blob: 05ca0fd069105eada9790a88b9badfd91729289f [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +000015- Speed up some Unicode operations.
16
17- A new AST parser implementation was completed.
18
Neal Norwitzb6570f52005-10-21 06:26:10 +000019- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +000020 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
21
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +000022- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
23
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +000024- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
25 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
26
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +000027- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
28
29- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
30
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +000031- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
32 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
33 was empty.
34
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +000035- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
36 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
37
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000038- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +000039 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000040
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +000041- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
42 codes.
43
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +000044- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
45 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
46 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
47
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +000048- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
49 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
50
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +000051- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +000052 (fixes bug #1119418).
53
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +000054- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
55
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +000056- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
57 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
58
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +000059- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
60 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
61 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
62
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +000063- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
64
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +000065- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
66 reference counts in some error exit cases.
67
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000068- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
69 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
70 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
71 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
72 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
73 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
74 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
75 realloc.
76
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +000077- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
78 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
79
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +000080- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
81 like their int counterparts.
82
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +000083- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
84 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
85 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
86 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
87 for a longer write-up of the problem).
88
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +000089- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
90 serializing floats.
91
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +000092- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
93 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
94 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
95
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +000096- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
97 278.
98
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +000099- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
100 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
101 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
102 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000103 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000104 PyNumber_*().
105 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
106
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000107- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
108 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
109 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
110 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
111
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000112- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
113 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
114 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
115 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
116 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
117
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000118- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
119 disabled caused a crash.
120
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000121- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
122 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
123
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000124- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000125 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
126
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000127- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
128
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000129- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000130 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
131 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
132 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000133
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000134- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
135
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000136- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
137 returning None.
138
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000139- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000140 ('\') with a specific error message.
141
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000142- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
143
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000144- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
145 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
146
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000147- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000148 an ferror() call.
149
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000150- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
151 list.sort().
152
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000153- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
154 (2+3) --> (5).
155
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000156- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
157
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000158- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
159 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000160
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000161- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
162 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
163 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
164
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000165- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
166 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
167 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
168
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000169Extension Modules
170-----------------
171
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000172- Get bsddb module to build with BSD DB version 3.2
173
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000174- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
175 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
176
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000177- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
178
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000179- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
180 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
181
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000182- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
183 returns in cStringIO.c.
184
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000185- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
186 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
187
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000188- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
189
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000190- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
191
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000192- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
193 the file system encoding.
194
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000195- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
196 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000197
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000198- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
199
200- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000201 line without newlines.
202
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000203- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
204 on Windows.
205
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000206- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000207 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
208
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000209- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
210 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
211 for large or negative values.
212
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000213- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000214 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000215
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000216- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
217
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000218- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
219 if available on the platform.
220
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000221- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
222 available on the platform.
223
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000224- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
225 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
226
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000227- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
228
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000229- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
230 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
231 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
232
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000233- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
234
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000235- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
236 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
237
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000238- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000239 file size.
240
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000241- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
242
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000243- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
244 {remove_history,replace_history}
245
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000246- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
247 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000248
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000249- stat_float_times is now True.
250
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000251- array.array objects are now picklable.
252
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000253- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
254 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
255
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000256- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
257 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
258 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
259
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000260- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
261 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000262
263Library
264-------
265
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000266- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
267
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000268- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000269 "parent" argument.
270
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000271- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
272 for padding.
273
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000274- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
275 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
276
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000277- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
278 to get the correct encoding.
279
280- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
281 languages.
282
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000283- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
284
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000285- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
286
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000287- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
288
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000289- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
290 functionality.
291
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000292- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
293
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000294- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
295 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
296
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000297- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
298 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
299 match the Content-Length header.
300
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000301- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
302
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000303- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
304 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000305 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000306
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000307- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
308
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000309- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
310
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000311- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
312 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
313
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000314- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
315 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
316 Tkdnd.
317
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000318- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
319 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
320
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000321- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
322 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
323
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000324- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000325 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
326
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000327- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
328 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
329
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000330- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
331 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
332
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000333- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000334 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000335
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000336- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
337
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000338- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
339 error messages.
340
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000341- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
342
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000343- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
344 Bug #1224621.
345
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000346- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
347 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
348 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
349 terminates by raising StopIteration.
350
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000351- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
352
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000353- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
354 component of the path.
355
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000356- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
357 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
358 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
359 class at all.
360
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000361- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
362 files to PyPI.
363
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000364- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
365 them to PyPI.
366
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000367- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
368 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
369 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
370 work as expected.
371
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000372- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
373 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
374
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000375- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000376 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
377
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000378- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
379
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000380- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
381 to build.
382
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000383- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
384 symbolic links on Windows.
385
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000386- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000387 profile.py if available.
388
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000389- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
390
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000391- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
392 in LWPCookieJar.
393
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000394- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
395
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000396- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
397
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000398- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
399
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000400- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
401
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000402- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
403
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000404- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
405
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000406- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
407
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000408- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
409
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000410- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
411 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
412 be exploited in various ways.
413
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000414- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
415
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000416- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
417
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000418- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
419
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000420- Enhancements to the csv module:
421
422 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000423 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000424 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000425 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
426 reporting.
427 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
428 dictates.
429 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000430 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000431 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000432 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
433 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000434 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
435 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000436 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000437 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
438 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
439 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
440 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
441 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
442 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
443 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
444 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
445 without first creating a dialect class.
446 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
447 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
448 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000449 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000450 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
451 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000452 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
453 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
454 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
455 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000456 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
457 This has been fixed.
458
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000459- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
460 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
461 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
462 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
463
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000464- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
465
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000466- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
467 (Bug #951915).
468
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000469- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
470 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
471 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000472 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000473
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000474- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
475
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000476- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
477 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
478
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000479- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
480
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000481- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
482
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000483- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
484
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000485- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
486
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000487- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
488
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000489- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
490 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
491 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
492
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000493- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000494 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000495
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000496- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
497 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
498 tokenizer with very long source lines.
499
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000500- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
501 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
502
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000503- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
504 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000505
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000506- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
507 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
508
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000509- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
510 correctly.
511
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000512- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
513 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
514 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
515 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
516 between two lines.
517
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000518- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
519 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
520 handlers.
521
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000522- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000523 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
524 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000525
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000526- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
527 considering it exactly like a '*'.
528
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000529- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
530 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000531
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000532Build
533-----
534
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000535- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
536 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
537
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000538- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
539 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
540
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000541- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
542 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
543 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000544 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000545
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000546- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
547 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
548 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
549
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000550- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
551
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000552- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
553 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
554
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000555- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
556 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
557 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
558 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
559 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
560 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
561 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
562 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
563
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000564- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
565 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
566 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
567 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
568
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000569
570C API
571-----
572
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000573- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
574
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000575- Removed PyRange_New().
576
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000577- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
578 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
579 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
580 mappings.
581
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000582
583Tests
584-----
585
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000586- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000587
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000588
589Documentation
590-------------
591
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000592- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
593
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000594- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
595
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000596- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
597
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000598- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
599
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000600- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
601
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000602- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
603
604- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
605
606- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
607
608- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
609
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000610- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
611 Closes bug #1166582.
612
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000613- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
614 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
615 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
616
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000617Mac
618---
619
620
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000621New platforms
622-------------
623
624- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
625
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000626
627Tools/Demos
628-----------
629
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000630- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
631 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
632 source files that need an encoding declaration.
633 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
634
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000635- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
636
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000637- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000638
639
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000640What's New in Python 2.4 final?
641===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000642
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000643*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000644
645Core and builtins
646-----------------
647
648- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
649 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
650 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
651
652
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000653What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
654==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000655
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000656*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000657
658Core and builtins
659-----------------
660
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000661- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
662 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
663 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
664
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000665
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000666Library
667-------
668
669- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
670 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
671 raised is re-raised.
672
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000673- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
674 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
675
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000676- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
677 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
678 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
679 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
680 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
681 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
682 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
683 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
684 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
685 by the slice are recomputed now.
686
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000687- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000688
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000689Build
690-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000691
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000692- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
693 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
694 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000695
696C API
697-----
698
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000699- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
700
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000701
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000702What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
703================================
704
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000705*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000706
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000707License
708-------
709
710The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
711is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
712changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
713Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
714intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
715durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
716the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
717License::
718
719 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
720
721says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
722to Python 2.1.1.
723
724The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
725License Version 2.
726
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000727Core and builtins
728-----------------
729
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000730- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
731 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
732 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
733 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
734 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
735 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
736 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
737 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
738 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
739 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
740
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000741- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000742
743Extension Modules
744-----------------
745
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000746- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
747 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
748 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
749 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000750
751Library
752-------
753
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000754- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
755 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
756 returned.
757
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000758- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
759
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000760- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
761 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
762
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000763- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
764
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000765- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
766 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000767
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000768- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
769
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000770- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
771
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000772- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000773 the source code is updated and reloaded.
774
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000775Build
776-----
777
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000778- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370dc2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000779
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000780What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
781================================
782
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000783*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000784
785Core and builtins
786-----------------
787
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000788- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000789 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
790
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000791- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
792 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
793 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
794 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
795
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000796- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
797 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
798
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000799- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
800 constant.
801
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000802- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
803 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
804 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
805 large), and to anomalies such as
806 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
807 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
808 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
809 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000810
811Extension modules
812-----------------
813
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000814- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
815 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000816 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
817 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
818 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000819
820Library
821-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000822
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000823- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000824 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000825 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
826 --swig-cpp.
827
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000828- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
829 it is set.
830
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000831- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000832
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000833- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
834 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
835 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
836 Closes bug #1039270.
837
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000838- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000839
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000840 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000841 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
842 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
843 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
844 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
845 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
846 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
847 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
848 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
849 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
850 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
851 + Updates to documentation.
852
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000853- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
854 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
855 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
856 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
857
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000858- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000859
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000860- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
861 applications should use the getmember function.
862
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000863- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
864
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000865- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
866 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
867 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
868 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
869 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
870 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
871 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
872 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
873 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
874
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000875- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
876 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000877 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000878
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000879- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
880 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
881 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
882 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
883 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
884 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
885 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
886 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000887
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000888- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
889 the new public features (of which there are many).
890
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000891- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000892 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
893 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
894 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
895 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000896 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000897
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000898- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
899
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000900- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
901 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
902 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
903 options.
904
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000905- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
906 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
907 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
908 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
909 conditions under which non-string values work.
910
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000911Build
912-----
913
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000914- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
915 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
916 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
917
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000918- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
919 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
920 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
921 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
922 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000923
924C API
925-----
926
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000927- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
928 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
929
930- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
931
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000932- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
933 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
934 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
935 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
936 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
937 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
938 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
939 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
940 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
941
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000942- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
943
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000944- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
945 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
946 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000947
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000948Tests
949-----
950
951- test__locale ported to unittest
952
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000953Mac
954---
955
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000956- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
957 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
958 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000959
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000960Tools/Demos
961-----------
962
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000963- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
964 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
965 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
966 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
967 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000968
969
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000970What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
971=================================
972
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000973*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000974
975Core and builtins
976-----------------
977
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000978- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000979 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
980
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000981- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
982 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
983 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
984 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
985 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
986 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
987 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
988 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000989 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
990 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
991 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
992 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
993 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000994
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000995- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
996 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
997 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
998 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
999 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
1000
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +00001001- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
1002
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +00001003- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
1004 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
1005
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001006- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1007 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1008 modified the list.
1009
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001010- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1011 functions is now writable.
1012
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001013- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1014 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1015 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1016 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1017
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001018- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1019 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1020 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1021 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1022 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001023
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001024- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1025 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1026
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001027Extension modules
1028-----------------
1029
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001030- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1031
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001032- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1033 data.
1034
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001035- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1036 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1037 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1038 supposed to have been truncated away.
1039
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001040- Added socket.socketpair().
1041
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001042- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1043 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1044
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001045- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001046 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1047
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001048Library
1049-------
1050
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001051- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001052 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001053
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001054- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1055 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1056
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001057- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1058 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1059
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001060- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1061
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001062- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1063 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001064
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001065- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1066 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1067
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001068- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1069
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001070- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1071
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001072- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1073
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001074- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1075 Percivall.
1076
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001077- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1078 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1079
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001080- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1081 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1082 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001083 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001084
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001085- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1086 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1087 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1088 and exponent.
1089
1090- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1091
1092- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001093 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001094 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1095
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001096- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1097 to the readline module.
1098
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001099- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001100 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1101 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001102
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001103- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1104 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1105 contains symlinks.
1106
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001107- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1108 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1109
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001110- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1111 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1112 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1113
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001114- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1115 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1116 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1117 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1118 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1119 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1120 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1121 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1122 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1123 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1124 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1125 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1126 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1127
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001128- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1129
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001130Tools/Demos
1131-----------
1132
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001133- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1134 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1135
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001136- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1137
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001138Build
1139-----
1140
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001141- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1142 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1143 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1144 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1145 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1146 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1147 plans to do so.
1148
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001149- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1150 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1151
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001152- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1153 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1154
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001155- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1156 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1157
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001158- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1159 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1160
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001161- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1162 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1163
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001164C API
1165-----
1166
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001167..
1168
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001169Documentation
1170-------------
1171
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001172- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1173 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1174
1175- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1176 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1177 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001178
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001179New platforms
1180-------------
1181
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001182- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1183
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001184Tests
1185-----
1186
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001187..
1188
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001189Windows
1190-------
1191
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001192- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1193 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1194 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1195 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1196 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1197 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1198 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1199 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1200 the problem.
1201
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001202Mac
1203---
1204
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001205..
1206
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001207
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001208What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1209=================================
1210
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001211*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001212
1213Core and builtins
1214-----------------
1215
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001216- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1217 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1218 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1219 sensitive code.
1220
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001221- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001222 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001223
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001224 @staticmethod
1225 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001226
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001227 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001228
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001229- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1230 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1231 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1232 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1233 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1234 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1235 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1236 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1237 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1238 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1239 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1240
1241 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1242 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1243 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1244 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1245 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1246 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1247 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1248
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001249- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1250 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1251
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001252- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001253 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001254
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001255- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001256 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001257 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1258
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001259- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001260 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1261 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1262
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001263- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1264 types that support garbage collection.
1265
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001266- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1267
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001268- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1269 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1270 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1271 Jython.
1272
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001273- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1274
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001275- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1276 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1277
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001278- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1279 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1280 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001281
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001282- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1283 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1284 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1285
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001286Extension modules
1287-----------------
1288
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001289- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1290
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001291Library
1292-------
1293
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001294- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1295 TIS-620
1296
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001297- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1298 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1299 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1300 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1301 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1302 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1303 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1304 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1305 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1306 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1307
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001308- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1309
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001310- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1311 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1312 same as when the argument is omitted).
1313 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1314
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001315- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1316
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001317- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1318 schemes are offered.
1319
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001320- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1321
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001322- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1323 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1324 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1325
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001326- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1327
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001328- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1329 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1330
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001331- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1332 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1333 when dummy_threading is being used.
1334
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001335- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1336 from a tarfile.
1337
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001338- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001339 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001340
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001341- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1342 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1343 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1344 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1345
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001346- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1347 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1348
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001349- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1350 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1351 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1352 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1353 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1354 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1355 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1356 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1357 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1358 by some other method in progress).
1359
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001360- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1361 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1362 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001363
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001364- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1365
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001366- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1367 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1368 AM Kuchling.
1369
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001370- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1371 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1372 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1373
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001374- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1375 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1376 instead of unsigned.
1377
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001378- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001379 no longer part of the public API.
1380
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001381- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1382 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1383 string methods of the same name).
1384
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001385- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001386 SF patch 945642.
1387
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001388- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1389
1390 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1391
1392 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1393 DocTestSuites.
1394
1395- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1396 that provide thread-local data.
1397
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001398- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1399 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1400
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001401- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1402
1403- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1404 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1405 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1406
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001407- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1408
1409 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1410 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1411 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001412
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001413 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1414 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1415 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1416 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1417
1418 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1419 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1420
1421 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1422 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1423 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1424 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1425
1426 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1427 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1428 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1429 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1430 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1431
1432 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1433 wrapping help output.
1434
1435 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1436 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1437 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001438
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001439C API
1440-----
1441
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001442- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1443 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1444 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1445 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1446 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1447 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1448 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1449 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1450 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1451 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1452 its visible semantics have not changed.
1453
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001454- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1455 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1456
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001457Documentation
1458-------------
1459
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001460- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001461
1462 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001463 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001464
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001465 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001466
1467 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1468
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001469- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001470
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001471Tests
1472-----
1473
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001474- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001475 platforms that use the Makefile.
1476
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001477- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1478 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1479 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1480
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001481
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001482What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1483=================================
1484
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001485*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001486
1487Core and builtins
1488-----------------
1489
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001490- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1491 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1492 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1493 objects now (one object instead of three).
1494
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001495- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1496 Windows DLLs.
1497
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001498- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1499 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001500
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001501- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1502 a new .pyc magic.
1503
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001504- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1505 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1506 be there.
1507
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001508- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1509 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1510 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1511
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001512- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1513 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1514 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1515
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001516- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1517
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001518- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1519 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1520 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001521
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001522- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1523 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1524
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001525- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1526
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001527- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001528 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001529
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001530- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1531
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001532- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1533
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001534- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1535 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1536
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001537- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1538 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1539 Fixes bug #858016 .
1540
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001541- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1542 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1543 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1544
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001545- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1546 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1547 improves their performance (about 35%).
1548
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001549- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1550 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1551 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1552
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001553- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1554 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1555 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1556 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1557
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001558- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1559 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001560 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001561 length is not known).
1562
1563- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1564 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001565 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1566 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001567 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1568
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001569- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1570 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1571
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001572- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1573 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1574 keyword arguments.
1575
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001576- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1577 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1578 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1579
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001580- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1581 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1582 cases.
1583
1584- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1585 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1586 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1587 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1588 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1589 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1590 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1591 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1592 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1593 a release build.
1594
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001595- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1596 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1597
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001598- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001599 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001600
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001601- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1602 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1603 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1604 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1605 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1606 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1607 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1608 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1609 destroyed.
1610
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001611- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1612 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1613 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1614 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1615 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1616 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1617 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1618 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1619
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001620- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1621 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1622 character other than a space.
1623
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001624- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1625 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1626 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1627 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1628 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1629 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1630 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1631 attributes with the same name.
1632
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001633- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1634 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1635 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1636 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1637 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1638 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1639 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1640 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1641 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1642 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1643 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1644 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1645 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1646 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001647
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001648- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1649 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1650 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1651 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1652 This has been repaired.
1653
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001654- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1655
1656- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1657
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001658- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1659 over a sequence.
1660
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001661- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001662 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001663
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001664- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1665
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001666- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1667 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1668 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1669 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1670 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1671 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1672 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1673 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1674
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001675- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1676 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1677 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1678
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001679- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1680 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1681 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1682 freelist.
1683
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001684- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1685 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1686
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001687- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1688 number.
1689
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001690- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1691 a TypeError exception.
1692
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001693- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1694 820195.
1695
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001696- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1697 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1698 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1699
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001700- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001701 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1702 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001703
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001704- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1705 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1706 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1707
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001708- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1709 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001710 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001711
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001712- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001713 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1714 the first call.
1715
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001716
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001717Extension modules
1718-----------------
1719
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001720- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1721 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1722
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001723- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1724 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1725 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1726 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1727 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1728 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1729 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001730
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001731- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1732
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001733- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1734
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001735- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1736 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1737
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001738- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1739 fewer false positives.
1740
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001741- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1742 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1743
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001744- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001745 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1746
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001747- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001748 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001749 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001750 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1751 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001752
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001753- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1754 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1755 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1756 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1757
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001758- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1759 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1760 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1761 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1762 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1763 #897625.
1764
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001765- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1766 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1767
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001768- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1769 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1770 and pops on either side of the deque.
1771
1772- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1773 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1774
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001775- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1776 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1777 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1778 other functions that expect a function argument.
1779
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001780- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1781
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001782- os.getsid was added.
1783
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001784- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1785 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1786 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1787
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001788- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1789
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001790- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1791
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001792- readline.clear_history was added.
1793
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001794- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1795
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001796- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1797
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001798- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1799
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001800- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1801
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001802- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1803
1804- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1805
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001806- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1807
1808- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1809
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001810- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1811 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1812 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1813
1814- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1815 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1816 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1817 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1818 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1819 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1820 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1821
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001822- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1823 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1824 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1825 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001826
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001827- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001828 iterators from a single iterable.
1829
1830- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1831 of raising a TypeError exception.
1832
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001833- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1834 as parameter.
1835
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001836Library
1837-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001838
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00001839- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
1840
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001841- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1842 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1843 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001844
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001845- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1846 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1847 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001848
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001849- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001850
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001851- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1852 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001853
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001854- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1855 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1856
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001857- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1858
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001859- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001860 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001861
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001862- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001863 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001864
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001865- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1866
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001867- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1868 on cygwin and mingw32.
1869
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001870- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1871
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001872- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1873 module.
1874
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001875- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1876 installation scheme for all platforms.
1877
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001878- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001879 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001880
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001881- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1882 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1883 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1884
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001885- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1886 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1887 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1888
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001889- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1890
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001891- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1892
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001893- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1894 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1895
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001896- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1897 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1898 type pattern with the same value exists.
1899
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001900- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1901 when run from the command prompt).
1902
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001903- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1904 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1905
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001906- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1907 default sort).
1908
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001909- Added global runctx function to profile module
1910
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001911- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1912
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001913- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1914
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001915- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1916
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001917- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001918 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1919 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1920 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1921 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1922 accordingly.
1923
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001924- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1925 decoding standards.
1926
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001927- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1928 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1929 called for all requests.
1930
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001931- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1932 they are passed to the compiler.
1933
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001934- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1935 indent, width and depth.
1936
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001937- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1938 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1939
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001940- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1941 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1942
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001943- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1944
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001945- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1946
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001947- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1948
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001949- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1950 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1951
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001952- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001953 for better performance.
1954
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001955- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001956
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001957- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1958 a string).
1959
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001960- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1961
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001962- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1963
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001964- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1965
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001966- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1967
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001968- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1969 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1970 list of fieldnames.
1971
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001972- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1973 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1974
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001975- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1976
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001977- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1978 empty lists.
1979
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001980- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1981 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1982 and shelves.
1983
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001984- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1985 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1986
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001987- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001988 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1989 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001990
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001991- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1992 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001993 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001994
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001995- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001996 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1997 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1998
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001999- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
2000 and removed in Py2.4.
2001
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00002002- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
2003
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00002004- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
2005
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002006Tools/Demos
2007-----------
2008
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002009- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2010 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2011
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002012- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2013
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002014- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2015 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2016 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2017 destination in situations where both files are given.
2018
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002019- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2020 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2021 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2022 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2023
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002024- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2025
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002026- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2027 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2028 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2029 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2030 now.
2031
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002032- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2033 in effect
2034
2035- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2036 C-c C-h
2037
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002038- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2039 -d option was given.
2040
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002041Build
2042-----
2043
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002044- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2045 build under OS X.
2046
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002047- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2048 --enable-profiling.
2049
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002050- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2051 is configured --with-tsc.
2052
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002053- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2054 on AMD64.
2055
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002056- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2057 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2058
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002059- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2060 removed.
2061
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002062- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2063 supported (see PEP 11).
2064
2065- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2066
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002067- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2068
2069- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2070 (see PEP 11).
2071
2072- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2073 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2074
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002075C API
2076-----
2077
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002078- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2079 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2080 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2081
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002082- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2083 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2084 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2085 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2086
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002087- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2088 generator objects.
2089
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002090- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2091 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002092 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2093 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002094
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002095- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2096 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2097
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002098- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2099 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2100 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2101 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2102 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2103
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002104- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2105 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2106 about 10% faster.
2107
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002108- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2109 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2110
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002111- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2112 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2113 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2114 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2115
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002116Windows
2117-------
2118
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002119- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2120 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2121 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2122 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2123
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002124- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2125 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2126 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2127
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002128
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002129What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2130===============================
2131
2132*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2133
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002134IDLE
2135----
2136
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002137- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2138 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2139 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2140 context-menu actions.
2141
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002142- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2143 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2144 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2145 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2146 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2147 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2148 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2149 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2150 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2151
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002152
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002153What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2154=============================================
2155
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002156*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002157
2158Core and builtins
2159-----------------
2160
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002161- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002162 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002163 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2164
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002165Extension modules
2166-----------------
2167
2168- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2169 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2170 than once. This has been fixed.
2171
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002172- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2173 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2174 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2175 call.
2176
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002177- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2178
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002179Library
2180-------
2181
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002182- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2183 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2184
2185- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2186 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2187 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2188 restored.
2189
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002190IDLE
2191----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002192
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002193- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002194
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002195Build
2196-----
2197
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002198- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2199 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2200
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002201C API
2202-----
2203
2204Windows
2205-------
2206
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002207- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2208 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2209
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002210- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2211
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002212Mac
2213---
2214
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002215- Various fixes to pimp.
2216
2217- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2218
2219- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2220 more problems than it solves.
2221
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002222
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002223What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2224=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002225
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002226*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2227
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002228Core and builtins
2229-----------------
2230
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002231- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2232 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2233
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002234- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2235 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002236 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002237
2238- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2239 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2240 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002241 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002242
2243- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2244 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002245
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002246- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2247 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2248 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2249
2250- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002251 770247.
2252
2253- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002254
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002255Extension modules
2256-----------------
2257
2258- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2259 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2260
2261- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2262
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002263- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2264
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002265- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2266 contained within the _strptime module.
2267
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002268- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2269 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2270
2271- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002272 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2273
2274- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2275 the find_class attribute, if present.
2276
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002277- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002278
2279 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2280 (SF bug 763298).
2281
2282 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002283 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2284 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2285 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002286
2287 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2288
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002289Library
2290-------
2291
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002292- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2293
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002294- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2295 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2296 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2297 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2298 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2299 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2300 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2301 or Tester().
2302
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002303- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2304 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2305 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2306 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2307 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2308 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2309 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2310 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2311 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002312
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002313 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002314
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002315- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2316 weren't before was an oversight.
2317
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002318- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2319 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2320
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002321- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2322 when there are no lines.
2323
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002324- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2325 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2326
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002327- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2328 to child processes.
2329
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002330- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2331
2332- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2333
2334- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2335 xmlrpclib.
2336
2337- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2338 responses.
2339
2340- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2341 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2342
2343- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2344 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2345 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2346
2347- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2348 used as patterns.
2349
2350- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2351 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2352 than Tk 8.3.
2353
2354- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2355
2356- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002357
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002358Tools/Demos
2359-----------
2360
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002361- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2362
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002363- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2364
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002365- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002366
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002367Build
2368-----
2369
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002370- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2371
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002372- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2373
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002374- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2375 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002376
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002377- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2378 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2379 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002380
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002381C API
2382-----
2383
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002384- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2385 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2386
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002387Windows
2388-------
2389
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002390- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2391 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2392 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2393 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2394 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2395 Python exception ::
2396
2397 thread.error: can't start new thread
2398
2399 is raised now.
2400
2401- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2402 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2403 instead of from DLL teardown.
2404
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002405Mac
2406---
2407
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002408- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002409 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002410 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2411 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2412 the executable in the bundle.
2413
2414- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002415
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002416- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2417
2418- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2419 on Panther.
2420
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002421What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2422================================
2423
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002424*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002425
2426Core and builtins
2427-----------------
2428
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002429- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2430 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2431 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2432 with the -i option.
2433
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002434- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2435 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2436
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002437- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2438 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2439
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002440- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2441 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2442 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2443 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2444 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2445 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2446 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2447 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2448 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2449 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2450 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2451 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2452 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002453
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002454- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2455 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2456 embedded in a lambda expression.
2457
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002458- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2459 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2460 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2461 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2462 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2463
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002464- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2465 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2466 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2467
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002468- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2469 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2470
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002471- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2472 It's writable again.
2473
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002474- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2475 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2476 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002477 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002478
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002479- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2480 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2481 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2482
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002483Extension modules
2484-----------------
2485
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002486- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2487 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2488
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002489- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2490 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2491 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2492 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2493
2494- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2495 collection.
2496
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002497- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2498 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2499 unique within a single program run.
2500
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002501- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2502 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2503
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002504- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2505 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2506
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002507- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2508 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002509
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002510- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2511
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002512- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2513 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2514
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002515- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2516 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2517 for many BSD-derived systems.
2518
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002519
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002520Library
2521-------
2522
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002523- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2524 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2525 primary ones:
2526
2527 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2528 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2529 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2530
2531 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2532 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2533 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2534 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2535 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2536 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2537
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002538- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2539 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2540 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2541 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2542 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2543 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2544 argument.
2545
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002546- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2547 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2548 in the archive.
2549
2550- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2551 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2552
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002553- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2554 569574).
2555
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002556- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2557 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2558 no more.
2559
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002560- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2561 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2562 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2563 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2564 code coverage.
2565
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002566- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2567 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2568 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002569 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2570 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002571
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002572- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2573 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2574 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002575 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002576
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002577- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2578
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002579- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2580 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2581 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2582 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2583
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002584- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2585 handling.
2586
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002587- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2588 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2589
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002590- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2591 in socket.py.
2592
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002593- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2594
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002595- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2596 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2597 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2598 opener with proxy support.
2599
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002600- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2601
2602- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2603
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002604Tools/Demos
2605-----------
2606
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002607- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2608
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002609- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2610
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002611- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2612 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002613
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002614- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2615 files.
2616
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002617Build
2618-----
2619
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002620- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002621 different root directory.
2622
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002623C API
2624-----
2625
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002626- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2627 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2628 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2629 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2630 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2631 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2632 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2633 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2634 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2635 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2636
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002637- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2638 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2639 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2640 from Python.
2641
2642
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002643New platforms
2644-------------
2645
2646None this time.
2647
2648Tests
2649-----
2650
2651- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2652 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2653
2654Windows
2655-------
2656
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002657- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2658
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002659- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2660 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2661 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2662 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2663 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2664 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2665 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2666 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2667 that's what it's for.
2668
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002669Mac
2670---
2671
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002672- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2673 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2674 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2675 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002676- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2677 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2678- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002679
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002680SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2681------------------------------------
2682
2683430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2684598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2685622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2686661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2687683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2688697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2689713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2690724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2691727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2692729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2693730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2694731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2695732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2696733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2697735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2698740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2699744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2700745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2701747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2702749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2703751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2704753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2705755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2706757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2707760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2708
2709
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002710What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2711================================
2712
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002713*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002714
2715Core and builtins
2716-----------------
2717
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002718- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2719 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2720
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002721- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2722 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2723 and cannot be strings).
2724
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002725- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2726 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2727 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2728 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2729
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002730- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2731 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2732 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2733 Python itself.
2734
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002735- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2736 the referenced object, if it has one.
2737
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002738- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2739 the thread started at
2740 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2741
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002742- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2743 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2744 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2745 placed on a list index.
2746
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002747- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2748 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2749 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2750 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2751
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002752- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2753 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2754 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2755 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2756 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2757 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2758 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2759
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002760- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2761 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2762 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2763 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2764 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2765
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002766- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2767 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002768
2769- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2770 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2771 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2772 #693195.)
2773
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002774- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2775 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002776
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002777- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002778 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002779 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2780 interpreter executions, would fail.
2781
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002782- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002783 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002784 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002785
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002786Extension modules
2787-----------------
2788
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002789- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2790 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2791 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2792 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2793
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002794- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2795 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2796
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002797- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2798 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2799 and Greg Chapman.)
2800
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002801- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2802 recursively.
2803
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002804- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002805 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2806 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2807 leaks.
2808
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002809- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2810
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002811- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2812 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2813 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2814 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2815 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2816 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2817 #705836.
2818
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002819- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002820 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2821
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002822- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2823 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2824 See SF bug #692416.
2825
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002826- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2827 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2828
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002829- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2830 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2831 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002832
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002833- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002834 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2835 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2836
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002837- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2838 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2839 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2840 timeouts to work properly.
2841
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002842Library
2843-------
2844
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002845- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2846 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2847 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2848 future release.
2849
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002850- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2851 for querying platform dependent features.
2852
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002853- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002854
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002855- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2856 pickle protocol versions.
2857
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002858- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2859 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2860 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2861
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002862- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2863
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002864- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2865 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2866 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2867 modules.
2868
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002869- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2870 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2871 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2872
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002873- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2874 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2875
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002876- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2877 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2878 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2879
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002880- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002881 MS Office extensions.
2882
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002883- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2884 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2885
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002886- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2887 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2888
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002889- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2890 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2891 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2892 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2893 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2894 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2895
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002896- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2897 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2898 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002899
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002900- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2901 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2902 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2903
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002904- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2905
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002906- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2907 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2908 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2909
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002910Tools/Demos
2911-----------
2912
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002913- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2914 See the module docstring for details.
2915
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002916Build
2917-----
2918
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002919- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2920 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002921
2922C API
2923-----
2924
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002925- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2926
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002927- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2928 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2929 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2930
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002931- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2932 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002933
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002934 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2935 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2936 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002937
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002938- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002939 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2940
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002941- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2942 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2943 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002944
2945New platforms
2946-------------
2947
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002948None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002949
2950Tests
2951-----
2952
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002953- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2954 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002955
2956Windows
2957-------
2958
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002959- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2960 function.
2961
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002962- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2963 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002964
2965Mac
2966---
2967
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002968- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2969 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002970
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002971- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2972 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002973
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002974- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2975 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2976 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002977
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002978- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002979 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2980 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002981
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002982- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2983 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002984
2985
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002986What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2987=================================
2988
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002989*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002990
2991Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002992-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002993
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002994- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2995 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2996 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2997
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002998- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2999 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
3000 (SF patch #664376.)
3001
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003002- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
3003 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
3004 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
3005 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3006 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3007 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003008 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003009
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003010- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3011 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3012 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3013 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003014 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003015
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003016- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3017 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3018 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3019 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3020 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3021 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3022 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3023 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3024 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3025 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3026 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3027
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003028- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3029 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3030 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3031 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3032 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3033 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3034
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003035- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3036 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3037
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003038- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3039 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3040 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3041 case.)
3042
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003043- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3044 passed as unicode strings.
3045
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003046- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3047 See SF bug #683467.
3048
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003049- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3050 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3051
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003052- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3053
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003054- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3055
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003056- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3057 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3058 arguments.
3059
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003060- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3061 See SF bug #667147.
3062
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003063- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003064 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003065 See SF bug #676155.
3066
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003067- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003068 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003069 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3070 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3071 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3072 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3073 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3074 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003075
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003076Extension modules
3077-----------------
3078
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003079- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3080 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3081 tp_as_number pointer.
3082
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003083- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3084 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3085 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3086 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3087 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3088
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003089- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3090
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003091- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3092
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003093- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003094 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003095 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3096 patch #678531.)
3097
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003098- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3099 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3100
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003101- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3102 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3103
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003104- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3105
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003106- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3107 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3108 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3109
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003110- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3111
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003112- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3113 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3114
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003115- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003116
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003117- datetime changes:
3118
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003119 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3120
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003121 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3122 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3123 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3124 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3125 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3126 now.
3127
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003128 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003129 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3130 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003131
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003132 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003133 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003134 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3135 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3136 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3137 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003138
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003139 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3140 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3141 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003142 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3143
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003144 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3145 by a later example coded by Guido.
3146
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003147 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003148 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3149 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3150 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003151 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3152 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3153
3154 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3155 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3156 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3157 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3158 tzinfo subclass instance.
3159
3160 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3161 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3162 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3163 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3164 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3165 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3166 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3167 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003168
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003169 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3170 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3171 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3172 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3173 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003174 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3175
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003176 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003177
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003178 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3179 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3180 as a naive datetime object.
3181
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003182 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3183 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3184 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3185
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003186 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3187 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3188 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3189 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3190 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3191 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3192 comparison.
3193
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003194 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3195 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3196 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3197 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003198 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003199
3200 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003201
3202 and ::
3203
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003204 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3205
3206 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3207 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3208 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3209 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3210
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003211 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3212 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3213 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3214 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3215 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3216
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003217 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3218 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003219 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3220 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003221
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003222Library
3223-------
3224
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003225- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3226 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3227
3228- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3229 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3230 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3231 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3232 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3233 See PEP 307 for details.
3234
3235- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3236 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3237
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003238- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3239 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003240 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003241 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3242 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003243 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003244
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003245- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3246 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3247
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003248- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3249 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3250 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3251
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003252- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3253
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003254- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3255 exception.
3256
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003257- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3258 class.
3259
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003260- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3261 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3262 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3263
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003264- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3265 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3266
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003267- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003268 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3269 See SF bug #659228.
3270
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003271- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3272 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3273 See SF patch #651082.
3274
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003275- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003276
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003277- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3278 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3279
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003280- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003281 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003282
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003283- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3284 DOS paths from other platforms.
3285
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003286Tools/Demos
3287-----------
3288
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003289- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3290 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3291 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3292 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3293 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3294 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3295 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3296 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3297 example:
3298
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003299 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3300 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003301
3302 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3303
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003304
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003305Build
3306-----
3307
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003308- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3309 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3310 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003311 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3312
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003313 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3314
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003315- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3316 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3317 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3318 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3319 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3320 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3321 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3322 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3323 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3324
3325- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3326 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3327 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3328 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3329
3330- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3331 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3332
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003333C API
3334-----
3335
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003336- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3337 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003338
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003339- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3340 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3341 tp_as_number pointer.
3342
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003343- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3344 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3345 (SF #681367)
3346
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003347- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3348 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3349 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3350 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003351
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003352Tests
3353-----
3354
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003355- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003356 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3357 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3358 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3359 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3360 pydoc.)
3361
3362- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3363
3364- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003365
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003366Windows
3367-------
3368
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003369- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3370 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3371 time).
3372
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003373- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3374 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3375
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003376- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3377 release without strong cryptography.
3378
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003379- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003380 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003381
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003382- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3383 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3384
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003385Mac
3386---
3387
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003388- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3389 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003390
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003391- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3392 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3393 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003394
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003395- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3396 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003397
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003398- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3399 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3400 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3401 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003402
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003403- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003404 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3405 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3406 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003407
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003408
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003409What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003410=================================
3411
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003412*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003413
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003414Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003415--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003416
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003417- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3418
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003419- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3420 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003421 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003422 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003423 a different meaning than before.
3424
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003425- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003426 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003427 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003428
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003429- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003430 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003431 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003432
3433- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3434 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3435 and deallocation.
3436
3437- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3438 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3439
3440- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3441 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3442 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3443 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3444 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3445
3446- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3447 now detected by the garbage collector.
3448
3449- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3450 [SF bug 519621]
3451
3452- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3453 identifier.
3454
3455- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3456 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3457 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3458 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3459 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3460 [SF bug 563060]
3461
3462- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3463 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3464 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3465 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3466 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3467
3468- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3469 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3470 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3471
3472- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3473
3474- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3475 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3476 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3477 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3478 state of the slots would be lost.)
3479
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003480Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003481-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003482
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003483- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003484 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3485 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3486 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3487 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003488 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3489 Jython 2.1.
3490
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003491- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003492 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003493 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3494 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3495 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3496 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3497 these, see PEP 302.
3498
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003499- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3500 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3501 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3502
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003503- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3504 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3505 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3506
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003507- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3508 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3509 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3510
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003511- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3512 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3513 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3514 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3515 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3516 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3517 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3518 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3519 releases or implementations.
3520
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003521- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003522 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3523 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003524
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003525- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3526 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3527
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003528- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3529 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3530 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3531
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003532- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3533 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3534
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003535- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3536 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003537 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3538 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003539
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003540- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3541 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3542 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3543 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3544 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3545
3546 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3547 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3548 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3549 pattern.
3550
3551 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3552 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3553 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3554 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3555
3556 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3557 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3558 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3559 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3560 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3561 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3562
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003563- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3564 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3565 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3566 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3567 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3568 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3569 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3570 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003571
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003572- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3573 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3574 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3575 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3576 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003577 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3578 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3579 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3580 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3581 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3582 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3583 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003584
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003585- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3586 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3587
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003588- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3589 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3590 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3591 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3592 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3593 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3594 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3595 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3596 to Zack Weinberg!
3597
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003598- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3599 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3600 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3601 type. This has been fixed now.
3602
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003603- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3604 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3605 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3606
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003607- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3608 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3609 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3610 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3611 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3612 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3613 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3614 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003615 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003616
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003617- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3618 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3619 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003620
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003621- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3622 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3623 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3624 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3625 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3626 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3627 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3628 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003629 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003630 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3631 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3632
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003633- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3634 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3635 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3636 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3637 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3638 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3639 this.)
3640
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003641- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3642 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003643 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003644 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003645 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3646 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003647 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3648 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003649
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003650- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3651 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3652 currently running.
3653
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003654- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3655 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3656 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3657 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3658
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003659- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3660 as directory names.
3661
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003662- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3663 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3664
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003665- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3666 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3667
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003668- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003669 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3670 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003671
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003672- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3673 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3674 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3675 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3676 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3677
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003678- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3679 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3680 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3681 removed.
3682
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003683- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3684 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3685 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3686
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003687- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3688 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3689 to __debug__.
3690
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003691- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3692 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3693 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3694
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003695- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3696 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3697 deprecated now.
3698
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003699- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3700 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3701 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003702
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003703- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3704 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3705 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3706 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3707 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003708
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003709- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3710 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3711
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003712- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3713 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3714 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003715 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003716 is backward compatible.
3717
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003718- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3719 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3720 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3721 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3722 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3723
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003724- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3725 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3726 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3727 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3728 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3729 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003730
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003731- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3732 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3733
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003734- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3735 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3736
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003737- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3738 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3739 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3740 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3741 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3742
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003743- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3744 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3745 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3746
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003747- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003748 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3749
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003750- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3751 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3752 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003753
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003754- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3755 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3756
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003757- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3758 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3759 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3760
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003761- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3762
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003763Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003764-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003765
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003766- Added three operators to the operator module:
3767 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3768 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3769 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3770
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003771- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3772
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003773- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3774 archives.
3775
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003776- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3777 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3778 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3779
3780 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3781
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003782- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3783 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3784 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003785 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003786
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003787- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3788 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3789 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3790 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003791 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3792 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3793 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3794 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003795
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003796- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3797 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003798
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003799- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3800
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003801- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3802 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3803
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003804- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3805 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3806 supported.
3807
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003808- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3809
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003810- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3811 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003812
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003813- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3814 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3815
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003816- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3817
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003818- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3819 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3820
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003821- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3822 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3823 functions but callable type objects.
3824
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003825- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003826 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003827 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003828
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003829- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3830 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003831
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003832- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3833 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003834
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003835- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3836 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3837 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3838 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3839
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003840- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3841 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003842
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003843- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3844 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3845 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3846 and __imul__.
3847
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003848- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003849 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3850 is called.
3851
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003852- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3853 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3854 interpreter was compiled.
3855
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003856- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3857 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3858 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003859 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003860 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3861 1, not 2.
3862
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003863- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3864 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3865 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3866 limit.
3867
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003868- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3869 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3870 bug #623464.
3871
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003872- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3873 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3874 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3875 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3876
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003877Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003878-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003879
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003880- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3881
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003882- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3883 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3884 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3885 with Python 2.3a2.
3886
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003887- os.path exposes getctime.
3888
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003889- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003890 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003891 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003892 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003893 unit tests of floating point results.
3894
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003895- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3896 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3897 has been increased.
3898
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003899- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3900 executed.
3901
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003902- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3903 postinstallation script.
3904
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003905- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3906 test the current module.
3907
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003908- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003909 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3910 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3911 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3912 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3913
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003914- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003915 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003916 Ward's Optik package.
3917
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003918- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3919 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3920 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3921 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3922
3923- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3924 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003925 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003926
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003927- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3928 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3929 shelf are binary pickles.
3930
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003931- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3932 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3933
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003934- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3935 modules are iterators now.
3936
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003937- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3938 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3939 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3940 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3941 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3942 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003943
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003944- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3945 with their entity value.
3946
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003947- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3948
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003949- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3950 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003951
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003952- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3953 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003954 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003955
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003956- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3957 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3958 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3959 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3960 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3961 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3962 main():
3963
3964 import locale
3965 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3966
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003967- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3968 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3969
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003970- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3971 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3972 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3973 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3974 to the new standard.
3975
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003976- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3977 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3978 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3979 an extension to the database.
3980
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003981- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3982 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3983 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3984 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003985 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003986
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003987- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003988 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003989
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003990- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3991 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3992 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3993 bounded integers.
3994
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003995- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3996 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3997 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3998 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3999 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
4000 in existence.
4001
4002 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
4003 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
4004 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
4005 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4006 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4007 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4008
4009 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4010 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4011 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4012 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4013
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004014- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4015 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4016 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4017
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004018- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4019
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004020- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4021 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4022 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4023 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4024
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004025- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4026 argument.
4027
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004028- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4029 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4030 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4031 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4032 [SF patch 560794].
4033
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004034- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4035 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4036 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004037 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4038 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4039 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004040
4041- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4042 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004043
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004044- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4045 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4046 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4047 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004048
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004049- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4050 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4051 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4052 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4053 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4054
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004055- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004056
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004057- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4058
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004059- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4060 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4061 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4062 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4063 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4064 identical to None.
4065
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004066- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4067 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4068 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4069 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4070 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4071 results now.
4072
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004073- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4074 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4075
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004076- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4077 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4078 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4079 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4080 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4081 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4082 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4083 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4084
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004085- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4086
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004087- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4088 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4089
4090- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4091 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4092 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4093 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4094 and other systems.
4095
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004096- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4097 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4098 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4099 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 +00004100 work well with these.
4101
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004102- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4103
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004104- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004105 connections.
4106
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004107- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4108 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4109 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4110
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004111- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4112 sets
4113
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004114- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4115 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4116 name.
4117
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004118- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4119 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4120 passed in.
4121
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004122- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004123 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004124 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4125 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004126
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004127- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4128
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004129- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4130
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004131- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4132 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4133 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4134
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004135- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4136 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4137 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4138 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004139 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004140
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004141- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004142 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004143 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004144
4145- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4146 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4147 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4148
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004149- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004150 the value of its expression argument.
4151
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004152- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4153 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4154 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4155
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004156- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4157 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4158 skipstone browser was included.
4159
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004160- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4161 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4162
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004163Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004164-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004165
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004166- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4167 names in addition to accepting file names.
4168
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004169- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4170 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4171 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4172 still used and useful.)
4173
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004174- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4175 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4176 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4177 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004178
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004179- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4180 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4181 the generated binary.
4182
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004183Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004184-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004185
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004186- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4187
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004188- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4189 except in the hands of experts.
4190
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004191- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004192 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4193 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4194 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004195
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004196- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4197 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4198 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4199 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4200 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4201 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4202 builds.
4203
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004204- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4205 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4206 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4207 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4208 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4209 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4210 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4211 new type.
4212
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004213- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004214
4215 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4216 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4217 positive infinities.
4218
4219 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4220 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4221 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4222 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4223 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4224 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4225 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4226
4227 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4228
4229 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4230
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004231- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4232 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4233 size of the executable.
4234
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004235- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4236 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4237 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4238 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004239
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004240- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4241
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004242- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4243 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4244 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004245
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004246- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4247 well as Unix.
4248
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004249- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4250 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4251 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4252 modules in the README file for details.
4253
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004254C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004255-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004256
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004257- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4258 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004259 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004260 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004261 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004262
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004263- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4264 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4265 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4266 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4267 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4268 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004269 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004270 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4271 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4272 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4273 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4274 aligned.)
4275
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004276- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4277 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4278 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4279
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004280- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4281 level.
4282
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004283- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4284 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4285 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4286 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4287 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4288
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004289- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4290 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4291 code.
4292
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004293- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4294 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4295 adjusting for negative indices.
4296
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004297- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4298 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4299 object.
4300
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004301- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4302 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4303 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4304
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004305- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4306 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004307
4308- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4309
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004310- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4311 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4312 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4313 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4314
4315- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4316
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004317- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004318
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004319- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004320 without going through the buffer API.
4321
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004322- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004323
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004324- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4325 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4326 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4327 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4328
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004329- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4330 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4331
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004332- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004333 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4334
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004335New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004336-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004337
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004338- OpenVMS is now supported.
4339
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004340- AtheOS is now supported.
4341
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004342- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4343
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004344- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4345
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004346Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004347-----
4348
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004349- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4350 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4351 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004352
4353Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004354-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004355
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004356- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4357 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4358 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4359 bugs.
4360 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004361 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004362 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4363 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004364 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004365
4366- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004367 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004368
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004369- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4370 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4371
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004372- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4373 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004374 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004375 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4376
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004377- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4378 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4379 use files" uninstall option).
4380
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004381- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4382
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004383- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4384 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4385
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004386- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4387 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4388 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4389
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004390- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4391 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4392 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4393 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4394 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004395 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4396 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4397 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004398
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004399- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004400 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004401 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4402 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4403 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4404 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4405 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4406 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4407 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4408 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4409 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4410 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4411 work around.
4412
4413- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4414 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4415 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4416 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4417 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4418 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4419 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4420 specified with O_CREAT too).
4421
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004422Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004423----
4424
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004425- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004426
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004427- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4428 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4429 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4430
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004431- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4432 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4433 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4434
4435- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4436 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4437 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4438 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4439 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4440 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4441 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4442 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004443
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004444- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4445 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4446 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004447
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004448- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4449 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4450 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4451 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4452 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004453
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004454- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4455 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4456 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004457
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004458- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4459 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004460
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004461- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4462 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4463 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4464 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4465 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004466
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004467- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4468 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4469 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4470
4471- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4472 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4473 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004474
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004475- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4476 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4477 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4478 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004479 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004480
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004481- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4482 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004483
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004484- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4485 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004486
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004487- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004488 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004489 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4490 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004491
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004492
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004493What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004494===============================
4495
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004496*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4497
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004498Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004499--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004500
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004501- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4502 with a custom metaclass.
4503
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004504Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004505-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004506
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004507- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4508 are proxies.
4509
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004510Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004511-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004512
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004513- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4514 very short strings.
4515
4516- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4517 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4518 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4519 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4520 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4521
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004522Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004523-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004524
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004525- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4526 close or delete time).
4527
4528- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4529 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4530
4531- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4532
4533- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004534 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004535
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004536Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004537-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004538
4539Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004540-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004541
4542C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004543-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004544
4545New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004546-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004547
4548Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004549-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004550
4551Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004552-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004553
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004554- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4555
4556- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4557 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4558
4559- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4560 deleted at process exit time.
4561
4562- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4563 in backslash.
4564
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004565Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004566----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004567
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004568- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4569 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4570 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4571
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004572
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004573What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004574===========================
4575
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004576*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4577
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004578Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004579--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004580
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004581- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4582 been extensively updated. See
4583
4584 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4585
4586 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4587
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004588- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4589 deleted!
4590
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004591- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4592 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4593 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4594 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4595 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4596
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004597- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4598
4599 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4600 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4601
4602 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4603 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4604 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4605 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4606 supported anyway.
4607
4608 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4609 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4610
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004611- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4612 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4613 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4614 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4615 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004616
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004617- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4618 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4619 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4620
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004621Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004622-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004623
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004624- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4625 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4626 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4627 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4628 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4629 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004630 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4631 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4632 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4633 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004634
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004635- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4636 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4637 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4638
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004639Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004640-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004641
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004642- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4643
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004644Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004645-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004646
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004647- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4648 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4649 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4650 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4651 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4652 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4653
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004654- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4655
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004656- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4657
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004658- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4659
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004660- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4661 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4662 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4663
4664- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4665
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004666Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004667-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004668
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004669- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4670 off a search on Google.
4671
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004672Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004673-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004674
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004675- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4676 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4677 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4678 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4679 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4680 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4681 other platforms should do likewise.
4682
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004683- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4684 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4685 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4686
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004687C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004688-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004689
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004690- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4691 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4692 producing key-value pairs.
4693
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004694- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004695 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004696 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4697 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4698 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4699 previously went unchallenged.
4700
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004701New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004702-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004703
4704Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004705-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004706
4707Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004708-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004709
4710Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004711----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004712
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004713- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4714 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004715
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004716- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4717 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4718 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4719 home.
4720
4721
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004722What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004723===========================
4724
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004725*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4726
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004727Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004728--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004729
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004730- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4731 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004732
4733 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004734 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004735
4736 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4737 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004738 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004739 This needs to be documented.
4740
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004741- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4742 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4743
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004744- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4745 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4746 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4747
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004748- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4749 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4750
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004751- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4752 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4753 class forbids it).
4754
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004755- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4756 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4757 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4758
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004759- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4760
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004761Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004762-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004763
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004764- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4765 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004766 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004767
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004768- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4769 (like 1 + '').
4770
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004771Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004772-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004773
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004774- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4775 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4776 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4777 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004778 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004779 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4780
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004781- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4782 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4783 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4784 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4785
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004786- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4787 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004788 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4789 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4790 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004791
4792- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4793 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004794
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004795- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4796 bytes on its input.
4797
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004798Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004799-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004800
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004801- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004802 convenience function.
4803
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004804- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4805 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4806 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004807 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4808 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4809 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4810 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4811 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4812 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004813
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004814- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4815 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4816 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4817 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4818
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004819- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4820 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4821 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4822
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004823- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4824 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4825 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4826 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4827
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004828- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4829 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004830 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004831 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4832 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4833 new -l and -e options.
4834
4835- statcache is now deprecated.
4836
4837- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4838 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004839 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004840 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4841 time properly taken into account.
4842
4843- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4844 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4845 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4846 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4847
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004848Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004849-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004850
4851Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004852-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004853
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004854- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4855 is built with libdb3 if available.
4856
4857- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4858
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004859C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004860-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004861
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004862- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4863 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4864 PySequence_Size().
4865
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004866- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4867
4868- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4869 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4870 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4871
4872- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4873 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4874
4875- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4876 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4877
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004878New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004879-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004880
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004881- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4882 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4883
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004884- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4885 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4886
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004887- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4888
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004889Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004890-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004891
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004892- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4893 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4894
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004895Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004896-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004897
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004898Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004899----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004900
4901- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4902 removed completely in the next release.
4903
4904- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4905 OSX.
4906
4907- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4908 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4909
4910- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4911
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004912
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004913What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004914===========================
4915
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004916*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4917
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004918Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004919--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004920
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004921- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004922 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004923 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004924 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4925 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004926 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4927 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004928 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4929 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004930
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004931- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4932 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4933
4934- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4935 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4936
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004937Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004938-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004939
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004940- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4941 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4942 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4943 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4944 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4945 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4946 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4947 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4948
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004949- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4950 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4951 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4952 example).
4953
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004954- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004955 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004956 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004957 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004958
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004959- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4960 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4961 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004962 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004963
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004964- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4965 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4966 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4967 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4968 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4969 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4970
4971 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4972
4973 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4974
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004975Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004976-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004977
4978- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4979
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004980- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4981
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004982- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4983 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004984
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004985- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4986 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4987 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4988 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4989 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4990 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004991 attributes.
4992
4993- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4994 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4995 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004996
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004997- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4998 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4999 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005000
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005001- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
5002 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
5003 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005004 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
5005 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5006
5007- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5008 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005009
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005010Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005011-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005012
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005013- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5014 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5015
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005016- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5017 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5018 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5019 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5020
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005021- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5022 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5023 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5024 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5025
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005026 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5027 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5028 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5029 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5030 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5031 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5032 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5033 without losing information).
5034
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005035- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005036 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5037 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5038 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5039 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5040 module).
5041
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005042 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005043 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5044 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5045 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5046 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005047
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005048- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005049 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5050 encoding.
5051
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005052- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5053 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5054
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005055- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005056 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5057
5058- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5059 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5060 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5061 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5062
5063- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5064
5065- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5066 ON, and OFF.
5067
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005068- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5069 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5070
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005071Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005072-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005073
5074- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5075 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5076 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005077
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005078- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5079 been added: -X and -E.
5080
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005081Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005082-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005083
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005084- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5085 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5086
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005087C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005088-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005089
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005090- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5091 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5092 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5093 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5094 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5095
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005096- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5097 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5098 as long) arguments.
5099
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005100- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5101 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5102 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5103 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5104 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5105 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5106
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005107- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5108 input.
5109
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005110New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005111-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005112
5113Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005114-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005115
5116Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005117-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005118
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005119- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5120 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5121 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5122
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005123- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5124 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5125 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005126 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005127
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005128 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5129 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5130 import signal
5131 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005132
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005133 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005134 while 1:
5135 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005136 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005137 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5138 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5139 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5140 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005141
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005142
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005143What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5144===========================
5145
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005146*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5147
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005148Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005149--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005150
5151- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5152 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5153 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5154
5155- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5156 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5157 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5158 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5159 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5160 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5161 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005162
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005163- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005164 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005165 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5166 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5167 associate a docstring with a property.
5168
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005169- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5170 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5171 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5172 other built-in object types.
5173
5174- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5175 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5176 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5177 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5178 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5179
5180- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5181 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5182
5183- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5184 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005185 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005186 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5187 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5188 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5189 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5190 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5191
5192- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5193 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5194 class.
5195
5196- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5197 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5198 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5199 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5200
5201- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5202 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5203 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5204 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5205
5206- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5207 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5208
5209- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5210 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5211 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5212 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5213 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005214 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005215 with the same value as s.
5216
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005217- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5218
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005219Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005220----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005221
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005222- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5223
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005224- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5225 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5226 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5227 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5228 objects.
5229
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005230- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5231 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005232 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5233 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5234
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005235- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5236 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5237 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5238
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005239Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005240-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005241
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005242- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5243 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5244 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5245 by the instances.
5246
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005247- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5248 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5249 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5250
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005251- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5252 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5253 before the entire comparison is complete.
5254
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005255- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5256 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5257 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5258
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005259- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5260 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5261 getwriter().
5262
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005263- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5264 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5265
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005266- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005267 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5268 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5269
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005270- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5271 iterable object.
5272
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005273- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5274 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005275
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005276- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5277 authentication.
5278
5279- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5280 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005281
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005282- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005283 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5284 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5285 a sample driver.)
5286
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005287Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005288-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005289
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005290- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5291 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5292 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5293 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5294 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5295 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5296 kernel has large file support.
5297
5298- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5299 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5300 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5301 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5302 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5303
5304- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5305 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5306 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5307
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005308C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005309-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005310
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005311- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5312 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5313
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005314New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005315-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005316
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005317- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5318 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5319
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005320Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005321-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005322
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005323- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5324 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5325 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5326 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5327 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5328
5329- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5330 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5331 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5332 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5333
5334- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5335 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5336
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005337Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005338-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005339
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005340- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005341 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5342 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005343
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005344
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005345What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5346===========================
5347
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005348*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5349
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005350Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005351----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005352
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005353- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5354 big to represent as a C double.
5355
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005356- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5357 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5358 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5359 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5360 restriction).
5361
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005362- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5363 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5364 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5365 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5366 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5367
5368 >>> dir([])
5369 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5370 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5371 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5372 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5373 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5374 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5375 'reverse', 'sort']
5376
5377 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5378
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005379- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005380 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5381 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5382 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5383 OverflowError exception.
5384
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005385- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005386 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005387 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5388 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5389 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5390 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5391 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005392 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005393 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5394 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5395
5396 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5397 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5398 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5399 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005400
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005401- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005402 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5403 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5404 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5405 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5406 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5407 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5408 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5409 once it is created.
5410
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005411- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5412 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5413 (key, value) pairs.
5414
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005415- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005416 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5417 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5418
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005419- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5420 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5421 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5422 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5423 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005424
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005425- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005426 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5427 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5428
5429 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5430
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005431- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005432 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5433
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005434Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005435-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005436
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005437- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005438 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5439 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005440
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005441- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5442 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5443 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5444 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5445 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5446 in this area anymore).
5447
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005448- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5449 threading.Timer.
5450
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005451- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5452 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5453
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005454- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005455 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5456
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005457- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005458 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5459 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5460 converted to Python longs.
5461
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005462- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005463 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5464
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005465- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5466 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5467 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5468
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005469Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005470-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005471
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005472- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5473 division operators as per PEP 238.
5474
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005475Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005476-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005477
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005478- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5479 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5480 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5481 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5482
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005483C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005484-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005485
5486- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005487
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005488- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5489 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005490 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005491
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005492 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5493 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005494 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005495 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005496
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005497- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005498 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5499 module:
5500
5501 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005502
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005503 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5504 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005505
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005506 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5507 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005508
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005509 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5510
5511 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5512
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005513- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005514 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5515 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5516 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005517
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005518New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005519-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005520
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005521- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5522 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5523 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5524 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5525 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005526
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005527Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005528-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005529
5530Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005531-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005532
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005533- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5534 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5535 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5536 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005537 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5538 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5539 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5540 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5541 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005542
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005543- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005544 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5545
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005546
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005547What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5548===========================
5549
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005550*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5551
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005552Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005553-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005554
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005555- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5556 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5557
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005558- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5559 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5560 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005561
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005562- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5563 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5564 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5565 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005566
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005567- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5568
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005569- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005570
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005571Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005572-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005573
5574- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005575 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005576 the module docstring for details.
5577
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005578Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005579-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005580
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005581- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005582 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5583 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5584 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005585
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005586- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5587 Nick Mathewson.
5588
5589Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005590----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005591
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005592- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5593 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5594 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5595 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5596 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5597 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5598 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5599 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5600
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005601- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5602 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5603 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5604 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5605
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005606- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5607 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5608 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5609 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5610 come a long way).
5611
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005612- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5613 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5614 write filters for these warnings).
5615
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005616- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5617 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5618 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5619 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5620 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5621
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005622- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5623 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5624 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5625 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5626 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5627 older distribution.
5628
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005629Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005630-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005631
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005632- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5633 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005634 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005635
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005636- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5637 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5638 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5639
5640- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5641
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005642- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5643
5644- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5645
5646- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5647
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005648- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005649
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005650- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5651
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005652New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005653-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005654
5655C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005656-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005657
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005658- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5659 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5660 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5661 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5662 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5663 against buffer overruns.
5664
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005665- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005666 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5667 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005668 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5669 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5670 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5671
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005672- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5673 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5674 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5675 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5676 deprecated.
5677
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005678Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005679-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005680
5681- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5682 relevant is found.
5683
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005684
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005685What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005686===========================
5687
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005688*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5689
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005690Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005691----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005692
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005693- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5694 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5695 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5696 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5697 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5698 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5699 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5700 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005701 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005702 repaired.
5703
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005704- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005705 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005706 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5707 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5708 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5709 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5710 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5711 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5712 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5713 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5714
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005715- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5716 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5717 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5718 leading BMO character).
5719
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005720- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5721 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5722 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5723
5724 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5725 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5726 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005727
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005728 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5729 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5730 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5731 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5732 for various simple to use conversions.
5733
5734 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5735 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5736
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005737 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5738 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5739 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5740 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5741 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5742 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5743 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5744 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5745 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5746 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5747 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5748 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5749 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5750 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5751 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005752
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005753- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5754 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5755 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005756 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005757 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005758
5759 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005760 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5761 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5762 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5763 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5764 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005765 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5766 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005767
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005768 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5769 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5770 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005771 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005772
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005773- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5774 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5775 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5776 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5777 floating arithmetic,
5778
5779 x = 9007199254740992.0
5780 print long(x)
5781
5782 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5783 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5784 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5785 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5786 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5787 functions are of good quality).
5788
5789 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5790 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5791 algorithms to break.
5792
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005793- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5794 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5795 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5796 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5797 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5798 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5799 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5800 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5801 order.
5802
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005803- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5804 operation along the most common code paths.
5805
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005806- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5807 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5808
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005809- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5810 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5811 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5812 {}.update(UserDict())
5813
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005814- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5815 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5816 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5817 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5818 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5819 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5820 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5821 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5822
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005823- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005824 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005825
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005826 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005827 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5828 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005829 join() method of strings
5830 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005831 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5832 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005833 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005834 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005835
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005836- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5837 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5838
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005839- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5840 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5841
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005842- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5843 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5844 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5845 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5846
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005847- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5848 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005849 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005850 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5851 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005852
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005853- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5854
5855
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005856Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005857-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005858
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005859- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005860 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005861 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5862 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5863
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005864- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5865 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5866
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005867- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5868 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5869 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5870 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5871
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005872- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5873 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5874 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5875
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005876- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5877
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005878- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5879
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005880- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5881 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5882 that are still imported into string.py).
5883
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005884- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5885
5886- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5887 Now it does.
5888
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005889- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5890
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005891- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5892 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5893 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5894 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5895 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005896 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5897 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005898
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005899- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5900 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5901 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5902 'help(object)'.
5903
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005904Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005905-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005906
5907- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005908 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005909 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5910 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5911
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005912- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005913 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5914 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005915
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005916C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005917-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005918
5919- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5920 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005921
5922----
5923
5924**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**