blob: 78cf145cf0fe8d8a578a257c57a3f0439589692b [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Neal Norwitzfc76d632006-01-10 06:03:13 +000015- Patch #1400181, fix unicode string formatting to not use the locale.
16 This is how string objects work. u'%f' could use , instead of .
17 for the decimal point. Now both strings and unicode always use periods.
18
Neal Norwitz671b9e32006-01-09 07:07:12 +000019- Bug #1244610, #1392915, fix build problem on OpenBSD 3.7 and 3.8.
20 configure would break checking curses.h.
21
Georg Brandlcd4d1e82005-12-27 17:37:07 +000022- Bug #959576: The pwd module is now builtin. This allows Python to be
23 built on UNIX platforms without $HOME set.
24
Neal Norwitzc10978f2005-12-19 06:07:16 +000025- Bug #1072182, fix some potential problems if characters are signed.
26
Neal Norwitz5d0ad502005-12-19 04:27:42 +000027- Bug #889500, fix line number on SyntaxWarning for global declarations.
28
Neal Norwitzdb83eb32005-12-18 05:29:30 +000029- Bug #1378022, UTF-8 files with a leading BOM crashed the interpreter.
30
Neal Norwitze7214a12005-12-18 05:03:17 +000031- Support for converting hex strings to floats no longer works.
32 This was not portable. float('0x3') now raises a ValueError.
33
Barry Warsaw2a38a862005-12-18 01:27:35 +000034- Patch #1382163: Expose Subversion revision number to Python. New C API
35 function Py_GetBuildNumber(). New attribute sys.build_number. Build number
36 is now displayed in interactive prompt banner.
37
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000038- Implementation of PEP 341 - Unification of try/except and try/finally.
39 "except" clauses can now be written together with a "finally" clause in
Neal Norwitz11ca77e2005-12-17 22:24:12 +000040 one try statement instead of two nested ones. Patch #1355913.
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000041
Hye-Shik Chang835b2432005-12-17 04:38:31 +000042- Bug #1379994: Builtin unicode_escape and raw_unicode_escape codec
43 now encodes backslash correctly.
44
Martin v. Löwisb45b3152005-11-28 17:34:23 +000045- Patch #1350409: Work around signal handling bug in Visual Studio 2005.
46
Georg Brandlf06e30a2005-11-24 15:37:42 +000047- Bug #1281408: Py_BuildValue now works correct even with unsigned longs
48 and long longs.
49
Neal Norwitz67715f02005-11-09 06:59:35 +000050- SF Bug #1350188, "setdlopenflags" leads to crash upon "import"
51 It was possible dlerror() returns a NULL pointer, use a default error
52 message in this case.
53
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000054- Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the
55 new Unicode translate string feature in the builtin charmap
56 codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available
57 at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS
58 encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo)
59
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +000060- Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000061
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +000062- Speed up some Unicode operations.
63
64- A new AST parser implementation was completed.
65
Neal Norwitzb6570f52005-10-21 06:26:10 +000066- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +000067 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
68
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +000069- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
70
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +000071- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
72 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
73
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +000074- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
75
76- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
77
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +000078- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
79 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
80 was empty.
81
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +000082- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
83 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
84
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000085- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +000086 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000087
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +000088- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
89 codes.
90
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +000091- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
92 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
93 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
94
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +000095- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
96 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
97
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +000098- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +000099 (fixes bug #1119418).
100
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +0000101- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
102
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +0000103- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
104 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
105
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +0000106- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
107 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
108 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
109
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +0000110- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
111
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +0000112- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
113 reference counts in some error exit cases.
114
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000115- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
116 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
117 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
118 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
119 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
120 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
121 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
122 realloc.
123
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +0000124- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
125 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
126
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +0000127- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
128 like their int counterparts.
129
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +0000130- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
131 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
132 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
133 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
134 for a longer write-up of the problem).
135
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +0000136- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
137 serializing floats.
138
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +0000139- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
140 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
141 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
142
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +0000143- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
144 278.
145
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000146- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
147 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
148 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
149 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000150 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000151 PyNumber_*().
152 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
153
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000154- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
155 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
156 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
157 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
158
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000159- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
160 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
161 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
162 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
163 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
164
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000165- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
166 disabled caused a crash.
167
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000168- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
169 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
170
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000171- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000172 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
173
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000174- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
175
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000176- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000177 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
178 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
179 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000180
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000181- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
182
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000183- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
184 returning None.
185
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000186- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000187 ('\') with a specific error message.
188
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000189- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
190
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000191- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
192 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
193
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000194- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000195 an ferror() call.
196
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000197- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
198 list.sort().
199
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000200- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
201 (2+3) --> (5).
202
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000203- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
204
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000205- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
206 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000207
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000208- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
209 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
210 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
211
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000212- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
213 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
214 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
215
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000216Extension Modules
217-----------------
218
Neal Norwitz5e3d8622006-01-09 06:24:35 +0000219- Bug #1400115, Fix segfault when calling curses.panel.userptr()
220 without prior setting of the userptr.
221
Neal Norwitz40c6b472006-01-05 05:43:35 +0000222- Fix 64-bit problems in bsddb.
223
Neal Norwitz8856fb72005-12-18 03:34:22 +0000224- Patch #1365916: fix some unsafe 64-bit mmap methods.
225
Hye-Shik Changc5c57e62005-12-12 11:48:32 +0000226- Bug #1290333: Added a workaround for cjkcodecs' _codecs_cn build
227 problem on AIX.
228
Georg Brandla13c2442005-11-22 19:30:31 +0000229- Bug #869197: os.setgroups rejects long integer arguments
230
Neal Norwitz0f46bbf2005-11-03 05:00:25 +0000231- Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint
232
Neal Norwitz7b631792005-11-02 05:26:07 +0000233- Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors
234
Neal Norwitzf3396542005-10-28 05:52:22 +0000235- Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract
236 REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs.
237
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000238- Get bsddb module to build with BSD DB version 3.2
239
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000240- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
241 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
242
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000243- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
244
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000245- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
246 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
247
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000248- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
249 returns in cStringIO.c.
250
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000251- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
252 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
253
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000254- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
255
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000256- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
257
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000258- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
259 the file system encoding.
260
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000261- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
262 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000263
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000264- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
265
266- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000267 line without newlines.
268
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000269- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
270 on Windows.
271
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000272- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000273 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
274
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000275- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
276 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
277 for large or negative values.
278
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000279- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000280 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000281
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000282- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
283
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000284- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
285 if available on the platform.
286
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000287- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
288 available on the platform.
289
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000290- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
291 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
292
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000293- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
294
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000295- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
296 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
297 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
298
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000299- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
300
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000301- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
302 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
303
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000304- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000305 file size.
306
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000307- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
308
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000309- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
310 {remove_history,replace_history}
311
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000312- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
313 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000314
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000315- stat_float_times is now True.
316
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000317- array.array objects are now picklable.
318
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000319- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
320 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
321
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000322- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
323 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
324 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
325
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000326- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
327 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000328
329Library
330-------
331
Martin v. Löwis412ed3b2006-01-08 10:45:39 +0000332- Patch #1177307: Added a new codec utf_8_sig for UTF-8 with a BOM signature.
333
Neal Norwitzab86f8e2005-12-23 21:44:36 +0000334- Patch #1157027: cookielib mishandles RFC 2109 cookies in Netscape mode
335
Neal Norwitz338e7862005-12-23 21:27:46 +0000336- Patch #1117398: cookielib.LWPCookieJar and .MozillaCookieJar now raise
337 LoadError as documented, instead of IOError. For compatibility,
338 LoadError subclasses IOError.
339
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000340- Added the hashlib module. It provides secure hash functions for MD5 and
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000341 SHA1, 224, 256, 384, and 512. Note that recent developments make the
342 historic MD5 and SHA1 unsuitable for cryptographic-strength applications.
343 In <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-December/058850.html>
344 Ronald L. Rivest offered this advice for Python:
345
346 "The consensus of researchers in this area (at least as
347 expressed at the NIST Hash Function Workshop 10/31/05),
348 is that SHA-256 is a good choice for the time being, but
349 that research should continue, and other alternatives may
350 arise from this research. The larger SHA's also seem OK."
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000351
Fredrik Lundh7e0aef02005-12-12 18:54:55 +0000352- Added a subset of Fredrik Lundh's ElementTree package. Available
353 modules are xml.etree.ElementTree, xml.etree.ElementPath, and
354 xml.etree.ElementInclude, from ElementTree 1.2.6.
355
Martin v. Löwis307021f2005-11-27 16:59:04 +0000356- Patch #1162825: Support non-ASCII characters in IDLE window titles.
357
Georg Brandl1f663572005-11-26 16:50:44 +0000358- Bug #1365984: urllib now opens "data:" URLs again.
359
Brett Cannonad07ff22005-11-23 02:15:50 +0000360- Patch #1314396: prevent deadlock for threading.Thread.join() when an exception
361 is raised within the method itself on a previous call (e.g., passing in an
362 illegal argument)
363
Brett Cannon5d0bf942005-11-02 23:04:26 +0000364- Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there
365 is an error in the format string.
366
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000367- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
368
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000369- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000370 "parent" argument.
371
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000372- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
373 for padding.
374
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000375- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
376 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
377
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000378- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
379 to get the correct encoding.
380
381- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
382 languages.
383
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000384- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
385
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000386- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
387
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000388- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
389
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000390- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
391 functionality.
392
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000393- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
394
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000395- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
396 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
397
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000398- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
399 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
400 match the Content-Length header.
401
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000402- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
403
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000404- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
405 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000406 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000407
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000408- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
409
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000410- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
411
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000412- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
413 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
414
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000415- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
416 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
417 Tkdnd.
418
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000419- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
420 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
421
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000422- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
423 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
424
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000425- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000426 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
427
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000428- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
429 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
430
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000431- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
432 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
433
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000434- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000435 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000436
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000437- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
438
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000439- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
440 error messages.
441
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000442- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
443
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000444- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
445 Bug #1224621.
446
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000447- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
448 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
449 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
450 terminates by raising StopIteration.
451
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000452- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
453
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000454- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
455 component of the path.
456
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000457- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
458 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
459 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
460 class at all.
461
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000462- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
463 files to PyPI.
464
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000465- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
466 them to PyPI.
467
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000468- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
469 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
470 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
471 work as expected.
472
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000473- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
474 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
475
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000476- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000477 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
478
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000479- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
480
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000481- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
482 to build.
483
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000484- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
485 symbolic links on Windows.
486
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000487- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000488 profile.py if available.
489
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000490- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
491
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000492- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
493 in LWPCookieJar.
494
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000495- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
496
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000497- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
498
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000499- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
500
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000501- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
502
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000503- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
504
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000505- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
506
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000507- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
508
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000509- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
510
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000511- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
512 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
513 be exploited in various ways.
514
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000515- Bug #1222790: in SimpleXMLRPCServer, set the reuse-address and close-on-exec
Andrew M. Kuchling3a976052005-12-04 15:07:41 +0000516 flags on the HTTP listening socket.
517
Andrew M. Kuchlinge63fde72005-12-04 15:36:57 +0000518- Bug #792570: SimpleXMLRPCServer had problems if the request grew too large.
519 Fixed by reading the HTTP body in chunks instead of one big socket.read().
520
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000521- Patches #893642, #1039083: add allow_none, encoding arguments to constructors of
Andrew M. Kuchling10a16de2005-12-04 16:34:40 +0000522 SimpleXMLRPCServer and CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler.
523
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000524- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
525
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000526- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
527
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000528- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
529
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000530- Enhancements to the csv module:
531
532 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000533 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000534 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000535 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
536 reporting.
537 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
538 dictates.
539 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000540 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000541 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000542 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
543 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000544 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
545 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000546 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000547 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
548 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
549 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
550 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
551 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
552 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
553 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
554 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
555 without first creating a dialect class.
556 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
557 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
558 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000559 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000560 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
561 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000562 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
563 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
564 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
565 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000566 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
567 This has been fixed.
568
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000569- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
570 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
571 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
572 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
573
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000574- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
575
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000576- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
577 (Bug #951915).
578
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000579- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
580 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
581 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000582 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000583
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000584- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
585
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000586- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
587 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
588
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000589- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
590
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000591- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
592
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000593- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
594
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000595- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
596
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000597- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
598
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000599- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
600 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
601 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
602
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000603- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000604 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000605
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000606- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
607 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
608 tokenizer with very long source lines.
609
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000610- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called
611 immediately after creating the object, without any intervening
612 ``.decompress()`` calls.
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000613
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000614- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
615 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000616
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000617- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
618 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
619
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000620- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
621 correctly.
622
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000623- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
624 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
625 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
626 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
627 between two lines.
628
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000629- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
630 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
631 handlers.
632
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000633- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000634 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
635 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000636
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000637- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
638 considering it exactly like a '*'.
639
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000640- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
641 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000642
Walter Dörwald09f0dd52005-11-21 19:10:07 +0000643- ` uu.encode()`` and ``uu.decode()`` now support unicode filenames.
644
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000645Build
646-----
647
Martin v. Löwisfd9a72a2006-01-08 10:07:33 +0000648- Patch #881820: look for openpty and forkpty also in libbsd.
649
Martin v. Löwis64c33dd2006-01-03 07:42:14 +0000650- The sources of zlib are now part of the Python distribution (zlib 1.2.3).
651 The zlib module is now builtin on Windows.
652
Martin v. Löwisd5845ec2005-12-30 12:31:38 +0000653- Use -xcode=pic32 for CCSHARED on Solaris with SunPro.
654
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000655- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
656 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
657
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000658- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
659 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
660
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000661- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
662 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
663 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000664 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000665
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000666- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
667 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
668 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
669
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000670- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
671
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000672- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
673 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
674
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000675- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
676 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
677 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
678 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
679 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
680 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
681 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
682 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
683
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000684- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
685 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
686 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
687 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
688
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000689C API
690-----
691
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000692- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
693
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000694- Removed PyRange_New().
695
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000696- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
697 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
698 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
699 mappings.
700
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000701
702Tests
703-----
704
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000705- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000706
Hye-Shik Changaaa2f1d2005-12-10 17:44:27 +0000707- Patch #1276356: New resource "urlfetch" is implemented. This enables
708 even impatient people to run tests that require remote files.
709
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000710
711Documentation
712-------------
713
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000714- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
715
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000716- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
717
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000718- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
719
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000720- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
721
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000722- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
723
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000724- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
725
726- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
727
728- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
729
730- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
731
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000732- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
733 Closes bug #1166582.
734
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000735- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
736 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
737 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
738
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000739Mac
740---
741
742
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000743New platforms
744-------------
745
746- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
747
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000748
749Tools/Demos
750-----------
751
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000752- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
753 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
754 source files that need an encoding declaration.
755 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
756
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000757- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
758
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000759- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000760
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000761- Fixed a display glitch in Pynche, which could cause the right arrow to
762 wiggle over by a pixel.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000763
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000764What's New in Python 2.4 final?
765===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000766
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000767*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000768
769Core and builtins
770-----------------
771
772- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
773 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
774 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
775
776
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000777What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
778==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000779
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000780*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000781
782Core and builtins
783-----------------
784
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000785- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
786 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
787 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
788
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000789
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000790Library
791-------
792
793- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
794 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
795 raised is re-raised.
796
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000797- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
798 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
799
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000800- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
801 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
802 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
803 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
804 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
805 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
806 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
807 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
808 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
809 by the slice are recomputed now.
810
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000811- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000812
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000813Build
814-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000815
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000816- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
817 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
818 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000819
820C API
821-----
822
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000823- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
824
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000825
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000826What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
827================================
828
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000829*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000830
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000831License
832-------
833
834The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
835is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
836changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
837Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
838intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
839durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
840the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
841License::
842
843 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
844
845says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
846to Python 2.1.1.
847
848The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
849License Version 2.
850
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000851Core and builtins
852-----------------
853
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000854- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
855 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
856 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
857 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
858 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
859 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
860 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
Andrew M. Kuchlingb2a739d2005-11-22 15:14:44 +0000861 ``AttributeError`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000862 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
863 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
864
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000865- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000866
867Extension Modules
868-----------------
869
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000870- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
871 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
872 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
873 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000874
875Library
876-------
877
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000878- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
879 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
880 returned.
881
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000882- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
883
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000884- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
885 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
886
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000887- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
888
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000889- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
890 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000891
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000892- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
893
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000894- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
895
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000896- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000897 the source code is updated and reloaded.
898
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000899Build
900-----
901
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000902- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000903
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000904What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
905================================
906
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000907*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000908
909Core and builtins
910-----------------
911
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000912- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000913 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
914
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000915- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
916 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
917 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
918 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
919
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000920- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
921 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
922
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000923- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
924 constant.
925
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000926- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
927 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
928 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
929 large), and to anomalies such as
930 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
931 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
932 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
933 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000934
935Extension modules
936-----------------
937
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000938- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
939 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000940 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
941 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
942 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000943
944Library
945-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000946
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000947- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000948 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000949 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
950 --swig-cpp.
951
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000952- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
953 it is set.
954
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000955- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000956
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000957- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
958 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
959 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
960 Closes bug #1039270.
961
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000962- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000963
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000964 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000965 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
966 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
967 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
968 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
969 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
970 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
971 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
972 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
973 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
974 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
975 + Updates to documentation.
976
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000977- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
978 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
979 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
980 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
981
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000982- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000983
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000984- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
985 applications should use the getmember function.
986
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000987- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
988
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000989- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
990 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
991 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
992 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
993 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
994 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
995 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
996 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
997 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
998
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000999- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
1000 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +00001001 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001002
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001003- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
1004 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
1005 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
1006 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
1007 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
1008 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
1009 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
1010 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001011
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001012- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
1013 the new public features (of which there are many).
1014
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +00001015- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001016 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
1017 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
1018 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
1019 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001020 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001021
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +00001022- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
1023
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +00001024- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
1025 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
1026 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
1027 options.
1028
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +00001029- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
1030 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
1031 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
1032 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
1033 conditions under which non-string values work.
1034
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001035Build
1036-----
1037
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +00001038- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
1039 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
1040 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
1041
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +00001042- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
1043 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
1044 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
1045 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
1046 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001047
1048C API
1049-----
1050
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +00001051- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
1052 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
1053
1054- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
1055
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +00001056- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1057 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
1058 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
1059 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
1060 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
1061 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
1062 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
1063 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1064 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
1065
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001066- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
1067
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001068- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
1069 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
1070 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001071
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001072Tests
1073-----
1074
1075- test__locale ported to unittest
1076
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001077Mac
1078---
1079
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +00001080- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
1081 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
1082 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001083
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001084Tools/Demos
1085-----------
1086
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +00001087- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
1088 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
1089 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
1090 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
1091 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001092
1093
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001094What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
1095=================================
1096
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +00001097*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001098
1099Core and builtins
1100-----------------
1101
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001102- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001103 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
1104
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001105- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
1106 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
1107 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
1108 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
1109 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
1110 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
1111 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
1112 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001113 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
1114 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
1115 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
1116 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
1117 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001118
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +00001119- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
1120 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
1121 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
1122 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
1123 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
1124
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +00001125- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
1126
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +00001127- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
1128 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
1129
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001130- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1131 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1132 modified the list.
1133
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001134- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1135 functions is now writable.
1136
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001137- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1138 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1139 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1140 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1141
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001142- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1143 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1144 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1145 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1146 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001147
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001148- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1149 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1150
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001151Extension modules
1152-----------------
1153
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001154- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1155
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001156- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1157 data.
1158
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001159- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1160 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1161 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1162 supposed to have been truncated away.
1163
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001164- Added socket.socketpair().
1165
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001166- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1167 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1168
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001169- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001170 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1171
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001172Library
1173-------
1174
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001175- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001176 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001177
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001178- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1179 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1180
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001181- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1182 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1183
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001184- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1185
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001186- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1187 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001188
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001189- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1190 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1191
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001192- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1193
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001194- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1195
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001196- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1197
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001198- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1199 Percivall.
1200
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001201- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1202 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1203
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001204- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1205 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1206 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001207 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001208
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001209- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1210 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1211 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1212 and exponent.
1213
1214- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1215
1216- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001217 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001218 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1219
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001220- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1221 to the readline module.
1222
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001223- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001224 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1225 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001226
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001227- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1228 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1229 contains symlinks.
1230
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001231- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1232 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1233
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001234- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1235 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1236 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1237
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001238- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1239 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1240 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1241 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1242 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1243 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1244 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1245 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1246 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1247 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1248 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1249 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1250 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1251
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001252- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1253
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001254Tools/Demos
1255-----------
1256
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001257- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1258 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1259
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001260- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1261
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001262Build
1263-----
1264
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001265- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1266 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1267 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1268 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1269 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1270 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1271 plans to do so.
1272
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001273- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1274 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1275
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001276- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1277 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1278
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001279- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1280 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1281
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001282- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1283 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1284
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001285- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1286 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1287
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001288C API
1289-----
1290
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001291..
1292
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001293Documentation
1294-------------
1295
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001296- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1297 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1298
1299- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1300 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1301 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001302
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001303New platforms
1304-------------
1305
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001306- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1307
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001308Tests
1309-----
1310
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001311..
1312
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001313Windows
1314-------
1315
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001316- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1317 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1318 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1319 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1320 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1321 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1322 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1323 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1324 the problem.
1325
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001326Mac
1327---
1328
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001329..
1330
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001331
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001332What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1333=================================
1334
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001335*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001336
1337Core and builtins
1338-----------------
1339
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001340- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1341 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1342 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1343 sensitive code.
1344
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001345- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001346 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001347
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001348 @staticmethod
1349 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001350
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001351 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001352
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001353- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1354 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1355 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1356 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1357 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1358 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1359 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1360 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1361 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1362 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1363 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1364
1365 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1366 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1367 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1368 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1369 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1370 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1371 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1372
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001373- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1374 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1375
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001376- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001377 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001378
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001379- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001380 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001381 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1382
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001383- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001384 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1385 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1386
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001387- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1388 types that support garbage collection.
1389
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001390- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1391
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001392- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1393 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1394 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1395 Jython.
1396
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001397- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1398
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001399- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1400 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1401
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001402- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1403 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1404 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001405
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001406- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1407 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1408 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1409
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001410Extension modules
1411-----------------
1412
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001413- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1414
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001415Library
1416-------
1417
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001418- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1419 TIS-620
1420
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001421- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1422 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1423 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1424 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1425 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1426 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1427 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1428 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1429 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1430 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1431
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001432- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1433
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001434- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1435 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1436 same as when the argument is omitted).
1437 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1438
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001439- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1440
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001441- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1442 schemes are offered.
1443
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001444- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1445
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001446- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1447 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1448 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1449
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001450- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1451
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001452- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1453 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1454
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001455- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1456 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1457 when dummy_threading is being used.
1458
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001459- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1460 from a tarfile.
1461
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001462- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001463 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001464
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001465- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1466 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1467 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1468 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1469
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001470- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1471 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1472
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001473- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1474 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1475 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1476 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1477 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1478 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1479 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1480 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1481 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1482 by some other method in progress).
1483
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001484- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1485 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1486 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001487
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001488- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1489
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001490- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1491 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1492 AM Kuchling.
1493
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001494- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1495 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1496 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1497
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001498- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1499 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1500 instead of unsigned.
1501
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001502- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001503 no longer part of the public API.
1504
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001505- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1506 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1507 string methods of the same name).
1508
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001509- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001510 SF patch 945642.
1511
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001512- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1513
1514 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1515
1516 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1517 DocTestSuites.
1518
1519- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1520 that provide thread-local data.
1521
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001522- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1523 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1524
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001525- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1526
1527- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1528 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1529 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1530
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001531- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1532
1533 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1534 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1535 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001536
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001537 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1538 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1539 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1540 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1541
1542 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1543 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1544
1545 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1546 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1547 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1548 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1549
1550 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1551 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1552 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1553 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1554 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1555
1556 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1557 wrapping help output.
1558
1559 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1560 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1561 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001562
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001563C API
1564-----
1565
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001566- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1567 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1568 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1569 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1570 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1571 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1572 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1573 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1574 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1575 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1576 its visible semantics have not changed.
1577
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001578- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1579 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1580
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001581Documentation
1582-------------
1583
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001584- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001585
1586 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001587 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001588
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001589 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001590
1591 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1592
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001593- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001594
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001595Tests
1596-----
1597
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001598- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001599 platforms that use the Makefile.
1600
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001601- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1602 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1603 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1604
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001605
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001606What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1607=================================
1608
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001609*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001610
1611Core and builtins
1612-----------------
1613
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001614- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1615 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1616 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1617 objects now (one object instead of three).
1618
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001619- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1620 Windows DLLs.
1621
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001622- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1623 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001624
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001625- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1626 a new .pyc magic.
1627
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001628- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1629 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1630 be there.
1631
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001632- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1633 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1634 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1635
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001636- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1637 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1638 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1639
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001640- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1641
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001642- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1643 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1644 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001645
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001646- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1647 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1648
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001649- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1650
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001651- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001652 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001653
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001654- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1655
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001656- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1657
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001658- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1659 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1660
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001661- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1662 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1663 Fixes bug #858016 .
1664
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001665- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1666 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1667 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1668
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001669- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1670 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1671 improves their performance (about 35%).
1672
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001673- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1674 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1675 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1676
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001677- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1678 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1679 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1680 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1681
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001682- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1683 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001684 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001685 length is not known).
1686
1687- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1688 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001689 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1690 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001691 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1692
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001693- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1694 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1695
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001696- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1697 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1698 keyword arguments.
1699
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001700- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1701 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1702 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1703
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001704- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1705 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1706 cases.
1707
1708- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1709 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1710 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1711 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1712 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1713 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1714 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1715 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1716 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1717 a release build.
1718
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001719- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1720 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1721
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001722- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001723 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001724
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001725- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1726 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1727 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1728 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1729 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1730 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1731 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1732 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1733 destroyed.
1734
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001735- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1736 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1737 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1738 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1739 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1740 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1741 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1742 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1743
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001744- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1745 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1746 character other than a space.
1747
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001748- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1749 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1750 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1751 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1752 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1753 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1754 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1755 attributes with the same name.
1756
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001757- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1758 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1759 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1760 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1761 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1762 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1763 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1764 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1765 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1766 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1767 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1768 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1769 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1770 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001771
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001772- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1773 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1774 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1775 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1776 This has been repaired.
1777
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001778- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1779
1780- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1781
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001782- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1783 over a sequence.
1784
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001785- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001786 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001787
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001788- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1789
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001790- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1791 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1792 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1793 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1794 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1795 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1796 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1797 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1798
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001799- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1800 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1801 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1802
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001803- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1804 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1805 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1806 freelist.
1807
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001808- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1809 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1810
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001811- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1812 number.
1813
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001814- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1815 a TypeError exception.
1816
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001817- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1818 820195.
1819
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001820- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1821 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1822 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1823
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001824- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001825 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1826 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001827
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001828- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1829 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1830 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1831
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001832- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1833 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001834 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001835
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001836- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001837 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1838 the first call.
1839
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001840
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001841Extension modules
1842-----------------
1843
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001844- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1845 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1846
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001847- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1848 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1849 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1850 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1851 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1852 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1853 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001854
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001855- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1856
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001857- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1858
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001859- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1860 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1861
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001862- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1863 fewer false positives.
1864
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001865- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1866 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1867
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001868- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001869 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1870
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001871- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001872 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001873 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001874 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1875 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001876
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001877- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1878 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1879 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1880 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1881
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001882- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1883 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1884 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1885 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1886 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1887 #897625.
1888
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001889- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1890 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1891
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001892- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1893 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1894 and pops on either side of the deque.
1895
1896- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1897 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1898
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001899- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1900 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1901 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1902 other functions that expect a function argument.
1903
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001904- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1905
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001906- os.getsid was added.
1907
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001908- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1909 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1910 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1911
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001912- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1913
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001914- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1915
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001916- readline.clear_history was added.
1917
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001918- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1919
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001920- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1921
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001922- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1923
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001924- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1925
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001926- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1927
1928- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1929
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001930- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1931
1932- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1933
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001934- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1935 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1936 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1937
1938- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1939 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1940 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1941 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1942 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1943 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1944 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1945
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001946- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1947 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1948 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1949 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001950
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001951- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001952 iterators from a single iterable.
1953
1954- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1955 of raising a TypeError exception.
1956
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001957- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1958 as parameter.
1959
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001960Library
1961-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001962
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00001963- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
1964
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001965- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1966 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1967 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001968
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001969- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1970 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1971 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001972
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001973- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001974
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001975- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1976 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001977
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001978- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1979 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1980
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001981- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1982
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001983- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001984 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001985
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001986- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001987 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001988
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001989- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1990
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001991- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1992 on cygwin and mingw32.
1993
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001994- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1995
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001996- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1997 module.
1998
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001999- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
2000 installation scheme for all platforms.
2001
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002002- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00002003 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002004
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002005- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
2006 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
2007 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
2008
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00002009- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
2010 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
2011 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
2012
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00002013- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
2014
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00002015- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
2016
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00002017- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
2018 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
2019
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00002020- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
2021 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
2022 type pattern with the same value exists.
2023
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00002024- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
2025 when run from the command prompt).
2026
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002027- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
2028 not taken into consideration when caching value.
2029
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00002030- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
2031 default sort).
2032
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00002033- Added global runctx function to profile module
2034
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00002035- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
2036
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00002037- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
2038
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00002039- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
2040
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002041- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00002042 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
2043 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
2044 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
2045 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
2046 accordingly.
2047
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00002048- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
2049 decoding standards.
2050
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00002051- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
2052 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
2053 called for all requests.
2054
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00002055- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
2056 they are passed to the compiler.
2057
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00002058- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
2059 indent, width and depth.
2060
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00002061- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
2062 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
2063
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00002064- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
2065 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
2066
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00002067- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
2068
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00002069- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
2070
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002071- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
2072
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00002073- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
2074 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
2075
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00002076- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00002077 for better performance.
2078
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002079- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00002080
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00002081- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
2082 a string).
2083
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00002084- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
2085
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00002086- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
2087
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00002088- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
2089
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00002090- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
2091
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00002092- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
2093 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
2094 list of fieldnames.
2095
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00002096- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
2097 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
2098
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00002099- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
2100
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00002101- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
2102 empty lists.
2103
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00002104- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
2105 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
2106 and shelves.
2107
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00002108- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
2109 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
2110
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002111- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00002112 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
2113 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002114
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00002115- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
2116 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00002117 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00002118
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002119- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00002120 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
2121 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
2122
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002123- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
2124 and removed in Py2.4.
2125
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00002126- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
2127
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00002128- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
2129
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002130Tools/Demos
2131-----------
2132
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002133- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2134 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2135
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002136- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2137
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002138- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2139 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2140 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2141 destination in situations where both files are given.
2142
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002143- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2144 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2145 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2146 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2147
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002148- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2149
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002150- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2151 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2152 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2153 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2154 now.
2155
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002156- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2157 in effect
2158
2159- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2160 C-c C-h
2161
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002162- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2163 -d option was given.
2164
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002165Build
2166-----
2167
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002168- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2169 build under OS X.
2170
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002171- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2172 --enable-profiling.
2173
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002174- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2175 is configured --with-tsc.
2176
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002177- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2178 on AMD64.
2179
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002180- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2181 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2182
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002183- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2184 removed.
2185
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002186- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2187 supported (see PEP 11).
2188
2189- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2190
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002191- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2192
2193- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2194 (see PEP 11).
2195
2196- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2197 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2198
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002199C API
2200-----
2201
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002202- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2203 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2204 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2205
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002206- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2207 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2208 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2209 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2210
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002211- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2212 generator objects.
2213
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002214- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2215 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002216 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2217 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002218
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002219- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2220 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2221
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002222- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2223 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2224 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2225 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2226 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2227
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002228- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2229 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2230 about 10% faster.
2231
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002232- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2233 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2234
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002235- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2236 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2237 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2238 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2239
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002240Windows
2241-------
2242
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002243- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2244 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2245 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2246 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2247
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002248- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2249 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2250 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2251
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002252
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002253What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2254===============================
2255
2256*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2257
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002258IDLE
2259----
2260
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002261- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2262 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2263 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2264 context-menu actions.
2265
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002266- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2267 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2268 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2269 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2270 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2271 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2272 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2273 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2274 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2275
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002276
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002277What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2278=============================================
2279
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002280*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002281
2282Core and builtins
2283-----------------
2284
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002285- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002286 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002287 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2288
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002289Extension modules
2290-----------------
2291
2292- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2293 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2294 than once. This has been fixed.
2295
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002296- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2297 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2298 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2299 call.
2300
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002301- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2302
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002303Library
2304-------
2305
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002306- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2307 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2308
2309- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2310 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2311 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2312 restored.
2313
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002314IDLE
2315----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002316
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002317- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002318
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002319Build
2320-----
2321
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002322- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2323 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2324
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002325C API
2326-----
2327
2328Windows
2329-------
2330
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002331- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2332 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2333
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002334- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2335
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002336Mac
2337---
2338
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002339- Various fixes to pimp.
2340
2341- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2342
2343- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2344 more problems than it solves.
2345
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002346
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002347What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2348=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002349
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002350*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2351
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002352Core and builtins
2353-----------------
2354
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002355- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2356 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2357
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002358- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2359 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002360 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002361
2362- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2363 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2364 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002365 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002366
2367- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2368 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002369
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002370- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2371 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2372 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2373
2374- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002375 770247.
2376
2377- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002378
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002379Extension modules
2380-----------------
2381
2382- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2383 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2384
2385- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2386
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002387- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2388
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002389- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2390 contained within the _strptime module.
2391
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002392- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2393 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2394
2395- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002396 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2397
2398- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2399 the find_class attribute, if present.
2400
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002401- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002402
2403 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2404 (SF bug 763298).
2405
2406 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002407 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2408 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2409 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002410
2411 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2412
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002413Library
2414-------
2415
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002416- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2417
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002418- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2419 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2420 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2421 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2422 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2423 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2424 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2425 or Tester().
2426
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002427- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2428 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2429 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2430 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2431 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2432 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2433 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2434 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2435 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002436
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002437 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002438
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002439- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2440 weren't before was an oversight.
2441
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002442- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2443 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2444
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002445- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2446 when there are no lines.
2447
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002448- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2449 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2450
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002451- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2452 to child processes.
2453
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002454- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2455
2456- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2457
2458- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2459 xmlrpclib.
2460
2461- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2462 responses.
2463
2464- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2465 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2466
2467- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2468 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2469 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2470
2471- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2472 used as patterns.
2473
2474- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2475 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2476 than Tk 8.3.
2477
2478- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2479
2480- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002481
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002482Tools/Demos
2483-----------
2484
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002485- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2486
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002487- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2488
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002489- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002490
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002491Build
2492-----
2493
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002494- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2495
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002496- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2497
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002498- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2499 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002500
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002501- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2502 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2503 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002504
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002505C API
2506-----
2507
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002508- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2509 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2510
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002511Windows
2512-------
2513
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002514- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2515 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2516 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2517 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2518 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2519 Python exception ::
2520
2521 thread.error: can't start new thread
2522
2523 is raised now.
2524
2525- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2526 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2527 instead of from DLL teardown.
2528
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002529Mac
2530---
2531
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002532- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002533 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002534 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2535 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2536 the executable in the bundle.
2537
2538- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002539
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002540- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2541
2542- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2543 on Panther.
2544
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002545What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2546================================
2547
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002548*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002549
2550Core and builtins
2551-----------------
2552
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002553- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2554 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2555 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2556 with the -i option.
2557
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002558- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2559 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2560
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002561- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2562 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2563
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002564- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2565 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2566 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2567 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2568 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2569 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2570 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2571 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2572 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2573 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2574 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2575 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2576 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002577
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002578- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2579 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2580 embedded in a lambda expression.
2581
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002582- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2583 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2584 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2585 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2586 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2587
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002588- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2589 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2590 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2591
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002592- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2593 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2594
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002595- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2596 It's writable again.
2597
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002598- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2599 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2600 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002601 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002602
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002603- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2604 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2605 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2606
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002607Extension modules
2608-----------------
2609
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002610- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2611 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2612
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002613- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2614 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2615 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2616 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2617
2618- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2619 collection.
2620
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002621- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2622 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2623 unique within a single program run.
2624
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002625- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2626 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2627
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002628- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2629 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2630
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002631- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2632 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002633
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002634- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2635
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002636- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2637 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2638
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002639- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2640 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2641 for many BSD-derived systems.
2642
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002643
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002644Library
2645-------
2646
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002647- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2648 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2649 primary ones:
2650
2651 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2652 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2653 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2654
2655 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2656 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2657 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2658 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2659 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2660 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2661
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002662- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2663 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2664 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2665 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2666 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2667 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2668 argument.
2669
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002670- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2671 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2672 in the archive.
2673
2674- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2675 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2676
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002677- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2678 569574).
2679
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002680- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2681 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2682 no more.
2683
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002684- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2685 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2686 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2687 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2688 code coverage.
2689
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002690- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2691 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2692 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002693 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2694 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002695
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002696- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2697 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2698 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002699 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002700
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002701- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2702
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002703- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2704 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2705 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2706 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2707
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002708- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2709 handling.
2710
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002711- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2712 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2713
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002714- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2715 in socket.py.
2716
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002717- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2718
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002719- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2720 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2721 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2722 opener with proxy support.
2723
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002724- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2725
2726- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2727
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002728Tools/Demos
2729-----------
2730
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002731- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2732
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002733- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2734
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002735- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2736 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002737
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002738- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2739 files.
2740
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002741Build
2742-----
2743
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002744- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002745 different root directory.
2746
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002747C API
2748-----
2749
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002750- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2751 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2752 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2753 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2754 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2755 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2756 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2757 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2758 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2759 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2760
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002761- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2762 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2763 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2764 from Python.
2765
2766
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002767New platforms
2768-------------
2769
2770None this time.
2771
2772Tests
2773-----
2774
2775- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2776 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2777
2778Windows
2779-------
2780
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002781- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2782
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002783- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2784 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2785 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2786 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2787 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2788 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2789 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2790 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2791 that's what it's for.
2792
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002793Mac
2794---
2795
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002796- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2797 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2798 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2799 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002800- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2801 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2802- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002803
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002804SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2805------------------------------------
2806
2807430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2808598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2809622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2810661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2811683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2812697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2813713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2814724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2815727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2816729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2817730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2818731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2819732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2820733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2821735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2822740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2823744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2824745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2825747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2826749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2827751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2828753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2829755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2830757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2831760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2832
2833
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002834What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2835================================
2836
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002837*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002838
2839Core and builtins
2840-----------------
2841
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002842- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2843 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2844
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002845- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2846 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2847 and cannot be strings).
2848
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002849- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2850 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2851 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2852 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2853
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002854- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2855 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2856 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2857 Python itself.
2858
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002859- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2860 the referenced object, if it has one.
2861
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002862- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2863 the thread started at
2864 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2865
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002866- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2867 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2868 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2869 placed on a list index.
2870
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002871- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2872 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2873 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2874 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2875
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002876- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2877 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2878 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2879 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2880 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2881 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2882 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2883
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002884- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2885 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2886 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2887 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2888 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2889
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002890- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2891 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002892
2893- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2894 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2895 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2896 #693195.)
2897
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002898- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2899 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002900
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002901- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002902 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002903 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2904 interpreter executions, would fail.
2905
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002906- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002907 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002908 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002909
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002910Extension modules
2911-----------------
2912
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002913- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2914 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2915 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2916 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2917
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002918- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2919 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2920
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002921- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2922 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2923 and Greg Chapman.)
2924
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002925- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2926 recursively.
2927
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002928- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002929 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2930 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2931 leaks.
2932
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002933- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2934
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002935- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2936 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2937 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2938 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2939 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2940 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2941 #705836.
2942
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002943- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002944 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2945
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002946- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2947 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2948 See SF bug #692416.
2949
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002950- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2951 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2952
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002953- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2954 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2955 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002956
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002957- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002958 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2959 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2960
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002961- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2962 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2963 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2964 timeouts to work properly.
2965
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002966Library
2967-------
2968
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002969- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2970 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2971 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2972 future release.
2973
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002974- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2975 for querying platform dependent features.
2976
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002977- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002978
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002979- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2980 pickle protocol versions.
2981
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002982- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2983 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2984 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2985
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002986- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2987
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002988- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2989 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2990 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2991 modules.
2992
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002993- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2994 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2995 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2996
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002997- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2998 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2999
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00003000- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
3001 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
3002 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
3003
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003004- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00003005 MS Office extensions.
3006
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00003007- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
3008 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
3009
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00003010- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
3011 execution speed of expressions and statements.
3012
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003013- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
3014 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
3015 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
3016 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
3017 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
3018 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
3019
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003020- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
3021 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
3022 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003023
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00003024- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
3025 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
3026 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
3027
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00003028- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
3029
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00003030- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
3031 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
3032 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
3033
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003034Tools/Demos
3035-----------
3036
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00003037- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
3038 See the module docstring for details.
3039
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003040Build
3041-----
3042
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00003043- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
3044 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003045
3046C API
3047-----
3048
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003049- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
3050
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00003051- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
3052 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
3053 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
3054
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003055- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
3056 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003057
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003058 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
3059 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
3060 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00003061
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00003062- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00003063 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
3064
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00003065- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
3066 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
3067 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003068
3069New platforms
3070-------------
3071
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003072None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003073
3074Tests
3075-----
3076
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00003077- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
3078 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003079
3080Windows
3081-------
3082
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00003083- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
3084 function.
3085
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00003086- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
3087 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003088
3089Mac
3090---
3091
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003092- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
3093 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00003094
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00003095- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
3096 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003097
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00003098- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
3099 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
3100 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003101
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003102- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00003103 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
3104 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003105
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003106- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
3107 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003108
3109
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003110What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
3111=================================
3112
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003113*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003114
3115Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003116-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003117
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00003118- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
3119 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
3120 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
3121
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00003122- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
3123 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
3124 (SF patch #664376.)
3125
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003126- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
3127 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
3128 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
3129 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3130 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3131 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003132 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003133
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003134- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3135 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3136 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3137 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003138 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003139
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003140- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3141 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3142 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3143 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3144 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3145 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3146 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3147 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3148 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3149 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3150 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3151
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003152- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3153 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3154 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3155 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3156 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3157 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3158
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003159- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3160 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3161
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003162- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3163 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3164 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3165 case.)
3166
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003167- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3168 passed as unicode strings.
3169
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003170- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3171 See SF bug #683467.
3172
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003173- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3174 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3175
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003176- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3177
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003178- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3179
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003180- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3181 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3182 arguments.
3183
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003184- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3185 See SF bug #667147.
3186
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003187- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003188 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003189 See SF bug #676155.
3190
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003191- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003192 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003193 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3194 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3195 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3196 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3197 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3198 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003199
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003200Extension modules
3201-----------------
3202
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003203- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3204 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3205 tp_as_number pointer.
3206
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003207- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3208 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3209 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3210 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3211 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3212
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003213- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3214
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003215- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3216
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003217- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003218 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003219 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3220 patch #678531.)
3221
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003222- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3223 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3224
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003225- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3226 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3227
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003228- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3229
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003230- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3231 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3232 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3233
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003234- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3235
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003236- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3237 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3238
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003239- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003240
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003241- datetime changes:
3242
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003243 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3244
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003245 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3246 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3247 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3248 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3249 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3250 now.
3251
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003252 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003253 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3254 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003255
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003256 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003257 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003258 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3259 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3260 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3261 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003262
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003263 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3264 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3265 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003266 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3267
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003268 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3269 by a later example coded by Guido.
3270
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003271 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003272 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3273 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3274 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003275 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3276 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3277
3278 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3279 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3280 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3281 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3282 tzinfo subclass instance.
3283
3284 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3285 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3286 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3287 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3288 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3289 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3290 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3291 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003292
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003293 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3294 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3295 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3296 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3297 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003298 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3299
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003300 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003301
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003302 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3303 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3304 as a naive datetime object.
3305
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003306 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3307 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3308 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3309
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003310 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3311 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3312 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3313 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3314 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3315 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3316 comparison.
3317
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003318 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3319 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3320 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3321 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003322 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003323
3324 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003325
3326 and ::
3327
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003328 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3329
3330 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3331 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3332 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3333 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3334
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003335 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3336 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3337 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3338 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3339 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3340
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003341 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3342 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003343 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3344 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003345
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003346Library
3347-------
3348
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003349- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3350 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3351
3352- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3353 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3354 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3355 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3356 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3357 See PEP 307 for details.
3358
3359- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3360 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3361
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003362- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3363 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003364 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003365 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3366 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003367 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003368
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003369- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3370 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3371
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003372- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3373 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3374 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3375
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003376- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3377
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003378- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3379 exception.
3380
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003381- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3382 class.
3383
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003384- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3385 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3386 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3387
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003388- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3389 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3390
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003391- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003392 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3393 See SF bug #659228.
3394
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003395- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3396 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3397 See SF patch #651082.
3398
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003399- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003400
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003401- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3402 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3403
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003404- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003405 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003406
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003407- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3408 DOS paths from other platforms.
3409
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003410Tools/Demos
3411-----------
3412
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003413- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3414 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3415 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3416 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3417 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3418 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3419 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3420 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3421 example:
3422
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003423 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3424 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003425
3426 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3427
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003428
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003429Build
3430-----
3431
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003432- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3433 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3434 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003435 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3436
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003437 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3438
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003439- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3440 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3441 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3442 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3443 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3444 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3445 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3446 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3447 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3448
3449- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3450 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3451 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3452 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3453
3454- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3455 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3456
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003457C API
3458-----
3459
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003460- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3461 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003462
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003463- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3464 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3465 tp_as_number pointer.
3466
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003467- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3468 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3469 (SF #681367)
3470
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003471- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3472 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3473 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3474 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003475
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003476Tests
3477-----
3478
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003479- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003480 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3481 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3482 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3483 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3484 pydoc.)
3485
3486- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3487
3488- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003489
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003490Windows
3491-------
3492
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003493- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3494 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3495 time).
3496
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003497- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3498 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3499
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003500- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3501 release without strong cryptography.
3502
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003503- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003504 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003505
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003506- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3507 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3508
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003509Mac
3510---
3511
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003512- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3513 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003514
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003515- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3516 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3517 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003518
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003519- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3520 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003521
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003522- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3523 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3524 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3525 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003526
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003527- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003528 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3529 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3530 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003531
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003532
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003533What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003534=================================
3535
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003536*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003537
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003538Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003539--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003540
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003541- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3542
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003543- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3544 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003545 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003546 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003547 a different meaning than before.
3548
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003549- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003550 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003551 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003552
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003553- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003554 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003555 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003556
3557- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3558 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3559 and deallocation.
3560
3561- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3562 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3563
3564- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3565 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3566 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3567 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3568 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3569
3570- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3571 now detected by the garbage collector.
3572
3573- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3574 [SF bug 519621]
3575
3576- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3577 identifier.
3578
3579- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3580 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3581 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3582 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3583 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3584 [SF bug 563060]
3585
3586- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3587 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3588 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3589 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3590 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3591
3592- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3593 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3594 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3595
3596- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3597
3598- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3599 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3600 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3601 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3602 state of the slots would be lost.)
3603
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003604Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003605-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003606
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003607- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003608 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3609 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3610 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3611 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003612 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3613 Jython 2.1.
3614
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003615- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003616 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003617 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3618 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3619 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3620 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3621 these, see PEP 302.
3622
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003623- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3624 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3625 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3626
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003627- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3628 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3629 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3630
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003631- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3632 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3633 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3634
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003635- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3636 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3637 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3638 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3639 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3640 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3641 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3642 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3643 releases or implementations.
3644
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003645- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003646 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3647 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003648
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003649- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3650 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3651
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003652- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3653 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3654 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3655
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003656- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3657 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3658
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003659- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3660 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003661 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3662 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003663
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003664- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3665 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3666 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3667 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3668 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3669
3670 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3671 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3672 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3673 pattern.
3674
3675 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3676 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3677 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3678 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3679
3680 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3681 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3682 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3683 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3684 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3685 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3686
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003687- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3688 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3689 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3690 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3691 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3692 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3693 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3694 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003695
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003696- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3697 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3698 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3699 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3700 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003701 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3702 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3703 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3704 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3705 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3706 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3707 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003708
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003709- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3710 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3711
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003712- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3713 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3714 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3715 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3716 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3717 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3718 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3719 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3720 to Zack Weinberg!
3721
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003722- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3723 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3724 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3725 type. This has been fixed now.
3726
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003727- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3728 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3729 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3730
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003731- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3732 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3733 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3734 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3735 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3736 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3737 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3738 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003739 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003740
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003741- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3742 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3743 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003744
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003745- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3746 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3747 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3748 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3749 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3750 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3751 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3752 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003753 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003754 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3755 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3756
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003757- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3758 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3759 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3760 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3761 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3762 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3763 this.)
3764
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003765- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3766 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003767 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003768 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003769 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3770 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003771 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3772 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003773
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003774- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3775 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3776 currently running.
3777
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003778- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3779 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3780 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3781 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3782
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003783- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3784 as directory names.
3785
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003786- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3787 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3788
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003789- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3790 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3791
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003792- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003793 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3794 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003795
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003796- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3797 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3798 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3799 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3800 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3801
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003802- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3803 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3804 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3805 removed.
3806
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003807- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3808 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3809 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3810
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003811- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3812 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3813 to __debug__.
3814
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003815- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3816 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3817 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3818
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003819- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3820 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3821 deprecated now.
3822
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003823- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3824 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3825 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003826
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003827- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3828 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3829 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3830 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3831 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003832
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003833- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3834 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3835
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003836- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3837 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3838 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003839 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003840 is backward compatible.
3841
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003842- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3843 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3844 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3845 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3846 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3847
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003848- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3849 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3850 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3851 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3852 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3853 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003854
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003855- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3856 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3857
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003858- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3859 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3860
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003861- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3862 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3863 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3864 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3865 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3866
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003867- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3868 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3869 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3870
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003871- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003872 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3873
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003874- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3875 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3876 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003877
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003878- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3879 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3880
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003881- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3882 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3883 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3884
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003885- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3886
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003887Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003888-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003889
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003890- Added three operators to the operator module:
3891 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3892 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3893 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3894
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003895- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3896
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003897- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3898 archives.
3899
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003900- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3901 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3902 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3903
3904 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3905
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003906- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3907 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3908 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003909 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003910
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003911- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3912 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3913 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3914 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003915 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3916 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3917 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3918 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003919
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003920- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3921 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003922
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003923- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3924
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003925- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3926 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3927
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003928- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3929 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3930 supported.
3931
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003932- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3933
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003934- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3935 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003936
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003937- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3938 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3939
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003940- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3941
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003942- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3943 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3944
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003945- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3946 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3947 functions but callable type objects.
3948
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003949- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003950 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003951 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003952
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003953- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3954 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003955
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003956- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3957 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003958
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003959- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3960 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3961 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3962 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3963
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003964- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3965 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003966
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003967- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3968 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3969 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3970 and __imul__.
3971
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003972- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003973 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3974 is called.
3975
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003976- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3977 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3978 interpreter was compiled.
3979
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003980- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3981 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3982 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003983 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003984 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3985 1, not 2.
3986
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003987- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3988 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3989 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3990 limit.
3991
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003992- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3993 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3994 bug #623464.
3995
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003996- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3997 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3998 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3999 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
4000
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004001Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004002-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004003
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00004004- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
4005
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00004006- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
4007 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
4008 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
4009 with Python 2.3a2.
4010
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00004011- os.path exposes getctime.
4012
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004013- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004014 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004015 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004016 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004017 unit tests of floating point results.
4018
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00004019- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
4020 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
4021 has been increased.
4022
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00004023- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
4024 executed.
4025
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00004026- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
4027 postinstallation script.
4028
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00004029- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
4030 test the current module.
4031
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004032- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00004033 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
4034 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
4035 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
4036 this behavior needs to be controlled.
4037
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004038- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004039 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004040 Ward's Optik package.
4041
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004042- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
4043 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
4044 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
4045 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
4046
4047- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
4048 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004049 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004050
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00004051- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
4052 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
4053 shelf are binary pickles.
4054
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00004055- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
4056 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
4057
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00004058- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
4059 modules are iterators now.
4060
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00004061- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
4062 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
4063 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
4064 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
4065 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
4066 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004067
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00004068- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
4069 with their entity value.
4070
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00004071- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
4072
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004073- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
4074 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00004075
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004076- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
4077 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004078 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00004079
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00004080- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
4081 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
4082 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
4083 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
4084 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
4085 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
4086 main():
4087
4088 import locale
4089 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
4090
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00004091- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
4092 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
4093
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00004094- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
4095 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
4096 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
4097 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
4098 to the new standard.
4099
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00004100- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
4101 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
4102 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
4103 an extension to the database.
4104
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004105- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
4106 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
4107 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
4108 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00004109 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004110
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004111- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00004112 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004113
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00004114- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
4115 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
4116 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
4117 bounded integers.
4118
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00004119- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
4120 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
4121 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
4122 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
4123 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
4124 in existence.
4125
4126 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
4127 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
4128 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
4129 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4130 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4131 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4132
4133 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4134 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4135 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4136 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4137
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004138- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4139 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4140 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4141
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004142- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4143
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004144- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4145 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4146 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4147 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4148
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004149- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4150 argument.
4151
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004152- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4153 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4154 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4155 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4156 [SF patch 560794].
4157
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004158- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4159 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4160 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004161 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4162 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4163 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004164
4165- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4166 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004167
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004168- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4169 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4170 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4171 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004172
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004173- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4174 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4175 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4176 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4177 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4178
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004179- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004180
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004181- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4182
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004183- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4184 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4185 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4186 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4187 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4188 identical to None.
4189
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004190- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4191 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4192 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4193 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4194 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4195 results now.
4196
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004197- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4198 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4199
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004200- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4201 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4202 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4203 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4204 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4205 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4206 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4207 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4208
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004209- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4210
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004211- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4212 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4213
4214- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4215 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4216 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4217 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4218 and other systems.
4219
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004220- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4221 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4222 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4223 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 +00004224 work well with these.
4225
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004226- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4227
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004228- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004229 connections.
4230
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004231- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4232 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4233 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4234
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004235- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4236 sets
4237
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004238- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4239 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4240 name.
4241
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004242- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4243 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4244 passed in.
4245
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004246- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004247 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004248 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4249 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004250
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004251- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4252
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004253- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4254
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004255- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4256 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4257 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4258
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004259- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4260 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4261 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4262 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004263 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004264
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004265- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004266 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004267 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004268
4269- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4270 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4271 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4272
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004273- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004274 the value of its expression argument.
4275
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004276- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4277 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4278 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4279
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004280- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4281 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4282 skipstone browser was included.
4283
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004284- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4285 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4286
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004287Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004288-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004289
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004290- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4291 names in addition to accepting file names.
4292
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004293- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4294 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4295 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4296 still used and useful.)
4297
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004298- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4299 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4300 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4301 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004302
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004303- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4304 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4305 the generated binary.
4306
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004307Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004308-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004309
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004310- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4311
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004312- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4313 except in the hands of experts.
4314
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004315- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004316 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4317 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4318 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004319
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004320- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4321 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4322 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4323 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4324 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4325 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4326 builds.
4327
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004328- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4329 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4330 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4331 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4332 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4333 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4334 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4335 new type.
4336
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004337- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004338
4339 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4340 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4341 positive infinities.
4342
4343 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4344 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4345 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4346 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4347 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4348 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4349 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4350
4351 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4352
4353 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4354
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004355- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4356 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4357 size of the executable.
4358
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004359- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4360 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4361 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4362 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004363
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004364- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4365
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004366- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4367 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4368 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004369
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004370- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4371 well as Unix.
4372
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004373- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4374 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4375 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4376 modules in the README file for details.
4377
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004378C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004379-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004380
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004381- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4382 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004383 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004384 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004385 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004386
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004387- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4388 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4389 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4390 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4391 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4392 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004393 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004394 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4395 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4396 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4397 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4398 aligned.)
4399
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004400- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4401 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4402 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4403
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004404- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4405 level.
4406
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004407- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4408 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4409 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4410 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4411 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4412
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004413- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4414 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4415 code.
4416
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004417- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4418 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4419 adjusting for negative indices.
4420
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004421- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4422 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4423 object.
4424
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004425- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4426 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4427 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4428
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004429- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4430 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004431
4432- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4433
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004434- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4435 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4436 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4437 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4438
4439- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4440
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004441- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004442
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004443- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004444 without going through the buffer API.
4445
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004446- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004447
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004448- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4449 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4450 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4451 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4452
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004453- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4454 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4455
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004456- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004457 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4458
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004459New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004460-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004461
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004462- OpenVMS is now supported.
4463
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004464- AtheOS is now supported.
4465
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004466- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4467
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004468- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4469
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004470Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004471-----
4472
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004473- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4474 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4475 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004476
4477Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004478-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004479
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004480- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4481 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4482 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4483 bugs.
4484 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004485 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004486 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4487 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004488 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004489
4490- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004491 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004492
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004493- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4494 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4495
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004496- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4497 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004498 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004499 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4500
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004501- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4502 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4503 use files" uninstall option).
4504
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004505- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4506
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004507- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4508 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4509
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004510- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4511 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4512 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4513
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004514- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4515 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4516 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4517 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4518 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004519 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4520 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4521 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004522
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004523- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004524 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004525 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4526 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4527 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4528 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4529 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4530 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4531 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4532 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4533 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4534 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4535 work around.
4536
4537- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4538 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4539 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4540 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4541 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4542 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4543 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4544 specified with O_CREAT too).
4545
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004546Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004547----
4548
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004549- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004550
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004551- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4552 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4553 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4554
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004555- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4556 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4557 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4558
4559- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4560 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4561 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4562 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4563 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4564 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4565 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4566 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004567
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004568- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4569 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4570 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004571
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004572- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4573 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4574 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4575 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4576 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004577
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004578- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4579 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4580 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004581
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004582- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4583 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004584
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004585- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4586 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4587 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4588 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4589 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004590
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004591- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4592 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4593 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4594
4595- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4596 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4597 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004598
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004599- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4600 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4601 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4602 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004603 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004604
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004605- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4606 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004607
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004608- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4609 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004610
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004611- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004612 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004613 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4614 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004615
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004616
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004617What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004618===============================
4619
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004620*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4621
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004622Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004623--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004624
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004625- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4626 with a custom metaclass.
4627
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004628Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004629-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004630
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004631- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4632 are proxies.
4633
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004634Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004635-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004636
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004637- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4638 very short strings.
4639
4640- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4641 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4642 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4643 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4644 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4645
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004646Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004647-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004648
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004649- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4650 close or delete time).
4651
4652- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4653 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4654
4655- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4656
4657- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004658 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004659
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004660Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004661-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004662
4663Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004664-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004665
4666C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004667-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004668
4669New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004670-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004671
4672Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004673-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004674
4675Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004676-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004677
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004678- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4679
4680- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4681 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4682
4683- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4684 deleted at process exit time.
4685
4686- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4687 in backslash.
4688
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004689Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004690----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004691
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004692- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4693 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4694 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4695
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004696
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004697What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004698===========================
4699
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004700*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4701
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004702Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004703--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004704
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004705- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4706 been extensively updated. See
4707
4708 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4709
4710 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4711
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004712- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4713 deleted!
4714
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004715- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4716 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4717 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4718 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4719 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4720
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004721- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4722
4723 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4724 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4725
4726 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4727 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4728 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4729 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4730 supported anyway.
4731
4732 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4733 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4734
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004735- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4736 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4737 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4738 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4739 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004740
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004741- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4742 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4743 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4744
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004745Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004746-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004747
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004748- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4749 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4750 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4751 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4752 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4753 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004754 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4755 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4756 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4757 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004758
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004759- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4760 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4761 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4762
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004763Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004764-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004765
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004766- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4767
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004768Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004769-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004770
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004771- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4772 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4773 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4774 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4775 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4776 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4777
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004778- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4779
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004780- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4781
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004782- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4783
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004784- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4785 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4786 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4787
4788- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4789
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004790Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004791-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004792
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004793- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4794 off a search on Google.
4795
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004796Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004797-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004798
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004799- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4800 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4801 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4802 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4803 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4804 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4805 other platforms should do likewise.
4806
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004807- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4808 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4809 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4810
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004811C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004812-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004813
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004814- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4815 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4816 producing key-value pairs.
4817
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004818- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004819 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004820 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4821 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4822 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4823 previously went unchallenged.
4824
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004825New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004826-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004827
4828Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004829-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004830
4831Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004832-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004833
4834Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004835----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004836
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004837- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4838 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004839
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004840- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4841 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4842 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4843 home.
4844
4845
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004846What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004847===========================
4848
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004849*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4850
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004851Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004852--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004853
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004854- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4855 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004856
4857 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004858 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004859
4860 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4861 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004862 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004863 This needs to be documented.
4864
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004865- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4866 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4867
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004868- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4869 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4870 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4871
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004872- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4873 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4874
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004875- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4876 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4877 class forbids it).
4878
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004879- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4880 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4881 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4882
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004883- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4884
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004885Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004886-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004887
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004888- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4889 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004890 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004891
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004892- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4893 (like 1 + '').
4894
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004895Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004896-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004897
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004898- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4899 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4900 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4901 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004902 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004903 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4904
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004905- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4906 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4907 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4908 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4909
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004910- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4911 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004912 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4913 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4914 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004915
4916- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4917 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004918
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004919- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4920 bytes on its input.
4921
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004922Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004923-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004924
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004925- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004926 convenience function.
4927
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004928- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4929 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4930 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004931 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4932 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4933 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4934 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4935 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4936 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004937
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004938- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4939 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4940 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4941 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4942
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004943- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4944 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4945 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4946
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004947- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4948 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4949 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4950 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4951
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004952- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4953 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004954 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004955 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4956 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4957 new -l and -e options.
4958
4959- statcache is now deprecated.
4960
4961- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4962 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004963 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004964 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4965 time properly taken into account.
4966
4967- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4968 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4969 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4970 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4971
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004972Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004973-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004974
4975Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004976-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004977
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004978- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4979 is built with libdb3 if available.
4980
4981- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4982
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004983C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004984-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004985
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004986- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4987 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4988 PySequence_Size().
4989
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004990- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4991
4992- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4993 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4994 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4995
4996- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4997 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4998
4999- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
5000 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
5001
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005002New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005003-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005004
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005005- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
5006 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
5007
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00005008- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
5009 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
5010
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005011- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
5012
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005013Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005014-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005015
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005016- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
5017 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
5018
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005019Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005020-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005021
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005022Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005023----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005024
5025- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
5026 removed completely in the next release.
5027
5028- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
5029 OSX.
5030
5031- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
5032 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
5033
5034- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
5035
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005036
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005037What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005038===========================
5039
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005040*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
5041
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005042Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005043--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005044
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005045- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005046 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005047 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005048 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
5049 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005050 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
5051 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005052 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
5053 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00005054
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00005055- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
5056 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
5057
5058- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
5059 class methods, static methods, and properties.
5060
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005061Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005062-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005063
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00005064- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
5065 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
5066 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
5067 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
5068 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
5069 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
5070 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
5071 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
5072
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005073- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
5074 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
5075 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
5076 example).
5077
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005078- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005079 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005080 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005081 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005082
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005083- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
5084 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
5085 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00005086 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005087
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005088- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
5089 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
5090 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
5091 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
5092 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
5093 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
5094
5095 isinstance(x, (A, B))
5096
5097 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
5098
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005099Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005100-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005101
5102- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
5103
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005104- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
5105
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005106- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
5107 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00005108
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005109- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
5110 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
5111 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
5112 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
5113 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
5114 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00005115 attributes.
5116
5117- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
5118 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
5119 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00005120
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005121- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
5122 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
5123 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005124
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005125- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
5126 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
5127 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005128 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
5129 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5130
5131- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5132 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005133
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005134Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005135-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005136
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005137- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5138 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5139
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005140- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5141 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5142 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5143 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5144
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005145- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5146 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5147 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5148 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5149
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005150 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5151 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5152 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5153 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5154 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5155 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5156 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5157 without losing information).
5158
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005159- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005160 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5161 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5162 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5163 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5164 module).
5165
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005166 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005167 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5168 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5169 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5170 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005171
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005172- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005173 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5174 encoding.
5175
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005176- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5177 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5178
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005179- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005180 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5181
5182- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5183 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5184 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5185 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5186
5187- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5188
5189- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5190 ON, and OFF.
5191
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005192- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5193 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5194
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005195Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005196-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005197
5198- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5199 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5200 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005201
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005202- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5203 been added: -X and -E.
5204
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005205Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005206-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005207
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005208- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5209 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5210
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005211C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005212-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005213
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005214- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5215 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5216 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5217 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5218 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5219
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005220- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5221 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5222 as long) arguments.
5223
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005224- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5225 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5226 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5227 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5228 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5229 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5230
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005231- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5232 input.
5233
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005234New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005235-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005236
5237Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005238-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005239
5240Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005241-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005242
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005243- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5244 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5245 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5246
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005247- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5248 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5249 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005250 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005251
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005252 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5253 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5254 import signal
5255 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005256
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005257 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005258 while 1:
5259 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005260 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005261 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5262 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5263 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5264 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005265
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005266
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005267What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5268===========================
5269
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005270*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5271
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005272Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005273--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005274
5275- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5276 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5277 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5278
5279- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5280 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5281 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5282 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5283 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5284 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5285 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005286
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005287- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005288 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005289 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5290 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5291 associate a docstring with a property.
5292
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005293- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5294 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5295 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5296 other built-in object types.
5297
5298- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5299 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5300 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5301 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5302 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5303
5304- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5305 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5306
5307- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5308 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005309 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005310 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5311 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5312 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5313 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5314 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5315
5316- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5317 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5318 class.
5319
5320- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5321 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5322 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5323 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5324
5325- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5326 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5327 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5328 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5329
5330- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5331 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5332
5333- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5334 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5335 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5336 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5337 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005338 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005339 with the same value as s.
5340
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005341- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5342
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005343Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005344----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005345
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005346- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5347
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005348- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5349 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5350 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5351 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5352 objects.
5353
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005354- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5355 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005356 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5357 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5358
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005359- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5360 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5361 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5362
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005363Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005364-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005365
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005366- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5367 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5368 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5369 by the instances.
5370
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005371- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5372 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5373 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5374
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005375- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5376 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5377 before the entire comparison is complete.
5378
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005379- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5380 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5381 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5382
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005383- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5384 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5385 getwriter().
5386
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005387- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5388 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5389
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005390- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005391 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5392 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5393
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005394- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5395 iterable object.
5396
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005397- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5398 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005399
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005400- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5401 authentication.
5402
5403- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5404 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005405
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005406- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005407 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5408 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5409 a sample driver.)
5410
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005411Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005412-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005413
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005414- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5415 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5416 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5417 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5418 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5419 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5420 kernel has large file support.
5421
5422- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5423 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5424 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5425 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5426 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5427
5428- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5429 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5430 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5431
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005432C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005433-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005434
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005435- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5436 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5437
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005438New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005439-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005440
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005441- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5442 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5443
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005444Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005445-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005446
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005447- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5448 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5449 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5450 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5451 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5452
5453- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5454 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5455 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5456 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5457
5458- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5459 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5460
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005461Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005462-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005463
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005464- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005465 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5466 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005467
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005468
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005469What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5470===========================
5471
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005472*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5473
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005474Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005475----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005476
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005477- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5478 big to represent as a C double.
5479
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005480- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5481 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5482 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5483 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5484 restriction).
5485
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005486- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5487 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5488 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5489 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5490 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5491
5492 >>> dir([])
5493 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5494 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5495 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5496 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5497 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5498 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5499 'reverse', 'sort']
5500
5501 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5502
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005503- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005504 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5505 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5506 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5507 OverflowError exception.
5508
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005509- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005510 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005511 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5512 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5513 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5514 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5515 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005516 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005517 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5518 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5519
5520 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5521 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5522 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5523 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005524
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005525- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005526 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5527 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5528 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5529 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5530 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5531 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5532 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5533 once it is created.
5534
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005535- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5536 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5537 (key, value) pairs.
5538
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005539- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005540 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5541 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5542
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005543- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5544 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5545 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5546 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5547 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005548
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005549- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005550 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5551 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5552
5553 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5554
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005555- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005556 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5557
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005558Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005559-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005560
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005561- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005562 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5563 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005564
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005565- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5566 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5567 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5568 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5569 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5570 in this area anymore).
5571
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005572- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5573 threading.Timer.
5574
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005575- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5576 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5577
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005578- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005579 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5580
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005581- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005582 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5583 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5584 converted to Python longs.
5585
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005586- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005587 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5588
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005589- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5590 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5591 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5592
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005593Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005594-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005595
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005596- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5597 division operators as per PEP 238.
5598
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005599Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005600-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005601
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005602- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5603 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5604 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5605 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5606
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005607C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005608-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005609
5610- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005611
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005612- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5613 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005614 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005615
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005616 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5617 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005618 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005619 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005620
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005621- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005622 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5623 module:
5624
5625 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005626
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005627 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5628 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005629
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005630 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5631 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005632
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005633 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5634
5635 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5636
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005637- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005638 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5639 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5640 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005641
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005642New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005643-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005644
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005645- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5646 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5647 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5648 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5649 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005650
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005651Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005652-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005653
5654Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005655-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005656
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005657- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5658 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5659 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5660 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005661 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5662 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5663 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5664 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5665 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005666
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005667- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005668 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5669
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005670
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005671What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5672===========================
5673
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005674*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5675
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005676Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005677-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005678
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005679- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5680 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5681
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005682- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5683 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5684 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005685
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005686- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5687 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5688 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5689 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005690
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005691- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5692
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005693- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005694
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005695Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005696-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005697
5698- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005699 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005700 the module docstring for details.
5701
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005702Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005703-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005704
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005705- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005706 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5707 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5708 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005709
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005710- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5711 Nick Mathewson.
5712
5713Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005714----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005715
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005716- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5717 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5718 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5719 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5720 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5721 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5722 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5723 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5724
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005725- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5726 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5727 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5728 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5729
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005730- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5731 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5732 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5733 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5734 come a long way).
5735
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005736- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5737 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5738 write filters for these warnings).
5739
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005740- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5741 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5742 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5743 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5744 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5745
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005746- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5747 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5748 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5749 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5750 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5751 older distribution.
5752
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005753Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005754-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005755
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005756- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5757 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005758 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005759
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005760- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5761 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5762 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5763
5764- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5765
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005766- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5767
5768- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5769
5770- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5771
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005772- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005773
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005774- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5775
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005776New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005777-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005778
5779C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005780-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005781
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005782- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5783 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5784 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5785 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5786 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5787 against buffer overruns.
5788
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005789- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005790 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5791 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005792 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5793 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5794 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5795
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005796- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5797 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5798 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5799 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5800 deprecated.
5801
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005802Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005803-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005804
5805- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5806 relevant is found.
5807
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005808
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005809What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005810===========================
5811
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005812*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5813
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005814Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005815----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005816
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005817- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5818 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5819 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5820 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5821 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5822 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5823 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5824 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005825 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005826 repaired.
5827
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005828- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005829 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005830 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5831 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5832 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5833 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5834 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5835 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5836 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5837 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5838
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005839- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5840 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5841 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5842 leading BMO character).
5843
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005844- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5845 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5846 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5847
5848 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5849 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5850 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005851
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005852 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5853 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5854 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5855 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5856 for various simple to use conversions.
5857
5858 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5859 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5860
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005861 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5862 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5863 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5864 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5865 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5866 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5867 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5868 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5869 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5870 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5871 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5872 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5873 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5874 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5875 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005876
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005877- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5878 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5879 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005880 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005881 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005882
5883 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005884 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5885 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5886 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5887 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5888 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005889 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5890 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005891
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005892 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5893 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5894 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005895 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005896
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005897- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5898 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5899 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5900 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5901 floating arithmetic,
5902
5903 x = 9007199254740992.0
5904 print long(x)
5905
5906 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5907 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5908 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5909 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5910 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5911 functions are of good quality).
5912
5913 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5914 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5915 algorithms to break.
5916
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005917- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5918 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5919 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5920 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5921 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5922 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5923 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5924 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5925 order.
5926
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005927- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5928 operation along the most common code paths.
5929
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005930- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5931 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5932
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005933- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5934 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5935 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5936 {}.update(UserDict())
5937
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005938- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5939 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5940 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5941 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5942 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5943 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5944 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5945 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5946
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005947- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005948 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005949
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005950 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005951 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5952 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005953 join() method of strings
5954 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005955 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5956 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005957 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005958 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005959
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005960- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5961 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5962
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005963- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5964 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5965
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005966- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5967 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5968 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5969 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5970
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005971- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5972 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005973 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005974 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5975 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005976
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005977- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5978
5979
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005980Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005981-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005982
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005983- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005984 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005985 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5986 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5987
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005988- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5989 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5990
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005991- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5992 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5993 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5994 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5995
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005996- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5997 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5998 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5999
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00006000- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
6001
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00006002- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
6003
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00006004- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
6005 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
6006 that are still imported into string.py).
6007
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006008- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
6009
6010- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
6011 Now it does.
6012
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006013- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
6014
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006015- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
6016 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
6017 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
6018 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
6019 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006020 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
6021 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006022
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00006023- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
6024 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
6025 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
6026 'help(object)'.
6027
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006028Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006029-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006030
6031- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006032 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006033 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
6034 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
6035
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006036- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006037 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
6038 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006039
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006040C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006041-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006042
6043- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
6044 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006045
6046----
6047
6048**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**