
3352
3353- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
3354
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003355C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003356-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003357
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00003358- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
3359 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
3360 PySequence_Size().
3361
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003362- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
3363
3364- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
3365 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
3366 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
3367
3368- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
3369 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
3370
3371- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
3372 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
3373
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003374New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003375-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003376
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00003377- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
3378 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
3379
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00003380- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
3381 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
3382
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00003383- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
3384
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003385Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003386-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003387
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00003388- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
3389 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
3390
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003391Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003392-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003393
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003394Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003395----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00003396
3397- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
3398 removed completely in the next release.
3399
3400- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
3401 OSX.
3402
3403- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
3404 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
3405
3406- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
3407
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00003408
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003409What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003410===========================
3411
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003412*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
3413
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003414Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003415--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003416
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003417- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003418 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003419 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003420 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
3421 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00003422 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
3423 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00003424 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
3425 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00003426
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00003427- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
3428 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
3429
3430- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
3431 class methods, static methods, and properties.
3432
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003433Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003434-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003435
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00003436- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
3437 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
3438 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
3439 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
3440 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
3441 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
3442 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
3443 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
3444
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003445- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
3446 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
3447 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
3448 example).
3449
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003450- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00003451 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003452 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003453 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00003454
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003455- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
3456 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
3457 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00003458 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003459
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003460- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
3461 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
3462 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
3463 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
3464 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
3465 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
3466
3467 isinstance(x, (A, B))
3468
3469 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
3470
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003471Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003472-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003473
3474- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
3475
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00003476- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
3477
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00003478- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
3479 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00003480
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00003481- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
3482 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
3483 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
3484 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
3485 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
3486 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00003487 attributes.
3488
3489- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
3490 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
3491 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00003492
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003493- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
3494 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
3495 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003496
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00003497- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
3498 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
3499 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003500 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
3501 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
3502
3503- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
3504 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00003505
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00003506Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003507-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00003508
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00003509- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
3510 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
3511
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003512- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
3513 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
3514 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
3515 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
3516
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00003517- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
3518 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
3519 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
3520 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
3521
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00003522 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
3523 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
3524 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
3525 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
3526 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
3527 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
3528 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
3529 without losing information).
3530
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00003531- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00003532 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
3533 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
3534 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
3535 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
3536 module).
3537
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003538 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00003539 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
3540 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
3541 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
3542 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00003543
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00003544- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00003545 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
3546 encoding.
3547
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00003548- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
3549 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
3550
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003551- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003552 to allow saving the message body to a file.
3553
3554- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
3555 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
3556 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
3557 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
3558
3559- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
3560
3561- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
3562 ON, and OFF.
3563
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00003564- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
3565 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
3566
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00003567Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003568-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00003569
3570- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
3571 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
3572 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003573
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003574- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
3575 been added: -X and -E.
3576
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003577Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003578-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003579
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00003580- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
3581 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
3582
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003583C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003584-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003585
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00003586- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
3587 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
3588 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
3589 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
3590 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
3591
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00003592- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
3593 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
3594 as long) arguments.
3595
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00003596- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
3597 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
3598 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
3599 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
3600 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
3601 report any bugs or strange behavior).
3602
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00003603- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
3604 input.
3605
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003606New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003607-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003608
3609Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003610-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003611
3612Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003613-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003614
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00003615- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
3616 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
3617 is created for .py and .pyw files.
3618
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003619- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
3620 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
3621 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003622 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003623
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003624 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
3625 # (SIGINT) behavior.
3626 import signal
3627 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003628
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003629 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003630 while 1:
3631 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003632 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003633 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
3634 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
3635 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
3636 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00003637
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00003638
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003639What's New in Python 2.2a4?
3640===========================
3641
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003642*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
3643
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003644Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003645--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003646
3647- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
3648 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
3649 documentation for all operations on list objects.
3650
3651- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
3652 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
3653 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
3654 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
3655 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
3656 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
3657 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003658
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00003659- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003660 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00003661 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
3662 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
3663 associate a docstring with a property.
3664
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003665- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
3666 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
3667 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
3668 other built-in object types.
3669
3670- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
3671 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
3672 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
3673 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
3674 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
3675
3676- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
3677 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
3678
3679- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
3680 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003681 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003682 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
3683 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
3684 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
3685 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
3686 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
3687
3688- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
3689 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
3690 class.
3691
3692- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
3693 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
3694 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
3695 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
3696
3697- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
3698 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
3699 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
3700 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
3701
3702- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
3703 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
3704
3705- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
3706 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
3707 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
3708 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
3709 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003710 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003711 with the same value as s.
3712
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00003713- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
3714
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003715Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003716----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00003717
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00003718- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
3719
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00003720- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
3721 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
3722 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
3723 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
3724 objects.
3725
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00003726- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
3727 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00003728 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
3729 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
3730
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003731- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
3732 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
3733 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
3734
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003735Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003736-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003737
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00003738- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
3739 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
3740 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
3741 by the instances.
3742
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00003743- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
3744 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
3745 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
3746
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003747- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
3748 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
3749 before the entire comparison is complete.
3750
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00003751- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
3752 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
3753 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
3754
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00003755- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
3756 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
3757 getwriter().
3758
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003759- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
3760 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
3761
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00003762- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003763 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
3764 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
3765
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00003766- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
3767 iterable object.
3768
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003769- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
3770 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00003771
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003772- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
3773 authentication.
3774
3775- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
3776 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00003777
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003778- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00003779 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
3780 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
3781 a sample driver.)
3782
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003783Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003784-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003785
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003786- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
3787 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
3788 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
3789 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
3790 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
3791 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
3792 kernel has large file support.
3793
3794- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
3795 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
3796 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
3797 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
3798 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
3799
3800- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
3801 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
3802 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
3803
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003804C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003805-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003806
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003807- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
3808 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
3809
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003810New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003811-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003812
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003813- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
3814 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
3815
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003816Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003817-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003818
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003819- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
3820 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
3821 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
3822 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
3823 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
3824
3825- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
3826 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
3827 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
3828 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
3829
3830- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
3831 especially in regard to reporting errors.
3832
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003833Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003834-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003835
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003836- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00003837 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
3838 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00003839
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00003840
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003841What's New in Python 2.2a3?
3842===========================
3843
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003844*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
3845
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003846Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003847----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003848
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003849- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
3850 big to represent as a C double.
3851
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00003852- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
3853 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
3854 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
3855 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
3856 restriction).
3857
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00003858- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
3859 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
3860 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
3861 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
3862 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
3863
3864 >>> dir([])
3865 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
3866 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
3867 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
3868 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
3869 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
3870 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
3871 'reverse', 'sort']
3872
3873 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
3874
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003875- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003876 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
3877 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
3878 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
3879 OverflowError exception.
3880
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00003881- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003882 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003883 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
3884 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
3885 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
3886 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
3887 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003888 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003889 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
3890 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
3891
3892 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
3893 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
3894 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
3895 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003896
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003897- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003898 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
3899 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
3900 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
3901 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
3902 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
3903 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
3904 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
3905 once it is created.
3906
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00003907- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
3908 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
3909 (key, value) pairs.
3910
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003911- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003912 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
3913 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
3914
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00003915- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
3916 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
3917 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
3918 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
3919 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003920
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003921- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003922 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
3923 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
3924
3925 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
3926
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003927- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00003928 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
3929
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003930Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003931-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003932
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00003933- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00003934 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
3935 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00003936
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00003937- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
3938 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
3939 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
3940 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
3941 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
3942 in this area anymore).
3943
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00003944- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
3945 threading.Timer.
3946
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00003947- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
3948 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
3949
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003950- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00003951 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
3952
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003953- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00003954 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
3955 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
3956 converted to Python longs.
3957
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003958- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003959 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
3960
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00003961- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
3962 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
3963 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
3964
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003965Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003966-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003967
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003968- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
3969 division operators as per PEP 238.
3970
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003971Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003972-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003973
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003974- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
3975 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
3976 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
3977 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
3978
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00003979C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003980-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00003981
3982- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00003983
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003984- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
3985 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003986 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003987
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003988 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
3989 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003990 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003991 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003992
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003993- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003994 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
3995 module:
3996
3997 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003998
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003999 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
4000 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004001
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004002 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
4003 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004004
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00004005 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
4006
4007 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
4008
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004009- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004010 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
4011 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
4012 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004013
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004014New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004015-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004016
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00004017- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
4018 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
4019 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
4020 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
4021 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004022
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004023Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004024-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004025
4026Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004027-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004028
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004029- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
4030 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
4031 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
4032 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00004033 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
4034 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
4035 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
4036 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
4037 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00004038
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004039- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00004040 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
4041
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004042
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004043What's New in Python 2.2a2?
4044===========================
4045
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004046*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
4047
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004048Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004049-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004050
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00004051- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
4052 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
4053
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004054- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
4055 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
4056 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004057
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00004058- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
4059 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
4060 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
4061 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004062
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004063- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
4064
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004065- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004066
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004067Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004068-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004069
4070- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00004071 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004072 the module docstring for details.
4073
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004074Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004075-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004076
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004077- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004078 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
4079 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
4080 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004081
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004082- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
4083 Nick Mathewson.
4084
4085Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004086----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004087
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004088- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
4089 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
4090 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
4091 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
4092 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
4093 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
4094 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
4095 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
4096
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00004097- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
4098 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
4099 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
4100 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
4101
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00004102- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
4103 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
4104 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
4105 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
4106 come a long way).
4107
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004108- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
4109 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
4110 write filters for these warnings).
4111
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00004112- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
4113 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
4114 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
4115 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
4116 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
4117
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00004118- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
4119 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
4120 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
4121 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
4122 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
4123 older distribution.
4124
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004125Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004126-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004127
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004128- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
4129 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00004130 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00004131
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004132- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
4133 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
4134 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
4135
4136- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
4137
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004138- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
4139
4140- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
4141
4142- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
4143
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004144- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00004145
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004146- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
4147
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004148New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004149-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004150
4151C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004152-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00004153
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00004154- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
4155 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
4156 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
4157 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
4158 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
4159 against buffer overruns.
4160
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00004161- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004162 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
4163 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00004164 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
4165 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
4166 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
4167
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00004168- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
4169 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
4170 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
4171 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
4172 deprecated.
4173
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004174Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004175-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00004176
4177- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
4178 relevant is found.
4179
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00004180
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004181What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004182===========================
4183
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004184*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
4185
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004186Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004187----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004188
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00004189- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
4190 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
4191 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
4192 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
4193 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
4194 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
4195 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
4196 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004197 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00004198 repaired.
4199
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004200- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00004201 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00004202 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
4203 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
4204 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
4205 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
4206 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
4207 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
4208 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
4209 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
4210
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00004211- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
4212 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
4213 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
4214 leading BMO character).
4215
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004216- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
4217 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
4218 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
4219
4220 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
4221 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
4222 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004223
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004224 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
4225 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
4226 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
4227 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
4228 for various simple to use conversions.
4229
4230 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
4231 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
4232
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004233 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4234 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
4235 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
4236 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
4237 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4238 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
4239 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4240 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
4241 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4242 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
4243 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4244 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
4245 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
4246 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
4247 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00004248
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004249- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
4250 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
4251 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004252 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004253 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004254
4255 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004256 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
4257 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
4258 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
4259 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
4260 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004261 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
4262 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00004263
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004264 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
4265 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
4266 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00004267 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004268
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00004269- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
4270 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
4271 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
4272 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
4273 floating arithmetic,
4274
4275 x = 9007199254740992.0
4276 print long(x)
4277
4278 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
4279 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
4280 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
4281 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
4282 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
4283 functions are of good quality).
4284
4285 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
4286 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
4287 algorithms to break.
4288
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00004289- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
4290 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
4291 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
4292 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
4293 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
4294 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
4295 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
4296 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
4297 order.
4298
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004299- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
4300 operation along the most common code paths.
4301
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00004302- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
4303 the same as dict.has_key(x).
4304
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00004305- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
4306 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
4307 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
4308 {}.update(UserDict())
4309
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00004310- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
4311 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
4312 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
4313 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
4314 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
4315 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
4316 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
4317 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
4318
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00004319- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004320 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004321
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00004322 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00004323 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
4324 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00004325 join() method of strings
4326 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00004327 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
4328 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004329 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00004330 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00004331
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00004332- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
4333 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
4334
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00004335- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
4336 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
4337
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00004338- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
4339 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
4340 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
4341 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
4342
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004343- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
4344 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004345 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00004346 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
4347 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00004348
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00004349- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
4350
4351
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004352Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004353-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004354
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00004355- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004356 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00004357 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
4358 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
4359
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00004360- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
4361 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
4362
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00004363- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
4364 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
4365 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
4366 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
4367
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00004368- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
4369 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
4370 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
4371
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00004372- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
4373
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00004374- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
4375
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00004376- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
4377 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
4378 that are still imported into string.py).
4379
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004380- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
4381
4382- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
4383 Now it does.
4384
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00004385- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
4386
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00004387- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
4388 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
4389 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
4390 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
4391 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00004392 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
4393 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00004394
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00004395- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
4396 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
4397 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
4398 'help(object)'.
4399
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004400Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004401-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004402
4403- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004404 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004405 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
4406 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
4407
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004408- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00004409 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
4410 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00004411
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00004412C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004413-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00004414
4415- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
4416 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004417
4418----
4419
4420**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**