blob: 63081b0a725ee27669e9f69271d70572683a4b17 [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
10Core and builtins
11-----------------
12
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +000013- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
14 list.sort().
15
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +000016- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
17 (2+3) --> (5).
18
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +000019- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
20
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000021
22Extension Modules
23-----------------
24
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +000025- stat_float_times is now True.
26
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +000027- array.array objects are now picklable.
28
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +000029- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
30 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
31
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +000032- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
33 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
34 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
35
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +000036- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
37 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000038
39Library
40-------
41
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +000042- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
43
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +000044- Enhancements to the csv module:
45
46 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
47 reflecting it's capabilities, and improving it's compliance with
48 PEP 305.
49 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
50 reporting.
51 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
52 dictates.
53 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +000054 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +000055 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +000056 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
57 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +000058 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
59 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +000060 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +000061 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
62 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
63 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
64 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
65 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
66 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
67 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
68 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
69 without first creating a dialect class.
70 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
71 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
72 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +000073 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +000074 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
75 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +000076 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
77 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
78 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
79 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +000080 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
81 This has been fixed.
82
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +000083- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
84 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
85 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
86 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
87
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +000088- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
89
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +000090- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
91 (Bug #951915).
92
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +000093- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
94 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
95 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
96 encoding alias table
97
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +000098- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
99
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000100- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
101 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
102
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000103- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
104
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000105- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
106
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000107- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
108
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000109- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
110
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000111- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
112
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000113- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
114 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
115 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
116
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000117- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000118 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000119
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000120- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
121 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
122 tokenizer with very long source lines.
123
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000124- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
125 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
126
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000127
128Build
129-----
130
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000131- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
132 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
133 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
134 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
135 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
136 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
137 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
138 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
139
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000140
141C API
142-----
143
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000144- Removed PyRange_New().
145
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000146
147Tests
148-----
149
150
151Mac
152---
153
154
155
156Tools/Demos
157-----------
158
159
160
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000161What's New in Python 2.4 final?
162===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000163
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000164*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000165
166Core and builtins
167-----------------
168
169- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
170 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
171 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
172
173
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000174What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
175==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000176
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000177*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000178
179Core and builtins
180-----------------
181
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000182- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
183 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
184 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
185
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000186
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000187Library
188-------
189
190- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
191 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
192 raised is re-raised.
193
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000194- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
195 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
196
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000197- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
198 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
199 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
200 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
201 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
202 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
203 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
204 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
205 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
206 by the slice are recomputed now.
207
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000208- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000209
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000210Build
211-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000212
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000213- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
214 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
215 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000216
217C API
218-----
219
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000220- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
221
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000222
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000223What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
224================================
225
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000226*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000227
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000228License
229-------
230
231The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
232is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
233changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
234Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
235intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
236durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
237the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
238License::
239
240 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
241
242says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
243to Python 2.1.1.
244
245The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
246License Version 2.
247
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000248Core and builtins
249-----------------
250
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000251- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
252 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
253 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
254 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
255 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
256 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
257 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
258 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
259 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
260 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
261
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000262- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000263
264Extension Modules
265-----------------
266
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000267- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
268 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
269 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
270 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000271
272Library
273-------
274
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000275- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
276 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
277 returned.
278
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000279- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
280
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000281- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
282 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
283
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000284- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
285
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000286- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
287 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000288
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000289- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
290
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000291- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
292
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000293- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000294 the source code is updated and reloaded.
295
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000296Build
297-----
298
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000299- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000300
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000301What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
302================================
303
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000304*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000305
306Core and builtins
307-----------------
308
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000309- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000310 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
311
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000312- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
313 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
314 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
315 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
316
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000317- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
318 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
319
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000320- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
321 constant.
322
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000323- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
324 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
325 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
326 large), and to anomalies such as
327 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
328 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
329 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
330 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000331
332Extension modules
333-----------------
334
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000335- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
336 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000337 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
338 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
339 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000340
341Library
342-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000343
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000344- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000345 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000346 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
347 --swig-cpp.
348
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000349- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
350 it is set.
351
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000352- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000353
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000354- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
355 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
356 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
357 Closes bug #1039270.
358
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000359- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000360
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000361 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000362 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
363 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
364 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
365 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
366 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
367 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
368 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
369 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
370 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
371 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
372 + Updates to documentation.
373
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000374- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
375 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
376 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
377 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
378
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000379- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000380
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000381- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
382 applications should use the getmember function.
383
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000384- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
385
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000386- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
387 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
388 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
389 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
390 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
391 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
392 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
393 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
394 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
395
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000396- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
397 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000398 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000399
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000400- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
401 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
402 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
403 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
404 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
405 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
406 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
407 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000408
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000409- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
410 the new public features (of which there are many).
411
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000412- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000413 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
414 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
415 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
416 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000417 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000418
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000419- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
420
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000421- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
422 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
423 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
424 options.
425
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000426- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
427 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
428 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
429 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
430 conditions under which non-string values work.
431
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000432Build
433-----
434
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000435- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
436 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
437 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
438
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000439- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
440 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
441 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
442 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
443 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000444
445C API
446-----
447
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000448- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
449 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
450
451- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
452
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000453- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
454 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
455 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
456 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
457 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
458 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
459 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
460 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
461 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
462
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000463- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
464
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000465- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
466 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
467 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000468
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000469Tests
470-----
471
472- test__locale ported to unittest
473
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000474Mac
475---
476
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000477- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
478 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
479 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000480
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000481Tools/Demos
482-----------
483
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000484- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
485 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
486 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
487 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
488 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000489
490
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000491What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
492=================================
493
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000494*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000495
496Core and builtins
497-----------------
498
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000499- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000500 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
501
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000502- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
503 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
504 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
505 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
506 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
507 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
508 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
509 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000510 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
511 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
512 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
513 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
514 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000515
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000516- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
517 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
518 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
519 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
520 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
521
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000522- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
523
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000524- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
525 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
526
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000527- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
528 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
529 modified the list.
530
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000531- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
532 functions is now writable.
533
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000534- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
535 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
536 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
537 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
538
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000539- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
540 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
541 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
542 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
543 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000544
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000545- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
546 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
547
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000548Extension modules
549-----------------
550
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000551- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
552
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000553- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
554 data.
555
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000556- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
557 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
558 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
559 supposed to have been truncated away.
560
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000561- Added socket.socketpair().
562
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000563- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
564 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
565
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000566- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000567 versions of Python, have now been removed.
568
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000569Library
570-------
571
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000572- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000573 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000574
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000575- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
576 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
577
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000578- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
579 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
580
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000581- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
582
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000583- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
584 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000585
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000586- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
587 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
588
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000589- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
590
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000591- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
592
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000593- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
594
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000595- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
596 Percivall.
597
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000598- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
599 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
600
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000601- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
602 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
603 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000604 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000605
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000606- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
607 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
608 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
609 and exponent.
610
611- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
612
613- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
614 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatability and atexit
615 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
616
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000617- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
618 to the readline module.
619
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000620- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000621 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
622 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000623
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000624- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
625 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
626 contains symlinks.
627
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000628- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
629 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
630
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000631- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
632 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
633 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
634
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000635- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
636 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
637 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
638 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
639 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
640 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
641 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
642 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
643 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
644 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
645 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
646 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
647 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
648
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000649- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
650
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000651Tools/Demos
652-----------
653
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000654- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
655 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
656
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000657- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
658
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000659Build
660-----
661
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000662- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
663 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
664 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
665 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
666 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
667 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
668 plans to do so.
669
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +0000670- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
671 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
672
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +0000673- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
674 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
675
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000676- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
677 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
678
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +0000679- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
680 GNU/k*BSD systems.
681
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +0000682- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
683 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
684
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000685C API
686-----
687
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000688..
689
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000690Documentation
691-------------
692
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +0000693- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
694 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
695
696- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
697 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
698 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +0000699
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000700New platforms
701-------------
702
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +0000703- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
704
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000705Tests
706-----
707
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000708..
709
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000710Windows
711-------
712
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +0000713- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
714 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
715 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
716 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
717 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
718 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
719 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
720 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
721 the problem.
722
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000723Mac
724---
725
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000726..
727
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000728
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000729What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
730=================================
731
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000732*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000733
734Core and builtins
735-----------------
736
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +0000737- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
738 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
739 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
740 sensitive code.
741
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000742- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000743 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000744
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000745 @staticmethod
746 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000747
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000748 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000749
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000750- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
751 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
752 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
753 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
754 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
755 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
756 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
757 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
758 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
759 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
760 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
761
762 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
763 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
764 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
765 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
766 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
767 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
768 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
769
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +0000770- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
771 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
772
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000773- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000774 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000775
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000776- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000777 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000778 which was missing for no apparent reason.
779
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000780- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000781 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
782 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
783
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000784- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
785 types that support garbage collection.
786
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +0000787- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
788
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +0000789- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
790 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
791 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
792 Jython.
793
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000794- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
795
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +0000796- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
797 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
798
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +0000799- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
800 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
801 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +0000802
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +0000803- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
804 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
805 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
806
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000807Extension modules
808-----------------
809
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +0000810- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
811
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000812Library
813-------
814
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +0000815- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
816 TIS-620
817
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +0000818- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
819 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
820 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
821 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
822 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
823 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
824 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
825 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
826 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
827 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
828
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +0000829- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
830
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +0000831- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
832 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
833 same as when the argument is omitted).
834 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
835
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +0000836- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
837
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +0000838- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
839 schemes are offered.
840
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +0000841- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
842
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +0000843- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
844 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
845 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
846
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +0000847- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
848
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +0000849- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
850 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
851
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +0000852- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
853 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
854 when dummy_threading is being used.
855
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +0000856- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
857 from a tarfile.
858
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000859- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000860 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000861
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +0000862- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
863 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
864 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
865 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
866
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +0000867- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
868 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
869
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +0000870- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
871 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
872 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
873 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
874 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
875 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
876 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
877 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
878 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
879 by some other method in progress).
880
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000881- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
882 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
883 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +0000884
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +0000885- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
886
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +0000887- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
888 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
889 AM Kuchling.
890
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +0000891- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
892 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
893 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
894
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +0000895- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
896 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
897 instead of unsigned.
898
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000899- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +0000900 no longer part of the public API.
901
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +0000902- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
903 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
904 string methods of the same name).
905
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000906- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +0000907 SF patch 945642.
908
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000909- doctest unittest integration improvements:
910
911 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
912
913 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
914 DocTestSuites.
915
916- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
917 that provide thread-local data.
918
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000919- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
920 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
921
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000922- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
923
924- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
925 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
926 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
927
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000928- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
929
930 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
931 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
932 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000933
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +0000934 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
935 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
936 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
937 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
938
939 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
940 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
941
942 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
943 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
944 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
945 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
946
947 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
948 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
949 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
950 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
951 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
952
953 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
954 wrapping help output.
955
956 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
957 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
958 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +0000959
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000960C API
961-----
962
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000963- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
964 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
965 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
966 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
967 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
968 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
969 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
970 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
971 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
972 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
973 its visible semantics have not changed.
974
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000975- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
976 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
977
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000978Documentation
979-------------
980
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000981- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000982
983 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +0000984 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000985
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +0000986 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000987
988 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
989
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +0000990- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000991
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000992Tests
993-----
994
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000995- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +0000996 platforms that use the Makefile.
997
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000998- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
999 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1000 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1001
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001002
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001003What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1004=================================
1005
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001006*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001007
1008Core and builtins
1009-----------------
1010
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001011- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1012 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1013 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1014 objects now (one object instead of three).
1015
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001016- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1017 Windows DLLs.
1018
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001019- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1020 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001021
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001022- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1023 a new .pyc magic.
1024
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001025- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1026 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1027 be there.
1028
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001029- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1030 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1031 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1032
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001033- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1034 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1035 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1036
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001037- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1038
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001039- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1040 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1041 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001042
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001043- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1044 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1045
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001046- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1047
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001048- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001049 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001050
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001051- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1052
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001053- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1054
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001055- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1056 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1057
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001058- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1059 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1060 Fixes bug #858016 .
1061
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001062- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1063 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1064 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1065
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001066- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1067 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1068 improves their performance (about 35%).
1069
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001070- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1071 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1072 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1073
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001074- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1075 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1076 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1077 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1078
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001079- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1080 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
1081 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
1082 length is not known).
1083
1084- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1085 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001086 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1087 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001088 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1089
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001090- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1091 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1092
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001093- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1094 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1095 keyword arguments.
1096
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001097- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1098 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1099 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1100
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001101- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1102 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1103 cases.
1104
1105- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1106 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1107 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1108 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1109 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1110 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1111 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1112 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1113 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1114 a release build.
1115
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001116- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1117 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1118
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001119- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001120 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001121
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001122- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1123 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1124 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1125 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1126 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1127 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1128 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1129 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1130 destroyed.
1131
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001132- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1133 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1134 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1135 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1136 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1137 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1138 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1139 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1140
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001141- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1142 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1143 character other than a space.
1144
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001145- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1146 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1147 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1148 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1149 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1150 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1151 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1152 attributes with the same name.
1153
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001154- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1155 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1156 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1157 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1158 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1159 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1160 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1161 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1162 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1163 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1164 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1165 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1166 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1167 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001168
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001169- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1170 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1171 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1172 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1173 This has been repaired.
1174
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001175- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1176
1177- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1178
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001179- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1180 over a sequence.
1181
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001182- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001183 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001184
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001185- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1186
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001187- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1188 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1189 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1190 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1191 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1192 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1193 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1194 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1195
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001196- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1197 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1198 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1199
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001200- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1201 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1202 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1203 freelist.
1204
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001205- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1206 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1207
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001208- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1209 number.
1210
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001211- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1212 a TypeError exception.
1213
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001214- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1215 820195.
1216
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001217- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1218 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1219 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1220
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001221- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001222 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1223 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001224
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001225- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1226 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1227 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1228
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001229- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1230 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001231 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001232
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001233- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001234 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1235 the first call.
1236
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001237
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001238Extension modules
1239-----------------
1240
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001241- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1242 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1243
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001244- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1245 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1246 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1247 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1248 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1249 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1250 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001251
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001252- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1253
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001254- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1255
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001256- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1257 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1258
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001259- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1260 fewer false positives.
1261
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001262- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1263 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1264
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001265- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001266 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1267
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001268- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001269 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001270 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001271 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1272 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001273
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001274- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1275 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1276 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1277 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1278
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001279- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1280 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1281 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1282 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1283 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1284 #897625.
1285
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001286- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1287 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1288
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001289- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1290 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1291 and pops on either side of the deque.
1292
1293- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1294 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1295
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001296- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1297 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1298 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1299 other functions that expect a function argument.
1300
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001301- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1302
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001303- os.getsid was added.
1304
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001305- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1306 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1307 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1308
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001309- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1310
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001311- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1312
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001313- readline.clear_history was added.
1314
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001315- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1316
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001317- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1318
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001319- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1320
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001321- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1322
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001323- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1324
1325- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1326
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001327- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1328
1329- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1330
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001331- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1332 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1333 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1334
1335- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1336 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1337 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1338 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1339 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1340 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1341 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1342
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001343- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1344 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1345 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1346 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001347
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001348- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001349 iterators from a single iterable.
1350
1351- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1352 of raising a TypeError exception.
1353
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001354- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1355 as parameter.
1356
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001357Library
1358-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001359
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001360- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1361 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1362 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001363
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001364- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1365 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1366 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001367
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001368- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001369
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001370- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1371 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001372
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001373- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1374 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1375
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001376- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1377
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001378- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001379 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001380
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001381- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001382 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001383
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001384- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1385
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001386- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1387 on cygwin and mingw32.
1388
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001389- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1390
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001391- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1392 module.
1393
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001394- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1395 installation scheme for all platforms.
1396
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001397- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001398 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001399
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001400- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1401 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1402 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1403
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001404- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1405 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1406 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1407
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001408- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1409
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001410- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1411
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001412- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1413 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1414
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001415- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1416 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1417 type pattern with the same value exists.
1418
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001419- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1420 when run from the command prompt).
1421
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001422- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1423 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1424
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001425- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1426 default sort).
1427
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001428- Added global runctx function to profile module
1429
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001430- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1431
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001432- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1433
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001434- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1435
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001436- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001437 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1438 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1439 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1440 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1441 accordingly.
1442
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001443- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1444 decoding standards.
1445
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001446- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1447 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1448 called for all requests.
1449
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001450- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1451 they are passed to the compiler.
1452
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001453- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1454 indent, width and depth.
1455
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001456- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1457 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1458
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001459- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1460 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1461
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001462- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1463
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001464- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1465
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001466- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1467
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001468- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1469 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1470
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001471- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001472 for better performance.
1473
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001474- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001475
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001476- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1477 a string).
1478
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001479- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1480
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001481- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1482
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001483- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1484
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001485- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1486
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001487- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1488 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1489 list of fieldnames.
1490
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001491- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1492 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1493
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001494- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1495
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001496- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1497 empty lists.
1498
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001499- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1500 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1501 and shelves.
1502
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001503- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1504 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1505
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001506- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001507 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1508 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001509
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001510- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1511 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001512 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001513
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001514- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001515 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1516 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1517
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001518- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1519 and removed in Py2.4.
1520
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001521- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1522
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001523- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1524
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001525Tools/Demos
1526-----------
1527
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001528- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1529 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1530
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001531- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1532
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001533- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1534 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1535 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1536 destination in situations where both files are given.
1537
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001538- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1539 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1540 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1541 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1542
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001543- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1544
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001545- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1546 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1547 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1548 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1549 now.
1550
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001551- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1552 in effect
1553
1554- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1555 C-c C-h
1556
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001557- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1558 -d option was given.
1559
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001560Build
1561-----
1562
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001563- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1564 build under OS X.
1565
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001566- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1567 --enable-profiling.
1568
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001569- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1570 is configured --with-tsc.
1571
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001572- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1573 on AMD64.
1574
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001575- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1576 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1577
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001578- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1579 removed.
1580
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001581- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1582 supported (see PEP 11).
1583
1584- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1585
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001586- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1587
1588- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1589 (see PEP 11).
1590
1591- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1592 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1593
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001594C API
1595-----
1596
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001597- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1598 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1599 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1600
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001601- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1602 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1603 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1604 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1605
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001606- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1607 generator objects.
1608
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001609- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1610 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001611 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1612 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001613
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001614- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1615 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1616
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001617- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1618 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1619 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1620 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1621 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1622
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001623- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1624 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1625 about 10% faster.
1626
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001627- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1628 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1629
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001630- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1631 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1632 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1633 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1634
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001635Windows
1636-------
1637
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001638- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1639 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1640 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1641 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1642
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001643- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1644 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1645 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1646
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001647
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001648What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1649===============================
1650
1651*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1652
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001653IDLE
1654----
1655
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001656- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1657 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1658 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1659 context-menu actions.
1660
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001661- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1662 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1663 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1664 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1665 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1666 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1667 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
1668 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
1669 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
1670
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001671
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001672What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
1673=============================================
1674
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00001675*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001676
1677Core and builtins
1678-----------------
1679
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001680- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001681 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001682 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1683
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001684Extension modules
1685-----------------
1686
1687- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1688 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1689 than once. This has been fixed.
1690
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001691- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1692 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1693 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1694 call.
1695
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001696- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1697
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001698Library
1699-------
1700
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001701- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1702 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1703
1704- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1705 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1706 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1707 restored.
1708
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001709IDLE
1710----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001711
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001712- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001713
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001714Build
1715-----
1716
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001717- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1718 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1719
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001720C API
1721-----
1722
1723Windows
1724-------
1725
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001726- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1727 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1728
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001729- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1730
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001731Mac
1732---
1733
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001734- Various fixes to pimp.
1735
1736- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1737
1738- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1739 more problems than it solves.
1740
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001741
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001742What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1743=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001744
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001745*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1746
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001747Core and builtins
1748-----------------
1749
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001750- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1751 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1752
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001753- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
1754 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001755 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001756
1757- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
1758 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
1759 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001760 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001761
1762- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
1763 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001764
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001765- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
1766 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
1767 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
1768
1769- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001770 770247.
1771
1772- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001773
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001774Extension modules
1775-----------------
1776
1777- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
1778 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
1779
1780- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
1781
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001782- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
1783
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00001784- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
1785 contained within the _strptime module.
1786
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001787- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
1788 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
1789
1790- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001791 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
1792
1793- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
1794 the find_class attribute, if present.
1795
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001796- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001797
1798 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
1799 (SF bug 763298).
1800
1801 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00001802 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
1803 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
1804 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001805
1806 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
1807
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001808Library
1809-------
1810
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001811- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
1812
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00001813- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
1814 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
1815 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
1816 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
1817 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
1818 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
1819 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
1820 or Tester().
1821
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001822- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
1823 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
1824 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
1825 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
1826 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
1827 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
1828 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
1829 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
1830 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00001831
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001832 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00001833
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00001834- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
1835 weren't before was an oversight.
1836
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001837- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
1838 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
1839
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00001840- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
1841 when there are no lines.
1842
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00001843- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
1844 which could occur with Tk 8.4
1845
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001846- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
1847 to child processes.
1848
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001849- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
1850
1851- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
1852
1853- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
1854 xmlrpclib.
1855
1856- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
1857 responses.
1858
1859- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
1860 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
1861
1862- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
1863 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
1864 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
1865
1866- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
1867 used as patterns.
1868
1869- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
1870 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
1871 than Tk 8.3.
1872
1873- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
1874
1875- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001876
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001877Tools/Demos
1878-----------
1879
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001880- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
1881
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00001882- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
1883
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001884- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001885
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001886Build
1887-----
1888
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001889- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
1890
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001891- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
1892
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001893- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
1894 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001895
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001896- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
1897 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
1898 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001899
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001900C API
1901-----
1902
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001903- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
1904 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
1905
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001906Windows
1907-------
1908
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001909- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
1910 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
1911 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
1912 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
1913 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
1914 Python exception ::
1915
1916 thread.error: can't start new thread
1917
1918 is raised now.
1919
1920- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
1921 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
1922 instead of from DLL teardown.
1923
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001924Mac
1925---
1926
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001927- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00001928 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001929 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
1930 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
1931 the executable in the bundle.
1932
1933- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001934
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00001935- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
1936
1937- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
1938 on Panther.
1939
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001940What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
1941================================
1942
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00001943*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00001944
1945Core and builtins
1946-----------------
1947
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00001948- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
1949 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
1950 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
1951 with the -i option.
1952
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00001953- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
1954 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
1955
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00001956- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
1957 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
1958
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00001959- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
1960 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
1961 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
1962 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
1963 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
1964 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
1965 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
1966 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
1967 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
1968 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
1969 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
1970 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
1971 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00001972
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001973- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
1974 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
1975 embedded in a lambda expression.
1976
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00001977- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
1978 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
1979 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
1980 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
1981 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
1982
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001983- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
1984 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
1985 matches the restriction on classic classes.
1986
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00001987- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
1988 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
1989
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00001990- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
1991 It's writable again.
1992
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001993- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
1994 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
1995 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001996 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00001997
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00001998- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
1999 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2000 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2001
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002002Extension modules
2003-----------------
2004
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002005- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2006 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2007
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002008- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2009 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2010 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2011 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2012
2013- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2014 collection.
2015
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002016- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2017 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2018 unique within a single program run.
2019
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002020- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2021 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2022
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002023- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2024 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2025
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002026- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2027 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002028
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002029- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2030
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002031- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2032 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2033
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002034- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2035 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2036 for many BSD-derived systems.
2037
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002038
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002039Library
2040-------
2041
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002042- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2043 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2044 primary ones:
2045
2046 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2047 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2048 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2049
2050 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2051 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2052 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2053 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2054 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2055 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2056
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002057- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2058 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2059 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2060 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2061 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2062 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2063 argument.
2064
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002065- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2066 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2067 in the archive.
2068
2069- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2070 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2071
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002072- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2073 569574).
2074
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002075- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2076 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2077 no more.
2078
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002079- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2080 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2081 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2082 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2083 code coverage.
2084
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002085- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2086 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2087 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002088 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2089 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002090
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002091- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2092 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2093 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002094 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002095
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002096- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2097
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002098- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2099 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2100 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2101 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2102
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002103- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2104 handling.
2105
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002106- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2107 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2108
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002109- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2110 in socket.py.
2111
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002112- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2113
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002114- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2115 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2116 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2117 opener with proxy support.
2118
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002119- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2120
2121- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2122
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002123Tools/Demos
2124-----------
2125
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002126- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2127
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002128- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2129
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002130- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2131 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002132
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002133- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2134 files.
2135
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002136Build
2137-----
2138
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002139- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002140 different root directory.
2141
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002142C API
2143-----
2144
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002145- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2146 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2147 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2148 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2149 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2150 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2151 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2152 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2153 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2154 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2155
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002156- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2157 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2158 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2159 from Python.
2160
2161
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002162New platforms
2163-------------
2164
2165None this time.
2166
2167Tests
2168-----
2169
2170- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2171 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2172
2173Windows
2174-------
2175
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002176- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2177
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002178- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2179 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2180 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2181 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2182 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2183 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2184 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2185 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2186 that's what it's for.
2187
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002188Mac
2189---
2190
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002191- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2192 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2193 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2194 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002195- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2196 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2197- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002198
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002199SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2200------------------------------------
2201
2202430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2203598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2204622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2205661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2206683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2207697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2208713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2209724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2210727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2211729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2212730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2213731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2214732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2215733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2216735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2217740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2218744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2219745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2220747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2221749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2222751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2223753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2224755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2225757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2226760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2227
2228
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002229What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2230================================
2231
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002232*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002233
2234Core and builtins
2235-----------------
2236
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002237- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2238 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2239
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002240- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2241 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2242 and cannot be strings).
2243
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002244- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2245 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2246 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2247 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2248
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002249- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2250 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2251 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2252 Python itself.
2253
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002254- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2255 the referenced object, if it has one.
2256
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002257- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2258 the thread started at
2259 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2260
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002261- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2262 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2263 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2264 placed on a list index.
2265
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002266- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2267 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2268 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2269 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2270
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002271- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2272 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2273 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2274 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2275 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2276 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2277 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2278
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002279- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2280 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2281 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2282 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2283 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2284
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002285- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2286 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002287
2288- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2289 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2290 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2291 #693195.)
2292
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002293- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2294 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002295
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002296- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002297 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002298 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2299 interpreter executions, would fail.
2300
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002301- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002302 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002303 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002304
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002305Extension modules
2306-----------------
2307
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002308- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2309 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2310 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2311 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2312
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002313- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2314 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2315
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002316- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2317 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2318 and Greg Chapman.)
2319
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002320- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2321 recursively.
2322
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002323- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002324 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2325 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2326 leaks.
2327
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002328- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2329
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002330- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2331 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2332 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2333 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2334 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2335 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2336 #705836.
2337
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002338- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002339 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2340
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002341- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2342 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2343 See SF bug #692416.
2344
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002345- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2346 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2347
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002348- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2349 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2350 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002351
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002352- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002353 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2354 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2355
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002356- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2357 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2358 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2359 timeouts to work properly.
2360
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002361Library
2362-------
2363
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002364- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2365 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2366 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2367 future release.
2368
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002369- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2370 for querying platform dependent features.
2371
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002372- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002373
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002374- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2375 pickle protocol versions.
2376
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002377- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2378 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2379 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2380
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002381- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2382
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002383- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2384 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2385 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2386 modules.
2387
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002388- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2389 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2390 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2391
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002392- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2393 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2394
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002395- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2396 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2397 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2398
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002399- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002400 MS Office extensions.
2401
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002402- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2403 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2404
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002405- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2406 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2407
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002408- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2409 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2410 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2411 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2412 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2413 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2414
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002415- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2416 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2417 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002418
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002419- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2420 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2421 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2422
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002423- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2424
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002425- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2426 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2427 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2428
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002429Tools/Demos
2430-----------
2431
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002432- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2433 See the module docstring for details.
2434
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002435Build
2436-----
2437
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002438- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2439 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002440
2441C API
2442-----
2443
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002444- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2445
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002446- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2447 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2448 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2449
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002450- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2451 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002452
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002453 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2454 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2455 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002456
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002457- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002458 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2459
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002460- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2461 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2462 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002463
2464New platforms
2465-------------
2466
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002467None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002468
2469Tests
2470-----
2471
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002472- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2473 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002474
2475Windows
2476-------
2477
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002478- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2479 function.
2480
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002481- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2482 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002483
2484Mac
2485---
2486
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002487- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2488 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002489
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002490- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2491 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002492
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002493- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2494 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2495 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002496
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002497- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002498 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2499 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002500
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002501- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2502 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002503
2504
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002505What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2506=================================
2507
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002508*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002509
2510Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002511-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002512
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002513- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2514 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2515 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2516
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002517- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2518 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2519 (SF patch #664376.)
2520
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002521- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2522 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2523 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2524 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2525 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2526 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002527 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002528
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002529- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2530 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2531 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2532 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002533 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002534
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002535- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2536 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2537 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2538 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2539 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2540 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2541 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2542 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2543 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2544 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2545 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2546
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002547- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2548 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2549 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2550 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2551 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2552 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2553
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002554- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2555 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2556
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002557- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2558 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2559 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2560 case.)
2561
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002562- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2563 passed as unicode strings.
2564
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002565- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2566 See SF bug #683467.
2567
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002568- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2569 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2570
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002571- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2572
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002573- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2574
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002575- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2576 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2577 arguments.
2578
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002579- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2580 See SF bug #667147.
2581
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002582- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002583 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002584 See SF bug #676155.
2585
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002586- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002587 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002588 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2589 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2590 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2591 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2592 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2593 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002594
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002595Extension modules
2596-----------------
2597
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002598- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2599 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2600 tp_as_number pointer.
2601
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002602- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2603 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2604 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2605 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2606 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2607
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002608- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2609
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002610- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2611
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002612- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002613 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002614 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2615 patch #678531.)
2616
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002617- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2618 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2619
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002620- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2621 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2622
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002623- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2624
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002625- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2626 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2627 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2628
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002629- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2630
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002631- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2632 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2633
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002634- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002635
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002636- datetime changes:
2637
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002638 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2639
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002640 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2641 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2642 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2643 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2644 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2645 now.
2646
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002647 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002648 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2649 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002650
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002651 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002652 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002653 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2654 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2655 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2656 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002657
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002658 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2659 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2660 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002661 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2662
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002663 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2664 by a later example coded by Guido.
2665
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002666 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002667 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
2668 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
2669 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002670 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
2671 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
2672
2673 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
2674 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
2675 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
2676 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
2677 tzinfo subclass instance.
2678
2679 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
2680 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
2681 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2682 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2683 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2684 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2685 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2686 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002687
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002688 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2689 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2690 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2691 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2692 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002693 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2694
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002695 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002696
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002697 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2698 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2699 as a naive datetime object.
2700
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002701 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2702 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2703 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2704
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002705 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2706 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2707 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2708 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2709 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2710 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2711 comparison.
2712
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002713 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2714 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2715 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2716 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002717 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002718
2719 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002720
2721 and ::
2722
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002723 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2724
2725 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2726 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2727 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2728 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2729
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002730 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2731 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2732 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2733 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2734 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2735
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002736 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2737 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002738 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2739 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002740
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002741Library
2742-------
2743
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002744- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2745 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2746
2747- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2748 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2749 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2750 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2751 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2752 See PEP 307 for details.
2753
2754- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
2755 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
2756
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002757- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
2758 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002759 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002760 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
2761 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002762 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002763
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00002764- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
2765 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
2766
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002767- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
2768 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
2769 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
2770
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00002771- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
2772
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00002773- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
2774 exception.
2775
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00002776- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
2777 class.
2778
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00002779- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
2780 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
2781 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
2782
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00002783- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
2784 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
2785
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002786- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00002787 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
2788 See SF bug #659228.
2789
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00002790- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
2791 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
2792 See SF patch #651082.
2793
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00002794- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002795
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00002796- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
2797 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
2798
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002799- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002800 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002801
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00002802- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
2803 DOS paths from other platforms.
2804
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002805Tools/Demos
2806-----------
2807
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002808- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
2809 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
2810 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
2811 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
2812 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
2813 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
2814 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
2815 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
2816 example:
2817
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00002818 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
2819 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002820
2821 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
2822
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002823
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002824Build
2825-----
2826
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002827- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
2828 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
2829 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002830 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
2831
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002832 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
2833
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00002834- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
2835 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
2836 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
2837 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
2838 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
2839 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
2840 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
2841 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
2842 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
2843
2844- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
2845 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
2846 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
2847 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
2848
2849- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
2850 from the Tools/scripts directory.
2851
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002852C API
2853-----
2854
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002855- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
2856 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00002857
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002858- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
2859 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2860 tp_as_number pointer.
2861
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00002862- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
2863 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
2864 (SF #681367)
2865
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00002866- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
2867 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
2868 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
2869 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00002870
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002871Tests
2872-----
2873
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00002874- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002875 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
2876 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
2877 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
2878 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
2879 pydoc.)
2880
2881- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
2882
2883- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002884
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002885Windows
2886-------
2887
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002888- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
2889 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
2890 time).
2891
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00002892- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
2893 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
2894
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002895- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
2896 release without strong cryptography.
2897
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002898- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002899 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002900
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002901- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
2902 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
2903
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002904Mac
2905---
2906
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002907- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
2908 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002909
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00002910- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
2911 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
2912 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002913
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00002914- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
2915 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002916
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002917- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
2918 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
2919 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
2920 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002921
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00002922- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00002923 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
2924 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
2925 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002926
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002927
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002928What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002929=================================
2930
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00002931*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002932
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002933Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002934--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002935
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00002936- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
2937
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002938- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
2939 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002940 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00002941 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00002942 a different meaning than before.
2943
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002944- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002945 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00002946 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002947
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00002948- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002949 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00002950 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00002951
2952- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
2953 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
2954 and deallocation.
2955
2956- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
2957 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
2958
2959- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
2960 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
2961 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
2962 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
2963 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
2964
2965- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
2966 now detected by the garbage collector.
2967
2968- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
2969 [SF bug 519621]
2970
2971- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
2972 identifier.
2973
2974- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
2975 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
2976 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
2977 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
2978 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
2979 [SF bug 563060]
2980
2981- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
2982 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
2983 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
2984 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
2985 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
2986
2987- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
2988 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
2989 not called. [SF bug #537450]
2990
2991- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
2992
2993- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
2994 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
2995 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
2996 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
2997 state of the slots would be lost.)
2998
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002999Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003000-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003001
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003002- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003003 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3004 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3005 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3006 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003007 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3008 Jython 2.1.
3009
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003010- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003011 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003012 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3013 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3014 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3015 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3016 these, see PEP 302.
3017
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003018- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3019 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3020 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3021
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003022- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3023 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3024 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3025
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003026- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3027 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3028 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3029
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003030- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3031 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3032 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3033 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3034 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3035 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3036 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3037 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3038 releases or implementations.
3039
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003040- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003041 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3042 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003043
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003044- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3045 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3046
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003047- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3048 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3049 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3050
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003051- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3052 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3053
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003054- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3055 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003056 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3057 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003058
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003059- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3060 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3061 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3062 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3063 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3064
3065 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3066 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3067 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3068 pattern.
3069
3070 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3071 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3072 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3073 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3074
3075 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3076 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3077 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3078 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3079 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3080 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3081
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003082- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3083 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3084 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3085 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3086 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3087 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3088 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3089 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003090
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003091- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3092 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3093 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3094 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3095 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003096 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3097 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3098 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3099 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3100 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3101 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3102 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003103
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003104- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3105 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3106
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003107- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3108 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3109 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3110 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3111 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3112 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3113 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3114 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3115 to Zack Weinberg!
3116
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003117- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3118 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3119 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3120 type. This has been fixed now.
3121
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003122- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3123 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3124 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3125
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003126- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3127 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3128 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3129 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3130 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3131 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3132 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3133 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003134 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003135
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003136- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3137 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3138 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003139
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003140- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3141 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3142 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3143 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3144 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3145 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3146 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3147 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003148 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003149 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3150 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3151
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003152- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3153 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3154 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3155 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3156 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3157 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3158 this.)
3159
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003160- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3161 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003162 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003163 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003164 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3165 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003166 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3167 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003168
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003169- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3170 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3171 currently running.
3172
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003173- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3174 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3175 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3176 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3177
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003178- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3179 as directory names.
3180
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003181- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3182 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3183
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003184- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3185 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3186
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003187- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003188 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3189 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003190
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003191- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3192 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3193 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3194 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3195 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3196
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003197- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3198 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3199 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3200 removed.
3201
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003202- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3203 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3204 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3205
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003206- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3207 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3208 to __debug__.
3209
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003210- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3211 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3212 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3213
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003214- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3215 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3216 deprecated now.
3217
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003218- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3219 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3220 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003221
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003222- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3223 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3224 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3225 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3226 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003227
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003228- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3229 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3230
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003231- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3232 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3233 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003234 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003235 is backward compatible.
3236
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003237- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3238 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3239 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3240 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3241 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3242
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003243- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3244 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3245 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3246 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3247 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3248 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003249
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003250- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3251 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3252
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003253- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3254 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3255
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003256- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3257 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3258 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3259 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3260 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3261
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003262- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3263 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3264 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3265
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003266- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003267 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3268
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003269- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3270 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3271 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003272
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003273- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3274 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3275
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003276- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3277 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3278 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3279
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003280- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3281
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003282Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003283-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003284
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003285- Added three operators to the operator module:
3286 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3287 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3288 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3289
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003290- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3291
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003292- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3293 archives.
3294
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003295- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3296 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3297 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3298
3299 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3300
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003301- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3302 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3303 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003304 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003305
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003306- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3307 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3308 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3309 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003310 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3311 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3312 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3313 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003314
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003315- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3316 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003317
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003318- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3319
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003320- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3321 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3322
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003323- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3324 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3325 supported.
3326
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003327- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3328
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003329- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3330 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003331
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003332- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3333 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3334
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003335- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3336
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003337- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3338 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3339
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003340- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3341 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3342 functions but callable type objects.
3343
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003344- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003345 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003346 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003347
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003348- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3349 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003350
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003351- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3352 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003353
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003354- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3355 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3356 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3357 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3358
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003359- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3360 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003361
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003362- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3363 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3364 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3365 and __imul__.
3366
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003367- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003368 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3369 is called.
3370
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003371- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3372 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3373 interpreter was compiled.
3374
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003375- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3376 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3377 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003378 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003379 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3380 1, not 2.
3381
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003382- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3383 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3384 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3385 limit.
3386
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003387- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3388 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3389 bug #623464.
3390
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003391- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3392 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3393 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3394 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3395
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003396Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003397-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003398
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003399- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3400
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003401- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3402 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3403 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3404 with Python 2.3a2.
3405
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003406- os.path exposes getctime.
3407
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003408- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003409 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003410 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003411 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003412 unit tests of floating point results.
3413
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003414- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3415 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3416 has been increased.
3417
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003418- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3419 executed.
3420
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003421- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3422 postinstallation script.
3423
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003424- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3425 test the current module.
3426
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003427- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003428 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3429 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3430 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3431 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3432
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003433- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003434 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003435 Ward's Optik package.
3436
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003437- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3438 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3439 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3440 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3441
3442- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3443 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003444 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003445
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003446- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3447 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3448 shelf are binary pickles.
3449
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003450- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3451 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3452
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003453- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3454 modules are iterators now.
3455
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003456- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3457 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3458 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3459 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3460 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3461 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003462
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003463- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3464 with their entity value.
3465
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003466- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3467
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003468- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3469 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003470
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003471- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3472 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003473 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003474
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003475- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3476 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3477 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3478 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3479 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3480 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3481 main():
3482
3483 import locale
3484 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3485
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003486- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3487 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3488
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003489- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3490 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3491 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3492 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3493 to the new standard.
3494
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003495- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3496 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3497 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3498 an extension to the database.
3499
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003500- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3501 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3502 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3503 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003504 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003505
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003506- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003507 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003508
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003509- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3510 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3511 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3512 bounded integers.
3513
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003514- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3515 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3516 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3517 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3518 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3519 in existence.
3520
3521 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3522 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3523 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3524 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3525 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3526 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3527
3528 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3529 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3530 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3531 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3532
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003533- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3534 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3535 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3536
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003537- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3538
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003539- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3540 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3541 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3542 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3543
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003544- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3545 argument.
3546
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003547- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3548 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3549 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3550 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3551 [SF patch 560794].
3552
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003553- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3554 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3555 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003556 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3557 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3558 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003559
3560- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3561 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003562
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003563- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3564 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3565 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3566 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003567
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003568- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3569 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3570 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3571 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3572 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3573
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003574- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003575
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003576- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3577
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003578- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3579 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3580 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3581 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3582 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3583 identical to None.
3584
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003585- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3586 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3587 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3588 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3589 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3590 results now.
3591
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003592- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3593 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3594
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003595- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3596 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3597 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3598 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3599 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3600 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3601 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3602 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3603
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003604- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3605
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003606- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3607 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3608
3609- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3610 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3611 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3612 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3613 and other systems.
3614
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003615- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3616 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3617 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3618 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 +00003619 work well with these.
3620
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003621- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3622
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003623- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003624 connections.
3625
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003626- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3627 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3628 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3629
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003630- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3631 sets
3632
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003633- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3634 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3635 name.
3636
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003637- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3638 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3639 passed in.
3640
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003641- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003642 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003643 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3644 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003645
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003646- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3647
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003648- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3649
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003650- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3651 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3652 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3653
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003654- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3655 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3656 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3657 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003658 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003659
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003660- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003661 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003662 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003663
3664- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3665 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3666 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3667
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003668- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00003669 the value of its expression argument.
3670
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003671- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
3672 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
3673 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
3674
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00003675- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
3676 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
3677 skipstone browser was included.
3678
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00003679- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
3680 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
3681
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003682Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003683-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003684
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003685- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3686 names in addition to accepting file names.
3687
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003688- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3689 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3690 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3691 still used and useful.)
3692
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003693- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3694 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3695 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3696 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003697
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003698- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3699 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3700 the generated binary.
3701
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003702Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003703-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003704
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003705- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3706
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003707- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3708 except in the hands of experts.
3709
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003710- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003711 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3712 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3713 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003714
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003715- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3716 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3717 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3718 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3719 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3720 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3721 builds.
3722
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003723- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3724 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3725 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3726 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3727 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3728 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3729 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3730 new type.
3731
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003732- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003733
3734 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3735 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3736 positive infinities.
3737
3738 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3739 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3740 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3741 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3742 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3743 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3744 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3745
3746 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3747
3748 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3749
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003750- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3751 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3752 size of the executable.
3753
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003754- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
3755 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
3756 configure script. On other platforms, remove
3757 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00003758
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00003759- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
3760
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00003761- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
3762 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
3763 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00003764
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00003765- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
3766 well as Unix.
3767
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00003768- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
3769 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
3770 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
3771 modules in the README file for details.
3772
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003773C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003774-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003775
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003776- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
3777 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003778 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00003779 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003780 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003781
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003782- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
3783 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
3784 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
3785 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
3786 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
3787 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003788 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003789 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
3790 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
3791 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
3792 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
3793 aligned.)
3794
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00003795- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
3796 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
3797 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
3798
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003799- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
3800 level.
3801
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00003802- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
3803 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
3804 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
3805 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
3806 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
3807
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00003808- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
3809 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
3810 code.
3811
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00003812- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
3813 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
3814 adjusting for negative indices.
3815
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003816- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
3817 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
3818 object.
3819
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00003820- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
3821 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
3822 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
3823
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003824- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
3825 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00003826
3827- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
3828
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00003829- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
3830 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
3831 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
3832 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
3833
3834- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
3835
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00003836- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003837
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003838- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00003839 without going through the buffer API.
3840
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003841- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00003842
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00003843- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
3844 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
3845 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
3846 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
3847
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003848- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
3849 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
3850
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003851- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003852 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
3853
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003854New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003855-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003856
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00003857- OpenVMS is now supported.
3858
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00003859- AtheOS is now supported.
3860
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00003861- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
3862
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00003863- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
3864
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003865Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003866-----
3867
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00003868- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
3869 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
3870 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003871
3872Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003873-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003874
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003875- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
3876 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
3877 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
3878 bugs.
3879 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003880 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00003881 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
3882 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003883 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003884
3885- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00003886 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003887
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00003888- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
3889 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
3890
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003891- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
3892 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003893 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003894 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
3895
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00003896- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
3897 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
3898 use files" uninstall option).
3899
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00003900- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
3901
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003902- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
3903 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
3904
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003905- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
3906 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
3907 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
3908
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003909- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
3910 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
3911 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
3912 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
3913 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00003914 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
3915 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
3916 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00003917
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003918- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003919 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003920 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
3921 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
3922 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
3923 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
3924 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
3925 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
3926 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
3927 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
3928 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
3929 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
3930 work around.
3931
3932- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
3933 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
3934 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
3935 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
3936 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
3937 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
3938 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
3939 specified with O_CREAT too).
3940
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003941Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003942----
3943
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003944- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003945
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00003946- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
3947 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
3948 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
3949
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003950- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
3951 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
3952 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
3953
3954- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
3955 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
3956 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
3957 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
3958 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
3959 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
3960 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
3961 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003962
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00003963- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
3964 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
3965 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003966
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003967- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
3968 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
3969 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
3970 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
3971 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003972
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003973- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
3974 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
3975 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003976
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003977- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
3978 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003979
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003980- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
3981 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
3982 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
3983 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
3984 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003985
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003986- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
3987 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
3988 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
3989
3990- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
3991 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
3992 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003993
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00003994- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
3995 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
3996 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
3997 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003998 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003999
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004000- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4001 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004002
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004003- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4004 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004005
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004006- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004007 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004008 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4009 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004010
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004011
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004012What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004013===============================
4014
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004015*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4016
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004017Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004018--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004019
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004020- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4021 with a custom metaclass.
4022
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004023Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004024-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004025
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004026- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4027 are proxies.
4028
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004029Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004030-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004031
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004032- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4033 very short strings.
4034
4035- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4036 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4037 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4038 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4039 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4040
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004041Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004042-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004043
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004044- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4045 close or delete time).
4046
4047- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4048 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4049
4050- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4051
4052- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004053 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004054
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004055Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004056-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004057
4058Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004059-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004060
4061C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004062-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004063
4064New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004065-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004066
4067Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004068-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004069
4070Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004071-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004072
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004073- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4074
4075- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4076 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4077
4078- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4079 deleted at process exit time.
4080
4081- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4082 in backslash.
4083
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004084Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004085----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004086
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004087- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4088 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4089 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4090
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004091
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004092What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004093===========================
4094
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004095*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4096
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004097Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004098--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004099
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004100- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4101 been extensively updated. See
4102
4103 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4104
4105 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4106
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004107- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4108 deleted!
4109
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004110- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4111 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4112 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4113 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4114 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4115
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004116- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4117
4118 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4119 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4120
4121 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4122 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4123 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4124 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4125 supported anyway.
4126
4127 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4128 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4129
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004130- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4131 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4132 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4133 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4134 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004135
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004136- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4137 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4138 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4139
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004140Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004141-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004142
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004143- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4144 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4145 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4146 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4147 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4148 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004149 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4150 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4151 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4152 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004153
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004154- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4155 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4156 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4157
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004158Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004159-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004160
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004161- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4162
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004163Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004164-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004165
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004166- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4167 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4168 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4169 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4170 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4171 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4172
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004173- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4174
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004175- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4176
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004177- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4178
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004179- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4180 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4181 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4182
4183- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4184
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004185Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004186-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004187
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004188- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4189 off a search on Google.
4190
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004191Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004192-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004193
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004194- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4195 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4196 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4197 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4198 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4199 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4200 other platforms should do likewise.
4201
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004202- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4203 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4204 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4205
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004206C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004207-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004208
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004209- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4210 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4211 producing key-value pairs.
4212
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004213- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004214 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004215 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4216 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4217 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4218 previously went unchallenged.
4219
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004220New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004221-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004222
4223Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004224-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004225
4226Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004227-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004228
4229Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004230----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004231
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004232- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4233 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004234
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004235- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4236 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4237 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4238 home.
4239
4240
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004241What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004242===========================
4243
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004244*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4245
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004246Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004247--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004248
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004249- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4250 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004251
4252 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004253 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004254
4255 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4256 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004257 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004258 This needs to be documented.
4259
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004260- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4261 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4262
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004263- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4264 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4265 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4266
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004267- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4268 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4269
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004270- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4271 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4272 class forbids it).
4273
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004274- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4275 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4276 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4277
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004278- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4279
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004280Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004281-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004282
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004283- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4284 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004285 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004286
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004287- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4288 (like 1 + '').
4289
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004290Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004291-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004292
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004293- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4294 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4295 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4296 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004297 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004298 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4299
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004300- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4301 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4302 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4303 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4304
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004305- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4306 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004307 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4308 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4309 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004310
4311- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4312 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004313
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004314- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4315 bytes on its input.
4316
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004317Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004318-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004319
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004320- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004321 convenience function.
4322
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004323- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4324 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4325 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004326 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4327 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4328 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4329 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4330 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4331 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004332
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004333- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4334 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4335 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4336 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4337
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004338- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4339 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4340 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4341
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004342- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4343 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4344 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4345 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4346
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004347- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4348 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004349 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004350 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4351 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4352 new -l and -e options.
4353
4354- statcache is now deprecated.
4355
4356- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4357 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004358 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004359 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4360 time properly taken into account.
4361
4362- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4363 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4364 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4365 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4366
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004367Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004368-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004369
4370Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004371-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004372
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004373- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4374 is built with libdb3 if available.
4375
4376- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4377
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004378C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004379-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004380
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004381- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4382 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4383 PySequence_Size().
4384
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004385- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4386
4387- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4388 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4389 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4390
4391- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4392 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4393
4394- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4395 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4396
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004397New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004398-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004399
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004400- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4401 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4402
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004403- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4404 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4405
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004406- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4407
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004408Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004409-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004410
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004411- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4412 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4413
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004414Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004415-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004416
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004417Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004418----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004419
4420- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4421 removed completely in the next release.
4422
4423- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4424 OSX.
4425
4426- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4427 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4428
4429- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4430
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004431
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004432What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004433===========================
4434
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004435*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4436
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004437Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004438--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004439
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004440- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004441 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004442 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004443 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4444 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004445 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4446 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004447 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4448 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004449
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004450- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4451 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4452
4453- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4454 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4455
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004456Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004457-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004458
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004459- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4460 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4461 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4462 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4463 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4464 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4465 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4466 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4467
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004468- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4469 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4470 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4471 example).
4472
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004473- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004474 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004475 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004476 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004477
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004478- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4479 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4480 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004481 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004482
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004483- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4484 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4485 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4486 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4487 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4488 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4489
4490 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4491
4492 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4493
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004494Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004495-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004496
4497- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4498
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004499- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4500
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004501- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4502 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004503
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004504- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4505 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4506 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4507 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4508 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4509 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004510 attributes.
4511
4512- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4513 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4514 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004515
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004516- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4517 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4518 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004519
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004520- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4521 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4522 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004523 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4524 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4525
4526- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4527 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004528
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004529Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004530-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004531
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004532- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4533 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4534
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004535- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4536 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4537 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4538 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4539
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004540- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4541 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4542 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4543 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4544
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004545 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4546 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4547 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4548 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4549 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4550 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4551 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4552 without losing information).
4553
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004554- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004555 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4556 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4557 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4558 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4559 module).
4560
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004561 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004562 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4563 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4564 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4565 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004566
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004567- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004568 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4569 encoding.
4570
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004571- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4572 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4573
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004574- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004575 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4576
4577- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4578 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4579 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4580 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4581
4582- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4583
4584- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4585 ON, and OFF.
4586
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004587- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4588 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4589
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004590Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004591-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004592
4593- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4594 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4595 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004596
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004597- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4598 been added: -X and -E.
4599
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004600Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004601-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004602
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004603- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4604 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4605
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004606C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004607-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004608
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004609- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4610 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4611 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4612 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4613 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4614
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004615- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4616 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4617 as long) arguments.
4618
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004619- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4620 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4621 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4622 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4623 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4624 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4625
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004626- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4627 input.
4628
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004629New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004630-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004631
4632Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004633-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004634
4635Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004636-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004637
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004638- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4639 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4640 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4641
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004642- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4643 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4644 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004645 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004646
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004647 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4648 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4649 import signal
4650 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004651
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004652 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004653 while 1:
4654 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004655 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004656 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4657 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4658 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4659 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004660
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004661
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004662What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4663===========================
4664
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004665*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4666
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004667Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004668--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004669
4670- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
4671 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
4672 documentation for all operations on list objects.
4673
4674- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
4675 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
4676 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
4677 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
4678 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
4679 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
4680 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004681
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004682- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004683 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004684 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4685 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4686 associate a docstring with a property.
4687
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004688- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4689 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4690 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4691 other built-in object types.
4692
4693- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4694 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4695 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4696 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4697 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4698
4699- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4700 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4701
4702- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4703 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004704 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004705 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4706 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4707 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4708 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4709 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4710
4711- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4712 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4713 class.
4714
4715- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4716 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4717 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4718 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4719
4720- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4721 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4722 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4723 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4724
4725- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4726 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4727
4728- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4729 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4730 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4731 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4732 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004733 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004734 with the same value as s.
4735
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004736- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4737
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004738Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004739----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004740
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004741- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4742
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004743- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4744 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4745 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4746 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4747 objects.
4748
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004749- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4750 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004751 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4752 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
4753
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004754- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
4755 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
4756 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
4757
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004758Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004759-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004760
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00004761- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4762 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
4763 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
4764 by the instances.
4765
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00004766- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
4767 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
4768 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
4769
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004770- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
4771 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
4772 before the entire comparison is complete.
4773
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00004774- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4775 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
4776 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
4777
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00004778- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
4779 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
4780 getwriter().
4781
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004782- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
4783 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
4784
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00004785- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004786 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
4787 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
4788
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00004789- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
4790 iterable object.
4791
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004792- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
4793 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004794
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004795- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
4796 authentication.
4797
4798- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
4799 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004800
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004801- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00004802 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
4803 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
4804 a sample driver.)
4805
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004806Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004807-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004808
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004809- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
4810 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
4811 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
4812 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
4813 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
4814 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
4815 kernel has large file support.
4816
4817- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
4818 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
4819 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
4820 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
4821 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
4822
4823- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
4824 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
4825 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
4826
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004827C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004828-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004829
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004830- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
4831 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
4832
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004833New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004834-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004835
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004836- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
4837 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
4838
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004839Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004840-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004841
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004842- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
4843 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
4844 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
4845 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
4846 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
4847
4848- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
4849 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
4850 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
4851 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
4852
4853- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
4854 especially in regard to reporting errors.
4855
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004856Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004857-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004858
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004859- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004860 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
4861 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004862
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004863
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004864What's New in Python 2.2a3?
4865===========================
4866
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004867*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
4868
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004869Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004870----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004871
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004872- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
4873 big to represent as a C double.
4874
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00004875- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
4876 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
4877 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
4878 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
4879 restriction).
4880
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00004881- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
4882 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
4883 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
4884 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
4885 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
4886
4887 >>> dir([])
4888 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
4889 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
4890 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
4891 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
4892 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
4893 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
4894 'reverse', 'sort']
4895
4896 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
4897
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004898- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004899 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
4900 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
4901 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
4902 OverflowError exception.
4903
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00004904- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004905 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004906 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
4907 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
4908 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
4909 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
4910 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004911 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004912 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
4913 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
4914
4915 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
4916 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
4917 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
4918 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004919
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004920- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004921 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
4922 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
4923 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
4924 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
4925 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
4926 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
4927 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
4928 once it is created.
4929
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00004930- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
4931 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
4932 (key, value) pairs.
4933
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004934- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004935 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
4936 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
4937
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00004938- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
4939 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
4940 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
4941 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
4942 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004943
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004944- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00004945 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
4946 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
4947
4948 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
4949
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004950- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00004951 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
4952
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004953Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004954-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004955
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004956- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00004957 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
4958 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00004959
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00004960- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
4961 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
4962 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
4963 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
4964 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
4965 in this area anymore).
4966
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00004967- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
4968 threading.Timer.
4969
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00004970- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
4971 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
4972
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004973- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00004974 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
4975
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004976- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00004977 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
4978 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
4979 converted to Python longs.
4980
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004981- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004982 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
4983
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00004984- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
4985 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
4986 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
4987
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004988Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004989-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004990
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004991- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
4992 division operators as per PEP 238.
4993
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004994Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004995-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004996
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00004997- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
4998 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
4999 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5000 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5001
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005002C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005003-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005004
5005- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005006
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005007- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5008 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005009 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005010
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005011 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5012 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005013 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005014 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005015
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005016- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005017 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5018 module:
5019
5020 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005021
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005022 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5023 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005024
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005025 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5026 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005027
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005028 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5029
5030 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5031
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005032- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005033 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5034 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5035 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005036
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005037New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005038-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005039
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005040- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5041 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5042 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5043 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5044 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005045
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005046Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005047-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005048
5049Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005050-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005051
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005052- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5053 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5054 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5055 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005056 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5057 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5058 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5059 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5060 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005061
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005062- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005063 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5064
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005065
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005066What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5067===========================
5068
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005069*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5070
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005071Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005072-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005073
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005074- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5075 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5076
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005077- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5078 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5079 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005080
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005081- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5082 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5083 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5084 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005085
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005086- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5087
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005088- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005089
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005090Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005091-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005092
5093- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005094 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005095 the module docstring for details.
5096
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005097Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005098-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005099
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005100- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005101 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5102 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5103 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005104
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005105- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5106 Nick Mathewson.
5107
5108Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005109----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005110
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005111- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5112 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5113 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5114 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5115 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5116 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5117 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5118 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5119
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005120- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5121 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5122 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5123 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5124
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005125- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5126 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5127 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5128 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5129 come a long way).
5130
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005131- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5132 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5133 write filters for these warnings).
5134
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005135- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5136 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5137 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5138 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5139 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5140
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005141- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5142 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5143 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5144 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5145 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5146 older distribution.
5147
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005148Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005149-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005150
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005151- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5152 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005153 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005154
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005155- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5156 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5157 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5158
5159- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5160
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005161- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5162
5163- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5164
5165- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5166
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005167- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005168
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005169- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5170
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005171New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005172-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005173
5174C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005175-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005176
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005177- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5178 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5179 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5180 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5181 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5182 against buffer overruns.
5183
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005184- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005185 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5186 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005187 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5188 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5189 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5190
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005191- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5192 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5193 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5194 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5195 deprecated.
5196
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005197Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005198-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005199
5200- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5201 relevant is found.
5202
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005203
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005204What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005205===========================
5206
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005207*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5208
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005209Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005210----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005211
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005212- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5213 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5214 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5215 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5216 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5217 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5218 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5219 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005220 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005221 repaired.
5222
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005223- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005224 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005225 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5226 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5227 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5228 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5229 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5230 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5231 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5232 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5233
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005234- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5235 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5236 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5237 leading BMO character).
5238
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005239- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5240 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5241 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5242
5243 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5244 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5245 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005246
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005247 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5248 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5249 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5250 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5251 for various simple to use conversions.
5252
5253 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5254 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5255
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005256 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5257 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5258 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5259 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5260 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5261 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5262 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5263 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5264 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5265 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5266 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5267 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5268 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5269 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5270 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005271
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005272- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5273 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5274 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005275 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005276 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005277
5278 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005279 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5280 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5281 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5282 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5283 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005284 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5285 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005286
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005287 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5288 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5289 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005290 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005291
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005292- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5293 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5294 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5295 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5296 floating arithmetic,
5297
5298 x = 9007199254740992.0
5299 print long(x)
5300
5301 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5302 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5303 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5304 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5305 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5306 functions are of good quality).
5307
5308 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5309 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5310 algorithms to break.
5311
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005312- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5313 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5314 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5315 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5316 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5317 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5318 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5319 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5320 order.
5321
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005322- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5323 operation along the most common code paths.
5324
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005325- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5326 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5327
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005328- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5329 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5330 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5331 {}.update(UserDict())
5332
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005333- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5334 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5335 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5336 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5337 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5338 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5339 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5340 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5341
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005342- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005343 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005344
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005345 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005346 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5347 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005348 join() method of strings
5349 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005350 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5351 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005352 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005353 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005354
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005355- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5356 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5357
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005358- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5359 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5360
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005361- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5362 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5363 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5364 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5365
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005366- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5367 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005368 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005369 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5370 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005371
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005372- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5373
5374
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005375Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005376-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005377
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005378- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005379 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005380 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5381 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5382
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005383- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5384 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5385
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005386- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5387 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5388 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5389 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5390
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005391- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5392 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5393 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5394
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005395- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5396
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005397- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5398
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005399- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5400 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5401 that are still imported into string.py).
5402
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005403- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5404
5405- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5406 Now it does.
5407
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005408- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5409
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005410- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5411 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5412 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5413 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5414 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005415 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5416 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005417
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005418- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5419 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5420 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5421 'help(object)'.
5422
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005423Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005424-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005425
5426- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005427 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005428 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5429 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5430
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005431- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005432 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5433 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005434
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005435C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005436-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005437
5438- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5439 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005440
5441----
5442
5443**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**