blob: 721c222abd6339af024807092e0c8c42f258410f [file] [log] [blame]
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00001What's New in Python 2.1 alpha 1?
2=================================
3
4Core language, builtins, and interpreter
5
Guido van Rossum1cc8f832001-01-12 16:25:08 +00006- Two changes to from...import:
7
8 1) "from M import X" now works even if M is not a real module; it's
9 basically a getattr() operation with AttributeError exceptions
10 changed into ImportError.
11
12 2) "from M import *" now looks for M.__all__ to decide which names to
13 import; if M.__all__ doesn't exist, it uses M.__dict__.keys() but
14 filters out names starting with '_' as before. Whether or not
15 __all__ exists, there's no restriction on the type of M.
16
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +000017- File objects have a new method, xreadlines(). This is the fastest
18 way to iterate over all lines in a file:
19
20 for line in file.xreadlines():
21 ...do something to line...
22
23 See the xreadlines module (mentioned below) for how to do this for
24 other file-like objects.
25
26- Even if you don't use file.xreadlines(), you may expect a speedup on
27 line-by-line input. The file.readline() method has been optimized
28 quite a bit in platform-specific ways, both on Windows (using an
29 incredibly complex, but nevertheless thread-safe), and on systems
30 (like Linux) that support flockfile(), getc_unlocked(), and
31 funlockfile(). In addition, the fileinput module, while still slow,
32 has been sped up too, by using file.readlines(sizehint).
33
34- Support for run-time warnings has been added, including a new
35 command line option (-W) to specify the disposition of warnings.
36 See the description of the warnings module below.
37
38- Extensive changes have been made to the coercion code. This mostly
39 affects extension modules (which can now implement mixed-type
40 numerical operators without having to use coercion), but
41 occasionally, in boundary cases the coercion semantics have changed
42 subtly. Since this was a terrible gray area of the language, this
Guido van Rossumae72d872001-01-11 15:00:14 +000043 is considered an improvement. Also note that __rcmp__ is no longer
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +000044 supported -- instead of calling __rcmp__, __cmp__ is called with
45 reversed arguments.
46
Martin v. Löwisbe4c0f52001-01-04 20:30:56 +000047- The interpreter accepts now bytecode files on the command line even
48 if they do not have a .pyc or .pyo extension. On Linux, after executing
49
50 echo ':pyc:M::\x87\xc6\x0d\x0a::/usr/local/bin/python:' > /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register
51
52 any byte code file can be used as an executable (i.e. as an argument
53 to execve(2)).
54
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +000055- %[xXo] formats of negative Python longs now produce a sign
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +000056 character. In 1.6 and earlier, they never produced a sign,
57 and raised an error if the value of the long was too large
58 to fit in a Python int. In 2.0, they produced a sign if and
59 only if too large to fit in an int. This was inconsistent
60 across platforms (because the size of an int varies across
61 platforms), and inconsistent with hex() and oct(). Example:
62
63 >>> "%x" % -0x42L
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +000064 '-42' # in 2.1
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +000065 'ffffffbe' # in 2.0 and before, on 32-bit machines
66 >>> hex(-0x42L)
67 '-0x42L' # in all versions of Python
68
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +000069 The behavior of %d formats for negative Python longs remains
70 the same as in 2.0 (although in 1.6 and before, they raised
71 an error if the long didn't fit in a Python int).
72
73 %u formats don't make sense for Python longs, but are allowed
74 and treated the same as %d in 2.1. In 2.0, a negative long
75 formatted via %u produced a sign if and only if too large to
76 fit in an int. In 1.6 and earlier, a negative long formatted
77 via %u raised an error if it was too big to fit in an int.
78
Guido van Rossum3661d392000-12-12 22:10:31 +000079- Dictionary objects have an odd new method, popitem(). This removes
80 an arbitrary item from the dictionary and returns it (in the form of
81 a (key, value) pair). This can be useful for algorithms that use a
82 dictionary as a bag of "to do" items and repeatedly need to pick one
83 item. Such algorithms normally end up running in quadratic time;
84 using popitem() they can usually be made to run in linear time.
85
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +000086Standard library
87
Martin v. Löwis10a27872001-01-13 09:54:41 +000088- The module site now treats .pth files not only for path configuration,
89 but also supports extensions to the initialization code: Lines starting
90 with import are executed.
91
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +000092- There's a new module, warnings, which implements a mechanism for
93 issuing and filtering warnings. There are some new built-in
94 exceptions that serve as warning categories, and a new command line
95 option, -W, to control warnings (e.g. -Wi ignores all warnings, -We
96 turns warnings into errors). warnings.warn(message[, category])
97 issues a warning message; this can also be called from C as
98 PyErr_Warn(category, message).
99
100- A new module xreadlines was added. This exports a single factory
101 function, xreadlines(). The intention is that this code is the
102 absolutely fastest way to iterate over all lines in an open
103 file(-like) object:
104
105 import xreadlines
106 for line in xreadlines.xreadlines(file):
107 ...do something to line...
108
109 This is equivalent to the previous the speed record holder using
110 file.readlines(sizehint). Note that if file is a real file object
111 (as opposed to a file-like object), this is equivalent:
112
113 for line in file.xreadlines():
114 ...do something to line...
115
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +0000116- The bisect module has new functions bisect_left, insort_left,
117 bisect_right and insort_right. The old names bisect and insort
118 are now aliases for bisect_right and insort_right. XXX_right
119 and XXX_left methods differ in what happens when the new element
120 compares equal to one or more elements already in the list: the
121 XXX_left methods insert to the left, the XXX_right methods to the
Tim Peters742bb6f2001-01-05 08:05:32 +0000122 right. Code that doesn't care where equal elements end up should
123 continue to use the old, short names ("bisect" and "insort").
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +0000124
Andrew M. Kuchlingf6f3a892001-01-13 14:53:34 +0000125- The new curses.panel module wraps the panel library that forms part
126 of SYSV curses and ncurses. Contributed by Thomas Gellekum.
127
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000128- The SocketServer module now sets the allow_reuse_address flag by
129 default in the TCPServer class.
130
131- A new function, sys._getframe(), returns the stack frame pointer of
132 the caller. This is intended only as a building block for
133 higher-level mechanisms such as string interpolation.
134
135Build issues
136
137- On Linux (and possibly other Unix platforms), the readline and
138 _curses modules are automatically configured through
139 Modules/Setup.config. These, and the bsddb module (which was
140 already dynamically configured) are now built as shared libraries by
141 default.
142
143- Python now always uses its own (renamed) implementation of getopt()
144 -- there's too much variation among C library getopt()
145 implementations.
146
147- C++ compilers are better supported; the CXX macro is always set to a
148 C++ compiler if one is found.
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +0000149
Tim Petersd92dfe02000-12-12 01:18:41 +0000150Windows changes
151
152- select module: By default under Windows, a select() call
153 can specify no more than 64 sockets. Python now boosts
154 this Microsoft default to 512. If you need even more than
155 that, see the MS docs (you'll need to #define FD_SETSIZE
156 and recompile Python from source).
157
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000158- Support for Windows 3.1, DOS and OS/2 is gone. The Lib/dos-8x3
159 subdirectory is no more!
160
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000161
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000162What's New in Python 2.0?
Fred Drake1a640502000-10-16 20:27:25 +0000163=========================
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +0000164
Guido van Rossum8ed602b2000-09-01 22:34:33 +0000165Below is a list of all relevant changes since release 1.6. Older
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000166changes are in the file HISTORY. If you are making the jump directly
167from Python 1.5.2 to 2.0, make sure to read the section for 1.6 in the
168HISTORY file! Many important changes listed there.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +0000169
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000170Alternatively, a good overview of the changes between 1.5.2 and 2.0 is
171the document "What's New in Python 2.0" by Kuchling and Moshe Zadka:
172http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/python/writing/new-python/.
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +0000173
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000174--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)
Guido van Rossum437cfe81999-04-08 20:17:57 +0000175
176======================================================================
177
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000178What's new in 2.0 (since release candidate 1)?
179==============================================
180
181Standard library
182
183- The copy_reg module was modified to clarify its intended use: to
184 register pickle support for extension types, not for classes.
185 pickle() will raise a TypeError if it is passed a class.
186
187- Fixed a bug in gettext's "normalize and expand" code that prevented
188 it from finding an existing .mo file.
189
190- Restored support for HTTP/0.9 servers in httplib.
191
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +0000192- The math module was changed to stop raising OverflowError in case of
193 underflow, and return 0 instead in underflow cases. Whether Python
194 used to raise OverflowError in case of underflow was platform-
195 dependent (it did when the platform math library set errno to ERANGE
196 on underflow).
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000197
198- Fixed a bug in StringIO that occurred when the file position was not
199 at the end of the file and write() was called with enough data to
200 extend past the end of the file.
201
202- Fixed a bug that caused Tkinter error messages to get lost on
203 Windows. The bug was fixed by replacing direct use of
204 interp->result with Tcl_GetStringResult(interp).
205
206- Fixed bug in urllib2 that caused it to fail when it received an HTTP
207 redirect response.
208
209- Several changes were made to distutils: Some debugging code was
210 removed from util. Fixed the installer used when an external zip
211 program (like WinZip) is not found; the source code for this
212 installer is in Misc/distutils. check_lib() was modified to behave
213 more like AC_CHECK_LIB by add other_libraries() as a parameter. The
214 test for whether installed modules are on sys.path was changed to
215 use both normcase() and normpath().
216
Jeremy Hyltond867a2c2000-10-16 20:41:38 +0000217- Several minor bugs were fixed in the xml package (the minidom,
218 pulldom, expatreader, and saxutils modules).
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000219
220- The regression test driver (regrtest.py) behavior when invoked with
221 -l changed: It now reports a count of objects that are recognized as
222 garbage but not freed by the garbage collector.
223
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +0000224- The regression test for the math module was changed to test
225 exceptional behavior when the test is run in verbose mode. Python
226 cannot yet guarantee consistent exception behavior across platforms,
227 so the exception part of test_math is run only in verbose mode, and
228 may fail on your platform.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000229
230Internals
231
232- PyOS_CheckStack() has been disabled on Win64, where it caused
233 test_sre to fail.
234
235Build issues
236
237- Changed compiler flags, so that gcc is always invoked with -Wall and
238 -Wstrict-prototypes. Users compiling Python with GCC should see
239 exactly one warning, except if they have passed configure the
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +0000240 --with-pydebug flag. The expected warning is for getopt() in
Tim Petersadfb94f2000-10-16 20:51:33 +0000241 Modules/main.c. This warning will be fixed for Python 2.1.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000242
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000243- Fixed configure to add -threads argument during linking on OSF1.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000244
245Tools and other miscellany
246
247- The compiler in Tools/compiler was updated to support the new
248 language features introduced in 2.0: extended print statement, list
249 comprehensions, and augmented assignments. The new compiler should
250 also be backwards compatible with Python 1.5.2; the compiler will
251 always generate code for the version of the interpreter it runs
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000252 under.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000253
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000254What's new in 2.0 release candidate 1 (since beta 2)?
255=====================================================
256
Jeremy Hylton6040aaa2000-10-09 21:27:22 +0000257What is release candidate 1?
258
259We believe that release candidate 1 will fix all known bugs that we
260intend to fix for the 2.0 final release. This release should be a bit
261more stable than the previous betas. We would like to see even more
262widespread testing before the final release, so we are producing this
263release candidate. The final release will be exactly the same unless
264any show-stopping (or brown bag) bugs are found by testers of the
265release candidate.
266
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000267All the changes since the last beta release are bug fixes or changes
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000268to support building Python for specific platforms.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000269
270Core language, builtins, and interpreter
271
272- A bug that caused crashes when __coerce__ was used with augmented
273 assignment, e.g. +=, was fixed.
274
275- Raise ZeroDivisionError when raising zero to a negative number,
276 e.g. 0.0 ** -2.0. Note that math.pow is unrelated to the builtin
277 power operator and the result of math.pow(0.0, -2.0) will vary by
278 platform. On Linux, it raises a ValueError.
279
280- A bug in Unicode string interpolation was fixed that occasionally
281 caused errors with formats including "%%". For example, the
282 following expression "%% %s" % u"abc" no longer raises a TypeError.
283
284- Compilation of deeply nested expressions raises MemoryError instead
285 of SyntaxError, e.g. eval("[" * 50 + "]" * 50).
286
287- In 2.0b2 on Windows, the interpreter wrote .pyc files in text mode,
288 rendering them useless. They are now written in binary mode again.
289
290Standard library
291
292- Keyword arguments are now accepted for most pattern and match object
293 methods in SRE, the standard regular expression engine.
294
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000295- In SRE, fixed error with negative lookahead and lookbehind that
Jeremy Hylton32e20ff2000-10-09 19:48:11 +0000296 manifested itself as a runtime error in patterns like "(?<!abc)(def)".
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000297
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000298- Several bugs in the Unicode handling and error handling in _tkinter
299 were fixed.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000300
301- Fix memory management errors in Merge() and Tkapp_Call() routines.
302
303- Several changes were made to cStringIO to make it compatible with
304 the file-like object interface and with StringIO. If operations are
305 performed on a closed object, an exception is raised. The truncate
306 method now accepts a position argument and readline accepts a size
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000307 argument.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000308
309- There were many changes made to the linuxaudiodev module and its
310 test suite; as a result, a short, unexpected audio sample should now
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000311 play when the regression test is run.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000312
313 Note that this module is named poorly, because it should work
314 correctly on any platform that supports the Open Sound System
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000315 (OSS).
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000316
317 The module now raises exceptions when errors occur instead of
318 crashing. It also defines the AFMT_A_LAW format (logarithmic A-law
319 audio) and defines a getptr() method that calls the
320 SNDCTL_DSP_GETxPTR ioctl defined in the OSS Programmer's Guide.
321
322- The library_version attribute, introduced in an earlier beta, was
323 removed because it can not be supported with early versions of the C
324 readline library, which provides no way to determine the version at
325 compile-time.
326
327- The binascii module is now enabled on Win64.
328
Tim Peters46446d62000-10-09 21:19:31 +0000329- tokenize.py no longer suffers "recursion depth" errors when parsing
330 programs with very long string literals.
331
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000332Internals
333
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000334- Fixed several buffer overflow vulnerabilities in calculate_path(),
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000335 which is called when the interpreter starts up to determine where
336 the standard library is installed. These vulnerabilities affect all
337 previous versions of Python and can be exploited by setting very
338 long values for PYTHONHOME or argv[0]. The risk is greatest for a
339 setuid Python script, although use of the wrapper in
340 Misc/setuid-prog.c will eliminate the vulnerability.
341
342- Fixed garbage collection bugs in instance creation that were
343 triggered when errors occurred during initialization. The solution,
344 applied in cPickle and in PyInstance_New(), is to call
345 PyObject_GC_Init() after the initialization of the object's
346 container attributes is complete.
347
348- pyexpat adds definitions of PyModule_AddStringConstant and
349 PyModule_AddObject if the Python version is less than 2.0, which
350 provides compatibility with PyXML on Python 1.5.2.
351
352- If the platform has a bogus definition for LONG_BIT (the number of
353 bits in a long), an error will be reported at compile time.
354
355- Fix bugs in _PyTuple_Resize() which caused hard-to-interpret garbage
356 collection crashes and possibly other, unreported crashes.
357
358- Fixed a memory leak in _PyUnicode_Fini().
359
360Build issues
361
362- configure now accepts a --with-suffix option that specifies the
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000363 executable suffix. This is useful for builds on Cygwin and Mac OS
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000364 X, for example.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000365
366- The mmap.PAGESIZE constant is now initialized using sysconf when
367 possible, which eliminates a dependency on -lucb for Reliant UNIX.
368
369- The md5 file should now compile on all platforms.
370
371- The select module now compiles on platforms that do not define
372 POLLRDNORM and related constants.
373
374- Darwin (Mac OS X): Initial support for static builds on this
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000375 platform.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000376
Jeremy Hylton10921202000-10-09 18:34:12 +0000377- BeOS: A number of changes were made to the build and installation
378 process. ar-fake now operates on a directory of object files.
379 dl_export.h is gone, and its macros now appear on the mwcc command
380 line during build on PPC BeOS.
381
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000382- Platform directory in lib/python2.0 is "plat-beos5" (or
Jeremy Hylton10921202000-10-09 18:34:12 +0000383 "plat-beos4", if building on BeOS 4.5), rather than "plat-beos".
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000384
385- Cygwin: Support for shared libraries, Tkinter, and sockets.
386
387- SunOS 4.1.4_JL: Fix test for directory existence in configure.
388
389Tools and other miscellany
390
391- Removed debugging prints from main used with freeze.
392
Tim Peters46446d62000-10-09 21:19:31 +0000393- IDLE auto-indent no longer crashes when it encounters Unicode
394 characters.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000395
396What's new in 2.0 beta 2 (since beta 1)?
397========================================
398
399Core language, builtins, and interpreter
400
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000401- Add support for unbounded ints in %d,i,u,x,X,o formats; for example
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000402 "%d" % 2L**64 == "18446744073709551616".
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000403
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000404- Add -h and -V command line options to print the usage message and
405 Python version number and exit immediately.
406
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000407- eval() and exec accept Unicode objects as code parameters.
408
409- getattr() and setattr() now also accept Unicode objects for the
410 attribute name, which are converted to strings using the default
411 encoding before lookup.
412
413- Multiplication on string and Unicode now does proper bounds
414 checking; e.g. 'a' * 65536 * 65536 will raise ValueError, "repeated
415 string is too long."
416
417- Better error message when continue is found in try statement in a
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000418 loop.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000419
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000420
421Standard library and extensions
422
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000423- array: reverse() method of array now works. buffer_info() now does
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000424 argument checking; it still takes no arguments.
425
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000426- asyncore/asynchat: Included most recent version from Sam Rushing.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000427
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000428- cgi: Accept '&' or ';' as separator characters when parsing form data.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000429
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000430- CGIHTTPServer: Now works on Windows (and perhaps even Mac).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000431
432- ConfigParser: When reading the file, options spelled in upper case
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000433 letters are now correctly converted to lowercase.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000434
435- copy: Copy Unicode objects atomically.
436
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000437- cPickle: Fail gracefully when copy_reg can't be imported.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000438
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000439- cStringIO: Implemented readlines() method.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000440
Fred Drake67233bc2000-09-26 16:40:27 +0000441- dbm: Add get() and setdefault() methods to dbm object. Add constant
442 `library' to module that names the library used. Added doc strings
443 and method names to error messages. Uses configure to determine
444 which ndbm.h file to include; Berkeley DB's nbdm and GDBM's ndbm is
445 now available options.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000446
447- distutils: Update to version 0.9.3.
448
449- dl: Add several dl.RTLD_ constants.
450
451- fpectl: Now supported on FreeBSD.
452
453- gc: Add DEBUG_SAVEALL option. When enabled all garbage objects
454 found by the collector will be saved in gc.garbage. This is useful
455 for debugging a program that creates reference cycles.
456
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000457- httplib: Three changes: Restore support for set_debuglevel feature
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000458 of HTTP class. Do not close socket on zero-length response. Do not
459 crash when server sends invalid content-length header.
460
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000461- mailbox: Mailbox class conforms better to qmail specifications.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000462
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000463- marshal: When reading a short, sign-extend on platforms where shorts
464 are bigger than 16 bits. When reading a long, repair the unportable
465 sign extension that was being done for 64-bit machines. (It assumed
466 that signed right shift sign-extends.)
467
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000468- operator: Add contains(), invert(), __invert__() as aliases for
469 __contains__(), inv(), and __inv__() respectively.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000470
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000471- os: Add support for popen2() and popen3() on all platforms where
472 fork() exists. (popen4() is still in the works.)
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000473
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000474- os: (Windows only:) Add startfile() function that acts like double-
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000475 clicking on a file in Explorer (or passing the file name to the
476 DOS "start" command).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000477
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000478- os.path: (Windows, DOS:) Treat trailing colon correctly in
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000479 os.path.join. os.path.join("a:", "b") yields "a:b".
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000480
481- pickle: Now raises ValueError when an invalid pickle that contains
482 a non-string repr where a string repr was expected. This behavior
483 matches cPickle.
484
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000485- posixfile: Remove broken __del__() method.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000486
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000487- py_compile: support CR+LF line terminators in source file.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000488
489- readline: Does not immediately exit when ^C is hit when readline and
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000490 threads are configured. Adds definition of rl_library_version. (The
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000491 latter addition requires GNU readline 2.2 or later.)
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000492
493- rfc822: Domain literals returned by AddrlistClass method
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000494 getdomainliteral() are now properly wrapped in brackets.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000495
496- site: sys.setdefaultencoding() should only be called in case the
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000497 standard default encoding ("ascii") is changed. This saves quite a
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000498 few cycles during startup since the first call to
499 setdefaultencoding() will initialize the codec registry and the
500 encodings package.
501
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000502- socket: Support for size hint in readlines() method of object returned
503 by makefile().
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000504
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000505- sre: Added experimental expand() method to match objects. Does not
Jeremy Hylton625915e2000-10-02 13:43:33 +0000506 use buffer interface on Unicode strings. Does not hang if group id
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000507 is followed by whitespace.
508
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000509- StringIO: Size hint in readlines() is now supported as documented.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000510
511- struct: Check ranges for bytes and shorts.
512
513- urllib: Improved handling of win32 proxy settings. Fixed quote and
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000514 quote_plus functions so that the always encode a comma.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000515
516- Tkinter: Image objects are now guaranteed to have unique ids. Set
517 event.delta to zero if Tk version doesn't support mousewheel.
518 Removed some debugging prints.
519
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000520- UserList: now implements __contains__().
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000521
Fred Drake67233bc2000-09-26 16:40:27 +0000522- webbrowser: On Windows, use os.startfile() instead of os.popen(),
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000523 which works around a bug in Norton AntiVirus 2000 that leads directly
524 to a Blue Screen freeze.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000525
526- xml: New version detection code allows PyXML to override standard
527 XML package if PyXML version is greater than 0.6.1.
528
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000529- xml.dom: DOM level 1 support for basic XML. Includes xml.dom.minidom
530 (conventional DOM), and xml.dom.pulldom, which allows building the DOM
531 tree only for nodes which are sufficiently interesting to a specific
532 application. Does not provide the HTML-specific extensions. Still
533 undocumented.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000534
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000535- xml.sax: SAX 2 support for Python, including all the handler
536 interfaces needed to process XML 1.0 compliant XML. Some
537 documentation is already available.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000538
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000539- pyexpat: Renamed to xml.parsers.expat since this is part of the new,
540 packagized XML support.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000541
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000542
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000543C API
544
545- Add three new convenience functions for module initialization --
546 PyModule_AddObject(), PyModule_AddIntConstant(), and
547 PyModule_AddStringConstant().
548
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000549- Cleaned up definition of NULL in C source code; all definitions were
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000550 removed and add #error to Python.h if NULL isn't defined after
551 #include of stdio.h.
552
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000553- Py_PROTO() macros that were removed in 2.0b1 have been restored for
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000554 backwards compatibility (at the source level) with old extensions.
555
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000556- A wrapper API was added for signal() and sigaction(). Instead of
557 either function, always use PyOS_getsig() to get a signal handler
558 and PyOS_setsig() to set one. A new convenience typedef
559 PyOS_sighandler_t is defined for the type of signal handlers.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000560
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000561- Add PyString_AsStringAndSize() function that provides access to the
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000562 internal data buffer and size of a string object -- or the default
563 encoded version of a Unicode object.
564
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000565- PyString_Size() and PyString_AsString() accept Unicode objects.
566
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000567- The standard header <limits.h> is now included by Python.h (if it
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000568 exists). INT_MAX and LONG_MAX will always be defined, even if
569 <limits.h> is not available.
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000570
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000571- PyFloat_FromString takes a second argument, pend, that was
572 effectively useless. It is now officially useless but preserved for
573 backwards compatibility. If the pend argument is not NULL, *pend is
574 set to NULL.
575
576- PyObject_GetAttr() and PyObject_SetAttr() now accept Unicode objects
577 for the attribute name. See note on getattr() above.
578
579- A few bug fixes to argument processing for Unicode.
580 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() now accepts "es#" and "es".
581 PyArg_Parse() special cases "s#" for Unicode objects; it returns a
582 pointer to the default encoded string data instead of to the raw
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000583 UTF-16.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000584
585- Py_BuildValue accepts B format (for bgen-generated code).
586
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000587
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000588Internals
589
590- On Unix, fix code for finding Python installation directory so that
591 it works when argv[0] is a relative path.
592
Andrew M. Kuchlinga1099be2000-12-15 01:16:43 +0000593- Added a true unicode_internal_encode() function and fixed the
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000594 unicode_internal_decode function() to support Unicode objects directly
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000595 rather than by generating a copy of the object.
596
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000597- Several of the internal Unicode tables are much smaller now, and
598 the source code should be much friendlier to weaker compilers.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000599
Jeremy Hylton97693b02000-09-26 17:42:51 +0000600- In the garbage collector: Fixed bug in collection of tuples. Fixed
601 bug that caused some instances to be removed from the container set
602 while they were still live. Fixed parsing in gc.set_debug() for
603 platforms where sizeof(long) > sizeof(int).
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000604
605- Fixed refcount problem in instance deallocation that only occurred
606 when Py_REF_DEBUG was defined and Py_TRACE_REFS was not.
607
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000608- On Windows, getpythonregpath is now protected against null data in
609 registry key.
610
611- On Unix, create .pyc/.pyo files with O_EXCL flag to avoid a race
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000612 condition.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000613
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000614
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000615Build and platform-specific issues
616
617- Better support of GNU Pth via --with-pth configure option.
618
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000619- Python/C API now properly exposed to dynamically-loaded extension
620 modules on Reliant UNIX.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000621
622- Changes for the benefit of SunOS 4.1.4 (really!). mmapmodule.c:
623 Don't define MS_SYNC to be zero when it is undefined. Added missing
624 prototypes in posixmodule.c.
625
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000626- Improved support for HP-UX build. Threads should now be correctly
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000627 configured (on HP-UX 10.20 and 11.00).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000628
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000629- Fix largefile support on older NetBSD systems and OpenBSD by adding
630 define for TELL64.
631
632
633Tools and other miscellany
634
635- ftpmirror: Call to main() is wrapped in if __name__ == "__main__".
636
637- freeze: The modulefinder now works with 2.0 opcodes.
638
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000639- IDLE:
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000640 Move hackery of sys.argv until after the Tk instance has been
641 created, which allows the application-specific Tkinter
642 initialization to be executed if present; also pass an explicit
643 className parameter to the Tk() constructor.
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000644
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000645
646What's new in 2.0 beta 1?
647=========================
648
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000649Source Incompatibilities
650------------------------
651
652None. Note that 1.6 introduced several incompatibilities with 1.5.2,
653such as single-argument append(), connect() and bind(), and changes to
654str(long) and repr(float).
655
656
657Binary Incompatibilities
658------------------------
659
660- Third party extensions built for Python 1.5.x or 1.6 cannot be used
661with Python 2.0; these extensions will have to be rebuilt for Python
6622.0.
663
664- On Windows, attempting to import a third party extension built for
665Python 1.5.x or 1.6 results in an immediate crash; there's not much we
666can do about this. Check your PYTHONPATH environment variable!
667
668- Python bytecode files (*.pyc and *.pyo) are not compatible between
669releases.
670
671
672Overview of Changes Since 1.6
673-----------------------------
674
675There are many new modules (including brand new XML support through
676the xml package, and i18n support through the gettext module); a list
677of all new modules is included below. Lots of bugs have been fixed.
678
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000679The process for making major new changes to the language has changed
680since Python 1.6. Enhancements must now be documented by a Python
681Enhancement Proposal (PEP) before they can be accepted.
682
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000683There are several important syntax enhancements, described in more
684detail below:
685
686 - Augmented assignment, e.g. x += 1
687
688 - List comprehensions, e.g. [x**2 for x in range(10)]
689
690 - Extended import statement, e.g. import Module as Name
691
692 - Extended print statement, e.g. print >> file, "Hello"
693
694Other important changes:
695
696 - Optional collection of cyclical garbage
697
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000698Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP)
699---------------------------------
700
701PEP stands for Python Enhancement Proposal. A PEP is a design
702document providing information to the Python community, or describing
703a new feature for Python. The PEP should provide a concise technical
704specification of the feature and a rationale for the feature.
705
706We intend PEPs to be the primary mechanisms for proposing new
707features, for collecting community input on an issue, and for
708documenting the design decisions that have gone into Python. The PEP
709author is responsible for building consensus within the community and
710documenting dissenting opinions.
711
712The PEPs are available at http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000713
714Augmented Assignment
715--------------------
716
717This must have been the most-requested feature of the past years!
718Eleven new assignment operators were added:
719
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000720 += -= *= /= %= **= <<= >>= &= ^= |=
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000721
722For example,
723
724 A += B
725
726is similar to
727
728 A = A + B
729
730except that A is evaluated only once (relevant when A is something
731like dict[index].attr).
732
733However, if A is a mutable object, A may be modified in place. Thus,
734if A is a number or a string, A += B has the same effect as A = A+B
735(except A is only evaluated once); but if a is a list, A += B has the
736same effect as A.extend(B)!
737
738Classes and built-in object types can override the new operators in
739order to implement the in-place behavior; the not-in-place behavior is
740used automatically as a fallback when an object doesn't implement the
741in-place behavior. For classes, the method name is derived from the
742method name for the corresponding not-in-place operator by inserting
743an 'i' in front of the name, e.g. __iadd__ implements in-place
744__add__.
745
746Augmented assignment was implemented by Thomas Wouters.
747
748
749List Comprehensions
750-------------------
751
752This is a flexible new notation for lists whose elements are computed
753from another list (or lists). The simplest form is:
754
755 [<expression> for <variable> in <sequence>]
756
Guido van Rossum56db0952000-09-06 23:34:25 +0000757For example, [i**2 for i in range(4)] yields the list [0, 1, 4, 9].
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000758This is more efficient than a for loop with a list.append() call.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000759
760You can also add a condition:
761
762 [<expression> for <variable> in <sequence> if <condition>]
763
764For example, [w for w in words if w == w.lower()] would yield the list
765of words that contain no uppercase characters. This is more efficient
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000766than a for loop with an if statement and a list.append() call.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000767
768You can also have nested for loops and more than one 'if' clause. For
769example, here's a function that flattens a sequence of sequences::
770
771 def flatten(seq):
772 return [x for subseq in seq for x in subseq]
773
774 flatten([[0], [1,2,3], [4,5], [6,7,8,9], []])
775
776This prints
777
778 [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
779
780List comprehensions originated as a patch set from Greg Ewing; Skip
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000781Montanaro and Thomas Wouters also contributed. Described by PEP 202.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000782
783
784Extended Import Statement
785-------------------------
786
787Many people have asked for a way to import a module under a different
788name. This can be accomplished like this:
789
790 import foo
791 bar = foo
792 del foo
793
794but this common idiom gets old quickly. A simple extension of the
795import statement now allows this to be written as follows:
796
797 import foo as bar
798
799There's also a variant for 'from ... import':
800
801 from foo import bar as spam
802
803This also works with packages; e.g. you can write this:
804
805 import test.regrtest as regrtest
806
807Note that 'as' is not a new keyword -- it is recognized only in this
808context (this is only possible because the syntax for the import
809statement doesn't involve expressions).
810
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000811Implemented by Thomas Wouters. Described by PEP 221.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000812
813
814Extended Print Statement
815------------------------
816
817Easily the most controversial new feature, this extension to the print
818statement adds an option to make the output go to a different file
819than the default sys.stdout.
820
821For example, to write an error message to sys.stderr, you can now
822write:
823
824 print >> sys.stderr, "Error: bad dog!"
825
826As a special feature, if the expression used to indicate the file
Fred Drake45888ff2000-09-29 17:09:11 +0000827evaluates to None, the current value of sys.stdout is used. Thus:
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000828
829 print >> None, "Hello world"
830
831is equivalent to
832
833 print "Hello world"
834
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000835Design and implementation by Barry Warsaw. Described by PEP 214.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000836
837
838Optional Collection of Cyclical Garbage
839---------------------------------------
840
841Python is now equipped with a garbage collector that can hunt down
842cyclical references between Python objects. It's no replacement for
843reference counting; in fact, it depends on the reference counts being
844correct, and decides that a set of objects belong to a cycle if all
845their reference counts can be accounted for from their references to
846each other. This devious scheme was first proposed by Eric Tiedemann,
847and brought to implementation by Neil Schemenauer.
848
849There's a module "gc" that lets you control some parameters of the
850garbage collection. There's also an option to the configure script
851that lets you enable or disable the garbage collection. In 2.0b1,
852it's on by default, so that we (hopefully) can collect decent user
853experience with this new feature. There are some questions about its
Fred Drake9f11cf82000-09-29 17:54:40 +0000854performance. If it proves to be too much of a problem, we'll turn it
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000855off by default in the final 2.0 release.
856
857
858Smaller Changes
859---------------
860
861A new function zip() was added. zip(seq1, seq2, ...) is equivalent to
862map(None, seq1, seq2, ...) when the sequences have the same length;
863i.e. zip([1,2,3], [10,20,30]) returns [(1,10), (2,20), (3,30)]. When
864the lists are not all the same length, the shortest list wins:
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000865zip([1,2,3], [10,20]) returns [(1,10), (2,20)]. See PEP 201.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000866
867sys.version_info is a tuple (major, minor, micro, level, serial).
868
869Dictionaries have an odd new method, setdefault(key, default).
870dict.setdefault(key, default) returns dict[key] if it exists; if not,
871it sets dict[key] to default and returns that value. Thus:
872
873 dict.setdefault(key, []).append(item)
874
875does the same work as this common idiom:
876
877 if not dict.has_key(key):
878 dict[key] = []
879 dict[key].append(item)
880
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000881There are two new variants of SyntaxError that are raised for
882indentation-related errors: IndentationError and TabError.
883
884Changed \x to consume exactly two hex digits; see PEP 223. Added \U
885escape that consumes exactly eight hex digits.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000886
887The limits on the size of expressions and file in Python source code
888have been raised from 2**16 to 2**32. Previous versions of Python
889were limited because the maximum argument size the Python VM accepted
890was 2**16. This limited the size of object constructor expressions,
891e.g. [1,2,3] or {'a':1, 'b':2}, and the size of source files. This
892limit was raised thanks to a patch by Charles Waldman that effectively
893fixes the problem. It is now much more likely that you will be
894limited by available memory than by an arbitrary limit in Python.
895
896The interpreter's maximum recursion depth can be modified by Python
897programs using sys.getrecursionlimit and sys.setrecursionlimit. This
898limit is the maximum number of recursive calls that can be made by
899Python code. The limit exists to prevent infinite recursion from
900overflowing the C stack and causing a core dump. The default value is
9011000. The maximum safe value for a particular platform can be found
902by running Misc/find_recursionlimit.py.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000903
904New Modules and Packages
905------------------------
906
907atexit - for registering functions to be called when Python exits.
908
909imputil - Greg Stein's alternative API for writing custom import
910hooks.
911
912pyexpat - an interface to the Expat XML parser, contributed by Paul
913Prescod.
914
915xml - a new package with XML support code organized (so far) in three
916subpackages: xml.dom, xml.sax, and xml.parsers. Describing these
917would fill a volume. There's a special feature whereby a
918user-installed package named _xmlplus overrides the standard
919xmlpackage; this is intended to give the XML SIG a hook to distribute
920backwards-compatible updates to the standard xml package.
921
922webbrowser - a platform-independent API to launch a web browser.
923
924
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000925Changed Modules
926---------------
927
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000928array -- new methods for array objects: count, extend, index, pop, and
929remove
930
931binascii -- new functions b2a_hex and a2b_hex that convert between
932binary data and its hex representation
933
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000934calendar -- Many new functions that support features including control
935over which day of the week is the first day, returning strings instead
936of printing them. Also new symbolic constants for days of week,
937e.g. MONDAY, ..., SUNDAY.
938
939cgi -- FieldStorage objects have a getvalue method that works like a
940dictionary's get method and returns the value attribute of the object.
941
942ConfigParser -- The parser object has new methods has_option,
943remove_section, remove_option, set, and write. They allow the module
944to be used for writing config files as well as reading them.
945
946ftplib -- ntransfercmd(), transfercmd(), and retrbinary() all now
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000947optionally support the RFC 959 REST command.
948
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000949gzip -- readline and readlines now accept optional size arguments
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000950
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000951httplib -- New interfaces and support for HTTP/1.1 by Greg Stein. See
952the module doc strings for details.
Guido van Rossum830ca2a2000-09-05 15:34:16 +0000953
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000954locale -- implement getdefaultlocale for Win32 and Macintosh
955
956marshal -- no longer dumps core when marshaling deeply nested or
957recursive data structures
958
959os -- new functions isatty, seteuid, setegid, setreuid, setregid
960
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000961os/popen2 -- popen2/popen3/popen4 support under Windows. popen2/popen3
962support under Unix.
963
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000964os/pty -- support for openpty and forkpty
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000965
966os.path -- fix semantics of os.path.commonprefix
967
968smtplib -- support for sending very long messages
969
970socket -- new function getfqdn()
971
972readline -- new functions to read, write and truncate history files.
973The readline section of the library reference manual contains an
974example.
975
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000976select -- add interface to poll system call
977
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000978shutil -- new copyfileobj function
979
980SimpleHTTPServer, CGIHTTPServer -- Fix problems with buffering in the
981HTTP server.
982
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000983Tkinter -- optimization of function flatten
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000984
985urllib -- scans environment variables for proxy configuration,
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +0000986e.g. http_proxy.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000987
988whichdb -- recognizes dumbdbm format
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000989
990
991Obsolete Modules
992----------------
993
994None. However note that 1.6 made a whole slew of modules obsolete:
995stdwin, soundex, cml, cmpcache, dircache, dump, find, grep, packmail,
996poly, zmod, strop, util, whatsound.
997
998
999Changed, New, Obsolete Tools
1000----------------------------
1001
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +00001002None.
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +00001003
1004
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001005C-level Changes
1006---------------
1007
1008Several cleanup jobs were carried out throughout the source code.
1009
1010All C code was converted to ANSI C; we got rid of all uses of the
1011Py_PROTO() macro, which makes the header files a lot more readable.
1012
1013Most of the portability hacks were moved to a new header file,
1014pyport.h; several other new header files were added and some old
1015header files were removed, in an attempt to create a more rational set
1016of header files. (Few of these ever need to be included explicitly;
1017they are all included by Python.h.)
1018
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001019Trent Mick ensured portability to 64-bit platforms, under both Linux
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001020and Win64, especially for the new Intel Itanium processor. Mick also
1021added large file support for Linux64 and Win64.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001022
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001023The C APIs to return an object's size have been update to consistently
1024use the form PyXXX_Size, e.g. PySequence_Size and PyDict_Size. In
1025previous versions, the abstract interfaces used PyXXX_Length and the
1026concrete interfaces used PyXXX_Size. The old names,
1027e.g. PyObject_Length, are still available for backwards compatibility
1028at the API level, but are deprecated.
1029
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001030The PyOS_CheckStack function has been implemented on Windows by
1031Fredrik Lundh. It prevents Python from failing with a stack overflow
1032on Windows.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001033
1034The GC changes resulted in creation of two new slots on object,
1035tp_traverse and tp_clear. The augmented assignment changes result in
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +00001036the creation of a new slot for each in-place operator.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001037
1038The GC API creates new requirements for container types implemented in
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +00001039C extension modules. See Include/objimpl.h for details.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001040
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001041PyErr_Format has been updated to automatically calculate the size of
1042the buffer needed to hold the formatted result string. This change
1043prevents crashes caused by programmer error.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001044
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001045New C API calls: PyObject_AsFileDescriptor, PyErr_WriteUnraisable.
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +00001046
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001047PyRun_AnyFileEx, PyRun_SimpleFileEx, PyRun_FileEx -- New functions
1048that are the same as their non-Ex counterparts except they take an
1049extra flag argument that tells them to close the file when done.
1050
1051XXX There were other API changes that should be fleshed out here.
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +00001052
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +00001053
1054Windows Changes
1055---------------
1056
1057New popen2/popen3/peopen4 in os module (see Changed Modules above).
1058
1059os.popen is much more usable on Windows 95 and 98. See Microsoft
1060Knowledge Base article Q150956. The Win9x workaround described there
1061is implemented by the new w9xpopen.exe helper in the root of your
1062Python installation. Note that Python uses this internally; it is not
1063a standalone program.
1064
1065Administrator privileges are no longer required to install Python
1066on Windows NT or Windows 2000. If you have administrator privileges,
1067Python's registry info will be written under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
1068Otherwise the installer backs off to writing Python's registry info
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +00001069under HKEY_CURRENT_USER. The latter is sufficient for all "normal"
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +00001070uses of Python, but will prevent some advanced uses from working
1071(for example, running a Python script as an NT service, or possibly
1072from CGI).
1073
1074[This was new in 1.6] The installer no longer runs a separate Tcl/Tk
1075installer; instead, it installs the needed Tcl/Tk files directly in the
1076Python directory. If you already have a Tcl/Tk installation, this
1077wastes some disk space (about 4 Megs) but avoids problems with
1078conflicting Tcl/Tk installations, and makes it much easier for Python
1079to ensure that Tcl/Tk can find all its files.
1080
1081[This was new in 1.6] The Windows installer now installs by default in
1082\Python20\ on the default volume, instead of \Program Files\Python-2.0\.
1083
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00001084
1085Updates to the changes between 1.5.2 and 1.6
1086--------------------------------------------
1087
1088The 1.6 NEWS file can't be changed after the release is done, so here
1089is some late-breaking news:
1090
1091New APIs in locale.py: normalize(), getdefaultlocale(), resetlocale(),
1092and changes to getlocale() and setlocale().
1093
1094The new module is now enabled per default.
1095
1096It is not true that the encodings codecs cannot be used for normal
1097strings: the string.encode() (which is also present on 8-bit strings
1098!) allows using them for 8-bit strings too, e.g. to convert files from
1099cp1252 (Windows) to latin-1 or vice-versa.
1100
1101Japanese codecs are available from Tamito KAJIYAMA:
1102http://pseudo.grad.sccs.chukyo-u.ac.jp/~kajiyama/python/
1103
1104
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +00001105======================================================================