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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.)
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Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00007What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00008=================================
9
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +000010*XXX Release date: DD-MMM-2002 XXX*
11
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +000012Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +000013--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +000014
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +000015- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old and the new
16 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +000017 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +000018
19- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
20 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
21 and deallocation.
22
23- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
24 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
25
26- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
27 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
28 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
29 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
30 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
31
32- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
33 now detected by the garbage collector.
34
35- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
36 [SF bug 519621]
37
38- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
39 identifier.
40
41- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
42 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
43 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
44 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
45 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
46 [SF bug 563060]
47
48- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
49 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
50 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
51 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
52 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
53
54- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
55 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
56 not called. [SF bug #537450]
57
58- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
59
60- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
61 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
62 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
63 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
64 state of the slots would be lost.)
65
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +000066Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +000067-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +000068
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +000069- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +000070 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
71 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +000072
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +000073- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
74 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
75
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +000076- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
77 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
78 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
79
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +000080- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
81 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
82
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +000083- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
84 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
85 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but not kept up
86 to date).
87
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +000088- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
89 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
90 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
91 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
92 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
93
94 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
95 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
96 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
97 pattern.
98
99 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
100 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
101 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
102 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
103
104 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
105 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
106 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
107 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
108 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
109 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
110
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +0000111 - The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
112 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
113 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables. In
114 addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
Neal Norwitz7165af22002-09-05 21:42:24 +0000115 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
116 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
117 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
118 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +0000119
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +0000120- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
121 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
122 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
123 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
124 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +0000125 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
126 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
127 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
128 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
129 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
130 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
131 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +0000132
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +0000133- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
134 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
135
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +0000136- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
137 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
138 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
139 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
140 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
141 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
142 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
143 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
144 to Zack Weinberg!
145
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +0000146- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
147 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
148 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
149 type. This has been fixed now.
150
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +0000151- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
152 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
153 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
154
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +0000155- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
156 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
157 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
158 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
159 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
160 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
161 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
162 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +0000163 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +0000164
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +0000165- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
166 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
167 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +0000168
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +0000169- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
170 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
171 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
172 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
173 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
174 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
175 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
176 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +0000177 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +0000178 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
179 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
180
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +0000181- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
182 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
183 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
184 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
185 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
186 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
187 this.)
188
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +0000189- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
190 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +0000191 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +0000192 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +0000193 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
194 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +0000195 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
196 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +0000197
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +0000198- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
199 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
200 currently running.
201
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +0000202- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
203 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
204 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
205 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
206
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +0000207- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
208 as directory names.
209
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +0000210- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
211 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
212
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +0000213- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
214 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
215
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +0000216- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +0000217 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
218 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +0000219
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +0000220- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
221 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
222 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
223 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
224 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
225
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +0000226- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
227 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
228 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
229 removed.
230
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +0000231- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
232 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
233 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
234
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +0000235- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
236 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
237 to __debug__.
238
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +0000239- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
240 string to the left with zeros. For example,
241 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
242
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +0000243- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
244 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
245 deprecated now.
246
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +0000247- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
248 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
249 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +0000250
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +0000251- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
252 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
253
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +0000254- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
255 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
256 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +0000257 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +0000258 is backward compatible.
259
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +0000260- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
261 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
262 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
263 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
264 could access a pointer to freed memory.
265
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +0000266- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
267 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
268 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
269 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
270 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
271 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +0000272
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +0000273- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
274 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
275
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +0000276- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
277 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
278
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +0000279- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
280 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
281 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
282 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
283 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
284
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +0000285- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
286 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
287 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
288
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +0000289- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +0000290 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
291
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000292Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000293-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000294
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +0000295- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
296
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +0000297- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
298 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
299
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +0000300- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
301 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
302 supported.
303
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +0000304- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
305
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +0000306- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
307 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +0000308
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +0000309- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
310 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
311
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +0000312- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
313
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +0000314- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
315 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
316
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +0000317- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
318 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
319 functions but callable type objects.
320
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +0000321- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +0000322 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +0000323 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +0000324
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +0000325- posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and posix.getpgid have been
326 added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +0000327
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +0000328- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
329 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +0000330
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +0000331- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
332 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
333 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
334 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
335
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +0000336- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
337 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +0000338
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +0000339- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
340 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
341 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
342 and __imul__.
343
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +0000344- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +0000345 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
346 is called.
347
Michael W. Hudson34f20ea2002-05-27 15:08:24 +0000348- signal.sigpending, signal.sigprocmask and signal.sigsuspend have
349 been added where available.
350
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +0000351- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
352 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
353 interpreter was compiled.
354
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +0000355- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
356 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
357 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +0000358 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +0000359 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
360 1, not 2.
361
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000362Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000363-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000364
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +0000365- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
366 modules are iterators now.
367
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +0000368- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
369 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
370 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
371 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
372 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
373 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +0000374
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +0000375- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
376 with their entity value.
377
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +0000378- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
379
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +0000380- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
381 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +0000382
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +0000383- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
384 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +0000385 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +0000386
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +0000387- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
388 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
389 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
390 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
391 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
392 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
393 main():
394
395 import locale
396 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
397
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +0000398- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
399 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
400
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +0000401- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
402 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
403 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
404 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
405 to the new standard.
406
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +0000407- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
408 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
409 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
410 an extension to the database.
411
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +0000412- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
413 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
414 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
415 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
416 is the base class of the two. (This is not documented yet, but
417 help(sets) gives a wealth of information.)
418
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +0000419- Added operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to a**b.
420
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +0000421- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
422 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
423 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
424 bounded integers.
425
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +0000426- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
427 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
428 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
429
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +0000430- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
431
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +0000432- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
433 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
434 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
435 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
436
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +0000437- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
438 argument.
439
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +0000440- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
441 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
442 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
443 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
444 [SF patch 560794].
445
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +0000446- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
447 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
448 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +0000449 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
450 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
451 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +0000452
453- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
454 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +0000455
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +0000456- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
457 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
458 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
459 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +0000460
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +0000461- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
462 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
463 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
464 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
465 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
466
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +0000467- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +0000468
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +0000469- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
470 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
471 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
472 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
473 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
474 identical to None.
475
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +0000476- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
477 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
478 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
479 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
480 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
481 results now.
482
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +0000483- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
484 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
485
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +0000486- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
487 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
488 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
489 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
490 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
491 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
492 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
493 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
494
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +0000495- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
496
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +0000497- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
498 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
499
500- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
501 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
502 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
503 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
504 and other systems.
505
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +0000506- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
507 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
508 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
509 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 +0000510 work well with these.
511
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +0000512- compileall now supports quiet operation.
513
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +0000514- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +0000515 connections.
516
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +0000517- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
518 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
519 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
520
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +0000521- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
522 sets
523
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +0000524- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
525 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
526 name.
527
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +0000528- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
529 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
530 passed in.
531
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +0000532- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +0000533 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
534 on a per-message basis.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +0000535
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +0000536- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
537
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +0000538- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
539
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +0000540- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
541 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
542 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
543
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +0000544- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
545 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
546 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
547 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
548 honored.
549
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +0000550- distutils' build_ext command now links c++ extensions with the c++
551 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
552 running under *nix.
553
554- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
555 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
556 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
557
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +0000558- New pdb command `pp' which is like `p' except that it pretty-prints
559 the value of its expression argument.
560
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +0000561- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
562 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
563 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
564
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000565Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000566-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000567
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +0000568- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
569 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
570 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
571 still used and useful.)
572
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +0000573- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
574 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
575 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
576 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +0000577
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +0000578- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
579 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
580 the generated binary.
581
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000582Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000583-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000584
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +0000585- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
586 except in the hands of experts.
587
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +0000588- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +0000589 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
590 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
591 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +0000592
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +0000593- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
594 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
595 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
596 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
597 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
598 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
599 builds.
600
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +0000601- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
602 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
603 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
604 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
605 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
606 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
607 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
608 new type.
609
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +0000610- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +0000611
612 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
613 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
614 positive infinities.
615
616 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
617 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
618 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
619 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
620 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
621 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
622 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
623
624 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
625
626 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
627
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +0000628- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
629 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
630 size of the executable.
631
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +0000632- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
633 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
634 configure script. On other platforms, remove
635 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +0000636
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +0000637- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
638
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +0000639- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
640 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
641 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +0000642
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +0000643- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
644 well as Unix.
645
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +0000646- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
647 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
648 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
649 modules in the README file for details.
650
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000651C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000652-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000653
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +0000654- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
655 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
656 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
657 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
658 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
659 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
660 strings are now usually mortal; theres a new API,
661 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
662 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
663 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
664 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
665 aligned.)
666
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +0000667- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
668 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
669 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
670
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +0000671- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
672 level.
673
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +0000674- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
675 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
676 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
677 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
678 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
679
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +0000680- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
681 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
682 code.
683
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +0000684- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
685 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
686 adjusting for negative indices.
687
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +0000688- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
689 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
690 object.
691
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +0000692- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
693 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
694 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
695
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +0000696- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
697 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +0000698
699- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
700
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +0000701- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
702 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
703 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
704 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
705
706- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
707
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +0000708- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +0000709
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +0000710- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +0000711 without going through the buffer API.
712
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000713- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +0000714
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +0000715- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
716 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
717 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
718 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
719
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000720- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
721 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
722
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +0000723- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +0000724 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
725
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000726New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000727-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000728
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +0000729- AtheOS is now supported.
730
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +0000731- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
732
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +0000733- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
734
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000735Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000736-----
737
738Yet to be written.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000739
740Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000741-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000742
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +0000743- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
744 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
745 use files" uninstall option).
746
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +0000747- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
748
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +0000749- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
750 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
751
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +0000752- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
753 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
754 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
755
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +0000756- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
757 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
758 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
759 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
760 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +0000761 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
762 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
763 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +0000764
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +0000765- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +0000766 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +0000767 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
768 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
769 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
770 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
771 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
772 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
773 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
774 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
775 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
776 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
777 work around.
778
779- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
780 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
781 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
782 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
783 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
784 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
785 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
786 specified with O_CREAT too).
787
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000788Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000789----
790
791Yet to be written.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000792
793
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000794What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000795===============================
796
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000797*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
798
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000799Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000800--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000801
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +0000802- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
803 with a custom metaclass.
804
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000805Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000806-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000807
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +0000808- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
809 are proxies.
810
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000811Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000812-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000813
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +0000814- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
815 very short strings.
816
817- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
818 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
819 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
820 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
821 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
822
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000823Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000824-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000825
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +0000826- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
827 close or delete time).
828
829- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
830 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
831
832- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
833
834- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +0000835 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +0000836
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000837Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000838-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000839
840Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000841-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000842
843C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000844-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000845
846New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000847-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000848
849Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000850-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000851
852Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000853-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000854
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +0000855- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
856
857- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
858 instances are deleted at process exit time.
859
860- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
861 deleted at process exit time.
862
863- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
864 in backslash.
865
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000866Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000867----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000868
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +0000869- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
870 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
871 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
872
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000873
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +0000874What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000875===========================
876
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000877*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
878
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000879Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000880--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000881
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +0000882- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
883 been extensively updated. See
884
885 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
886
887 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
888
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +0000889- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
890 deleted!
891
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +0000892- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
893 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
894 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
895 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
896 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
897
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +0000898- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
899
900 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
901 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
902
903 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
904 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
905 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
906 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
907 supported anyway.
908
909 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
910 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
911
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +0000912- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
913 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
914 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
915 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
916 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +0000917
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +0000918- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
919 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
920 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
921
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000922Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000923-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000924
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +0000925- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
926 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
927 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
928 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
929 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
930 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +0000931 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
932 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
933 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
934 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +0000935
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +0000936- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
937 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
938 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
939
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000940Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000941-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000942
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +0000943- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
944
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000945Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000946-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000947
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +0000948- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
949 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
950 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
951 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
952 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
953 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
954
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +0000955- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
956
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +0000957- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
958
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +0000959- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
960
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +0000961- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
962 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
963 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
964
965- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
966
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000967Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000968-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000969
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +0000970- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
971 off a search on Google.
972
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000973Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000974-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000975
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +0000976- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
977 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
978 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
979 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
980 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
981 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
982 other platforms should do likewise.
983
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +0000984- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
985 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
986 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
987
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000988C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000989-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000990
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +0000991- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
992 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
993 producing key-value pairs.
994
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +0000995- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +0000996 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +0000997 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
998 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
999 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
1000 previously went unchallenged.
1001
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00001002New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001003-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00001004
1005Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001006-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00001007
1008Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001009-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00001010
1011Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001012----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00001013
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00001014- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
1015 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00001016
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00001017- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
1018 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
1019 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
1020 home.
1021
1022
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001023What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001024===========================
1025
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001026*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
1027
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001028Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001029--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001030
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00001031- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
1032 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00001033
1034 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00001035 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00001036
1037 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
1038 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00001039 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00001040 This needs to be documented.
1041
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00001042- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
1043 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
1044
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00001045- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
1046 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
1047 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
1048
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00001049- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
1050 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
1051
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00001052- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
1053 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
1054 class forbids it).
1055
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00001056- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
1057 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
1058 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
1059
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00001060- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
1061
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001062Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001063-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001064
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00001065- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
1066 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00001067 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00001068
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00001069- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
1070 (like 1 + '').
1071
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001072Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001073-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001074
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00001075- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
1076 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
1077 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
1078 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00001079 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00001080 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
1081
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00001082- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
1083 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
1084 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
1085 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
1086
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00001087- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
1088 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00001089 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
1090 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
1091 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00001092
1093- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
1094 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00001095
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00001096- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
1097 bytes on its input.
1098
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001099Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001100-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001101
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00001102- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00001103 convenience function.
1104
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00001105- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
1106 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
1107 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00001108 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
1109 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
1110 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
1111 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
1112 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
1113 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00001114
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00001115- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
1116 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
1117 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
1118 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
1119
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00001120- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
1121 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
1122 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
1123
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00001124- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
1125 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
1126 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
1127 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
1128
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00001129- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
1130 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001131 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00001132 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
1133 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
1134 new -l and -e options.
1135
1136- statcache is now deprecated.
1137
1138- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
1139 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001140 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00001141 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
1142 time properly taken into account.
1143
1144- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
1145 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
1146 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
1147 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
1148
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001149Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001150-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001151
1152Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001153-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001154
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00001155- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
1156 is built with libdb3 if available.
1157
1158- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
1159
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001160C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001161-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001162
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00001163- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
1164 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
1165 PySequence_Size().
1166
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00001167- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
1168
1169- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
1170 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
1171 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
1172
1173- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
1174 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
1175
1176- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
1177 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
1178
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001179New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001180-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001181
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00001182- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
1183 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
1184
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00001185- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
1186 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
1187
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00001188- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
1189
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001190Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001191-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001192
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00001193- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
1194 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
1195
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001196Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001197-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001198
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00001199Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001200----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00001201
1202- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
1203 removed completely in the next release.
1204
1205- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
1206 OSX.
1207
1208- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
1209 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
1210
1211- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
1212
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00001213
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00001214What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00001215===========================
1216
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001217*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
1218
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00001219Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001220--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00001221
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00001222- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00001223 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00001224 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00001225 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
1226 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00001227 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
1228 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00001229 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
1230 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00001231
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00001232- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
1233 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
1234
1235- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
1236 class methods, static methods, and properties.
1237
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00001238Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001239-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00001240
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00001241- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
1242 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
1243 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
1244 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
1245 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
1246 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
1247 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
1248 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
1249
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00001250- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
1251 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
1252 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
1253 example).
1254
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00001255- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00001256 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00001257 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00001258 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00001259
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00001260- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
1261 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
1262 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00001263 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00001264
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00001265- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
1266 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
1267 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
1268 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
1269 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
1270 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
1271
1272 isinstance(x, (A, B))
1273
1274 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
1275
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00001276Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001277-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00001278
1279- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
1280
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00001281- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
1282
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00001283- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
1284 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00001285
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00001286- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
1287 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
1288 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
1289 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
1290 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
1291 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00001292 attributes.
1293
1294- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
1295 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
1296 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00001297
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00001298- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
1299 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
1300 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00001301
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00001302- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
1303 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
1304 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00001305 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
1306 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
1307
1308- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
1309 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00001310
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00001311Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001312-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00001313
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00001314- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
1315 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
1316
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00001317- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
1318 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
1319 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
1320 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
1321
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00001322- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
1323 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
1324 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
1325 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
1326
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00001327 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
1328 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
1329 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
1330 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
1331 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
1332 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
1333 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
1334 without losing information).
1335
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00001336- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00001337 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
1338 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
1339 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
1340 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
1341 module).
1342
1343 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overriden by subclasses.
1344 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
1345 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
1346 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
1347 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00001348
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00001349- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00001350 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
1351 encoding.
1352
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00001353- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
1354 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
1355
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001356- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00001357 to allow saving the message body to a file.
1358
1359- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
1360 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
1361 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
1362 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
1363
1364- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
1365
1366- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
1367 ON, and OFF.
1368
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00001369- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
1370 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
1371
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00001372Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001373-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00001374
1375- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
1376 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
1377 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00001378
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00001379- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
1380 been added: -X and -E.
1381
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00001382Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001383-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00001384
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00001385- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
1386 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
1387
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00001388C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001389-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00001390
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00001391- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
1392 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
1393 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
1394 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
1395 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
1396
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00001397- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
1398 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
1399 as long) arguments.
1400
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00001401- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
1402 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
1403 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
1404 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
1405 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
1406 report any bugs or strange behavior).
1407
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00001408- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
1409 input.
1410
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00001411New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001412-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00001413
1414Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001415-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00001416
1417Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001418-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00001419
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00001420- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
1421 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
1422 is created for .py and .pyw files.
1423
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00001424- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
1425 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
1426 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00001427 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00001428
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001429 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
1430 # (SIGINT) behavior.
1431 import signal
1432 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00001433
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001434 try:
1435 while 1:
1436 pass
1437 except KeyboardInterrupt:
1438 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
1439 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
1440 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
1441 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00001442
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00001443
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00001444What's New in Python 2.2a4?
1445===========================
1446
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001447*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
1448
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00001449Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001450--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00001451
1452- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
1453 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
1454 documentation for all operations on list objects.
1455
1456- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
1457 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
1458 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
1459 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
1460 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
1461 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
1462 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00001463
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00001464- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00001465 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00001466 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
1467 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
1468 associate a docstring with a property.
1469
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00001470- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
1471 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
1472 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
1473 other built-in object types.
1474
1475- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
1476 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
1477 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
1478 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
1479 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
1480
1481- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
1482 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
1483
1484- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
1485 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00001486 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00001487 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
1488 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
1489 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
1490 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
1491 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
1492
1493- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
1494 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
1495 class.
1496
1497- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
1498 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
1499 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
1500 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
1501
1502- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
1503 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
1504 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
1505 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
1506
1507- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
1508 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
1509
1510- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
1511 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
1512 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
1513 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
1514 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00001515 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00001516 with the same value as s.
1517
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00001518- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
1519
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00001520Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001521----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00001522
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00001523- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
1524
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00001525- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
1526 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
1527 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
1528 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
1529 objects.
1530
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00001531- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
1532 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00001533 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
1534 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
1535
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00001536- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
1537 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
1538 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
1539
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00001540Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001541-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00001542
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00001543- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
1544 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
1545 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
1546 by the instances.
1547
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00001548- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
1549 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
1550 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
1551
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00001552- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
1553 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
1554 before the entire comparison is complete.
1555
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00001556- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
1557 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
1558 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
1559
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00001560- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
1561 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
1562 getwriter().
1563
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00001564- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
1565 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
1566
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00001567- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00001568 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
1569 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
1570
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00001571- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
1572 iterable object.
1573
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00001574- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
1575 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00001576
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00001577- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
1578 authentication.
1579
1580- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
1581 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00001582
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00001583- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00001584 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
1585 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
1586 a sample driver.)
1587
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00001588Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001589-----
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00001590
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00001591Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001592-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00001593
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00001594- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
1595 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
1596 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
1597 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
1598 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
1599 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
1600 kernel has large file support.
1601
1602- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
1603 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
1604 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
1605 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
1606 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
1607
1608- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
1609 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
1610 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
1611
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00001612C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001613-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00001614
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00001615- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
1616 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
1617
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00001618New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001619-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00001620
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00001621- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
1622 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
1623
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00001624Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001625-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00001626
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00001627- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
1628 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
1629 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
1630 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
1631 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
1632
1633- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
1634 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
1635 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
1636 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
1637
1638- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
1639 especially in regard to reporting errors.
1640
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00001641Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001642-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00001643
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00001644- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00001645 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
1646 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00001647
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00001648
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00001649What's New in Python 2.2a3?
1650===========================
1651
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001652*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
1653
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00001654Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001655----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00001656
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00001657- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
1658 big to represent as a C double.
1659
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00001660- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
1661 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
1662 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
1663 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
1664 restriction).
1665
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00001666- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
1667 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
1668 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
1669 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
1670 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
1671
1672 >>> dir([])
1673 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
1674 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
1675 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
1676 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
1677 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
1678 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
1679 'reverse', 'sort']
1680
1681 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
1682
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00001683- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00001684 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
1685 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
1686 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
1687 OverflowError exception.
1688
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00001689- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00001690 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00001691 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
1692 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
1693 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
1694 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
1695 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00001696 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001697 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
1698 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
1699
1700 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
1701 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
1702 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
1703 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00001704
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00001705- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00001706 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
1707 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
1708 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
1709 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
1710 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
1711 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
1712 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
1713 once it is created.
1714
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00001715- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
1716 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
1717 (key, value) pairs.
1718
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00001719- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00001720 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
1721 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
1722
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00001723- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
1724 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
1725 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
1726 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
1727 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00001728
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00001729- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00001730 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
1731 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
1732
1733 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
1734
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00001735- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00001736 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
1737
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00001738Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001739-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00001740
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00001741- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00001742 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
1743 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00001744
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00001745- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
1746 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
1747 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
1748 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
1749 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
1750 in this area anymore).
1751
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00001752- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
1753 threading.Timer.
1754
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00001755- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
1756 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
1757
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00001758- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00001759 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
1760
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00001761- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00001762 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
1763 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
1764 converted to Python longs.
1765
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00001766- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00001767 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
1768
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00001769- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
1770 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
1771 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
1772
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00001773Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001774-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00001775
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00001776- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
1777 division operators as per PEP 238.
1778
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00001779Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001780-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00001781
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00001782- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
1783 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
1784 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
1785 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
1786
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00001787C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001788-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00001789
1790- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00001791
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00001792- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
1793 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00001794 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00001795
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001796 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
1797 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
1798 /* The conversion failed. */
1799 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00001800
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00001801- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00001802 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
1803 module:
1804
1805 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00001806
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00001807 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
1808 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00001809
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00001810 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
1811 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00001812
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00001813 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
1814
1815 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
1816
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00001817- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00001818 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
1819 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
1820 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00001821
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00001822New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001823-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00001824
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00001825- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
1826 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
1827 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
1828 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
1829 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00001830
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00001831Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001832-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00001833
1834Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001835-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00001836
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00001837- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
1838 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
1839 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
1840 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00001841 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
1842 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
1843 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
1844 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
1845 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00001846
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00001847- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00001848 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
1849
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00001850
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00001851What's New in Python 2.2a2?
1852===========================
1853
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001854*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
1855
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00001856Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001857-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00001858
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00001859- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
1860 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
1861
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00001862- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
1863 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
1864 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00001865
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00001866- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
1867 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
1868 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
1869 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00001870
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00001871- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
1872
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001873- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00001874
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00001875Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001876-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00001877
1878- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00001879 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00001880 the module docstring for details.
1881
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00001882Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001883-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00001884
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00001885- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00001886 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
1887 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
1888 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00001889
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00001890- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
1891 Nick Mathewson.
1892
1893Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001894----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00001895
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00001896- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
1897 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
1898 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
1899 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
1900 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
1901 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
1902 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
1903 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
1904
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00001905- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
1906 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
1907 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
1908 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
1909
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00001910- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
1911 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
1912 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
1913 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
1914 come a long way).
1915
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00001916- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
1917 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
1918 write filters for these warnings).
1919
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00001920- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
1921 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
1922 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
1923 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
1924 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
1925
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00001926- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
1927 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
1928 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
1929 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
1930 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
1931 older distribution.
1932
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00001933Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001934-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00001935
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00001936- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
1937 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00001938 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00001939
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00001940- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
1941 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
1942 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
1943
1944- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
1945
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00001946- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
1947
1948- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
1949
1950- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
1951
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001952- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00001953
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00001954- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
1955
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00001956New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001957-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00001958
1959C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001960-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00001961
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00001962- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
1963 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
1964 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
1965 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
1966 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
1967 against buffer overruns.
1968
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00001969- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00001970 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
1971 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00001972 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
1973 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
1974 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
1975
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00001976- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
1977 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
1978 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
1979 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
1980 deprecated.
1981
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00001982Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001983-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00001984
1985- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
1986 relevant is found.
1987
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00001988
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00001989What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00001990===========================
1991
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001992*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
1993
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00001994Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001995----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00001996
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00001997- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
1998 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
1999 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
2000 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
2001 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
2002 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
2003 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
2004 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002005 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00002006 repaired.
2007
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00002008- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00002009 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00002010 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
2011 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
2012 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
2013 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
2014 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
2015 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
2016 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
2017 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
2018
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00002019- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
2020 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
2021 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
2022 leading BMO character).
2023
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00002024- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
2025 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
2026 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
2027
2028 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
2029 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
2030 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00002031
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00002032 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
2033 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
2034 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
2035 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
2036 for various simple to use conversions.
2037
2038 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
2039 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
2040
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002041 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
2042 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
2043 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
2044 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
2045 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
2046 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
2047 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
2048 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
2049 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
2050 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
2051 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
2052 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
2053 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
2054 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
2055 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00002056
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00002057- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
2058 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
2059 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00002060 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00002061 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00002062
2063 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00002064 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
2065 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
2066 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
2067 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
2068 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00002069 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
2070 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00002071
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00002072 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
2073 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
2074 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00002075 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00002076
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00002077- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
2078 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
2079 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
2080 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
2081 floating arithmetic,
2082
2083 x = 9007199254740992.0
2084 print long(x)
2085
2086 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
2087 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
2088 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
2089 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
2090 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
2091 functions are of good quality).
2092
2093 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
2094 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
2095 algorithms to break.
2096
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00002097- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
2098 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
2099 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
2100 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
2101 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
2102 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
2103 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
2104 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
2105 order.
2106
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00002107- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
2108 operation along the most common code paths.
2109
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00002110- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
2111 the same as dict.has_key(x).
2112
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00002113- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
2114 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
2115 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
2116 {}.update(UserDict())
2117
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00002118- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
2119 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
2120 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
2121 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
2122 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
2123 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
2124 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
2125 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
2126
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00002127- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00002128 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002129
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00002130 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00002131 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
2132 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00002133 join() method of strings
2134 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00002135 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
2136 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002137 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00002138 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00002139
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00002140- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
2141 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
2142
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00002143- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
2144 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
2145
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00002146- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
2147 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
2148 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
2149 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
2150
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00002151- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
2152 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00002153 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00002154 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
2155 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00002156
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00002157- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
2158
2159
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00002160Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002161-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00002162
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00002163- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002164 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00002165 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
2166 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
2167
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00002168- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
2169 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
2170
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00002171- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
2172 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
2173 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
2174 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
2175
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00002176- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
2177 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
2178 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
2179
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00002180- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
2181
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00002182- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
2183
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00002184- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
2185 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
2186 that are still imported into string.py).
2187
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00002188- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
2189
2190- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
2191 Now it does.
2192
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00002193- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
2194
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00002195- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
2196 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
2197 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
2198 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
2199 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00002200 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
2201 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00002202
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00002203- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
2204 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
2205 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
2206 'help(object)'.
2207
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00002208Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002209-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00002210
2211- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002212 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00002213 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
2214 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
2215
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002216- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00002217 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
2218 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00002219
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00002220C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002221-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00002222
2223- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
2224 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002225
2226----
2227
2228**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**