| Python History | |
| -------------- | |
| This file contains the release messages for previous Python releases. | |
| As you read on you go back to the dark ages of Python's history. | |
| (Note: news about 2.5c2 and later 2.5 releases is in the Misc/NEWS | |
| file of the release25-maint branch.) | |
| ====================================================================== | |
| What's New in Python 2.5 release candidate 1? | |
| ============================================= | |
| *Release date: 17-AUG-2006* | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Unicode objects will no longer raise an exception when being | |
| compared equal or unequal to a string and a UnicodeDecodeError | |
| exception occurs, e.g. as result of a decoding failure. | |
| Instead, the equal (==) and unequal (!=) comparison operators will | |
| now issue a UnicodeWarning and interpret the two objects as | |
| unequal. The UnicodeWarning can be filtered as desired using | |
| the warning framework, e.g. silenced completely, turned into an | |
| exception, logged, etc. | |
| Note that compare operators other than equal and unequal will still | |
| raise UnicodeDecodeError exceptions as they've always done. | |
| - Fix segfault when doing string formatting on subclasses of long. | |
| - Fix bug related to __len__ functions using values > 2**32 on 64-bit machines | |
| with new-style classes. | |
| - Fix bug related to __len__ functions returning negative values with | |
| classic classes. | |
| - Patch #1538606, Fix __index__() clipping. There were some problems | |
| discovered with the API and how integers that didn't fit into Py_ssize_t | |
| were handled. This patch attempts to provide enough alternatives | |
| to effectively use __index__. | |
| - Bug #1536021: __hash__ may now return long int; the final hash | |
| value is obtained by invoking hash on the long int. | |
| - Bug #1536786: buffer comparison could emit a RuntimeWarning. | |
| - Bug #1535165: fixed a segfault in input() and raw_input() when | |
| sys.stdin is closed. | |
| - On Windows, the PyErr_Warn function is now exported from | |
| the Python dll again. | |
| - Bug #1191458: tracing over for loops now produces a line event | |
| on each iteration. Fixing this problem required changing the .pyc | |
| magic number. This means that .pyc files generated before 2.5c1 | |
| will be regenerated. | |
| - Bug #1333982: string/number constants were inappropriately stored | |
| in the byte code and co_consts even if they were not used, ie | |
| immediately popped off the stack. | |
| - Fixed a reference-counting problem in property(). | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - Fix a bug in the ``compiler`` package that caused invalid code to be | |
| generated for generator expressions. | |
| - The distutils version has been changed to 2.5.0. The change to | |
| keep it programmatically in sync with the Python version running | |
| the code (introduced in 2.5b3) has been reverted. It will continue | |
| to be maintained manually as static string literal. | |
| - If the Python part of a ctypes callback function returns None, | |
| and this cannot be converted to the required C type, an exception is | |
| printed with PyErr_WriteUnraisable. Before this change, the C | |
| callback returned arbitrary values to the calling code. | |
| - The __repr__ method of a NULL ctypes.py_object() no longer raises | |
| an exception. | |
| - uuid.UUID now has a bytes_le attribute. This returns the UUID in | |
| little-endian byte order for Windows. In addition, uuid.py gained some | |
| workarounds for clocks with low resolution, to stop the code yielding | |
| duplicate UUIDs. | |
| - Patch #1540892: site.py Quitter() class attempts to close sys.stdin | |
| before raising SystemExit, allowing IDLE to honor quit() and exit(). | |
| - Bug #1224621: make tabnanny recognize IndentationErrors raised by tokenize. | |
| - Patch #1536071: trace.py should now find the full module name of a | |
| file correctly even on Windows. | |
| - logging's atexit hook now runs even if the rest of the module has | |
| already been cleaned up. | |
| - Bug #1112549, fix DoS attack on cgi.FieldStorage. | |
| - Bug #1531405, format_exception no longer raises an exception if | |
| str(exception) raised an exception. | |
| - Fix a bug in the ``compiler`` package that caused invalid code to be | |
| generated for nested functions. | |
| Extension Modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Patch #1511317: don't crash on invalid hostname (alias) info. | |
| - Patch #1535500: fix segfault in BZ2File.writelines and make sure it | |
| raises the correct exceptions. | |
| - Patch # 1536908: enable building ctypes on OpenBSD/AMD64. The | |
| '-no-stack-protector' compiler flag for OpenBSD has been removed. | |
| - Patch #1532975 was applied, which fixes Bug #1533481: ctypes now | |
| uses the _as_parameter_ attribute when objects are passed to foreign | |
| function calls. The ctypes version number was changed to 1.0.1. | |
| - Bug #1530559, struct.pack raises TypeError where it used to convert. | |
| Passing float arguments to struct.pack when integers are expected | |
| now triggers a DeprecationWarning. | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| - test_socketserver should now work on cygwin and not fail sporadically | |
| on other platforms. | |
| - test_mailbox should now work on cygwin versions 2006-08-10 and later. | |
| - Bug #1535182: really test the xreadlines() method of bz2 objects. | |
| - test_threading now skips testing alternate thread stack sizes on | |
| platforms that don't support changing thread stack size. | |
| Documentation | |
| ------------- | |
| - Patch #1534922: unittest docs were corrected and enhanced. | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - Bug #1535502, build _hashlib on Windows, and use masm assembler | |
| code in OpenSSL. | |
| - Bug #1534738, win32 debug version of _msi should be _msi_d.pyd. | |
| - Bug #1530448, ctypes build failure on Solaris 10 was fixed. | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| - New API for Unicode rich comparisons: PyUnicode_RichCompare() | |
| - Bug #1069160. Internal correctness changes were made to | |
| ``PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc()``. A test case was added, and | |
| the documentation was changed to state that the return value | |
| is always 1 (normal) or 0 (if the specified thread wasn't found). | |
| What's New in Python 2.5 beta 3? | |
| ================================ | |
| *Release date: 03-AUG-2006* | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - _PyWeakref_GetWeakrefCount() now returns a Py_ssize_t; it previously | |
| returned a long (see PEP 353). | |
| - Bug #1515471: string.replace() accepts character buffers again. | |
| - Add PyErr_WarnEx() so C code can pass the stacklevel to warnings.warn(). | |
| This provides the proper warning for struct.pack(). | |
| PyErr_Warn() is now deprecated in favor of PyErr_WarnEx(). | |
| - Patch #1531113: Fix augmented assignment with yield expressions. | |
| Also fix a SystemError when trying to assign to yield expressions. | |
| - Bug #1529871: The speed enhancement patch #921466 broke Python's compliance | |
| with PEP 302. This was fixed by adding an ``imp.NullImporter`` type that is | |
| used in ``sys.path_importer_cache`` to cache non-directory paths and avoid | |
| excessive filesystem operations during imports. | |
| - Bug #1521947: When checking for overflow, ``PyOS_strtol()`` used some | |
| operations on signed longs that are formally undefined by C. | |
| Unfortunately, at least one compiler now cares about that, so complicated | |
| the code to make that compiler happy again. | |
| - Bug #1524310: Properly report errors from FindNextFile in os.listdir. | |
| - Patch #1232023: Stop including current directory in search | |
| path on Windows. | |
| - Fix some potential crashes found with failmalloc. | |
| - Fix warnings reported by Klocwork's static analysis tool. | |
| - Bug #1512814, Fix incorrect lineno's when code within a function | |
| had more than 255 blank lines. | |
| - Patch #1521179: Python now accepts the standard options ``--help`` and | |
| ``--version`` as well as ``/?`` on Windows. | |
| - Bug #1520864: unpacking singleton tuples in a 'for' loop (for x, in) works | |
| again. Fixing this problem required changing the .pyc magic number. | |
| This means that .pyc files generated before 2.5b3 will be regenerated. | |
| - Bug #1524317: Compiling Python ``--without-threads`` failed. | |
| The Python core compiles again, and, in a build without threads, the | |
| new ``sys._current_frames()`` returns a dictionary with one entry, | |
| mapping the faux "thread id" 0 to the current frame. | |
| - Bug #1525447: build on MacOS X on a case-sensitive filesystem. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - Fix #1693149. Now you can pass several modules separated by | |
| comma to trace.py in the same --ignore-module option. | |
| - Correction of patch #1455898: In the mbcs decoder, set final=False | |
| for stream decoder, but final=True for the decode function. | |
| - os.urandom no longer masks unrelated exceptions like SystemExit or | |
| KeyboardInterrupt. | |
| - Bug #1525866: Don't copy directory stat times in | |
| shutil.copytree on Windows | |
| - Bug #1002398: The documentation for os.path.sameopenfile now correctly | |
| refers to file descriptors, not file objects. | |
| - The renaming of the xml package to xmlcore, and the import hackery done | |
| to make it appear at both names, has been removed. Bug #1511497, | |
| #1513611, and probably others. | |
| - Bug #1441397: The compiler module now recognizes module and function | |
| docstrings correctly as it did in Python 2.4. | |
| - Bug #1529297: The rewrite of doctest for Python 2.4 unintentionally | |
| lost that tests are sorted by name before being run. This rarely | |
| matters for well-written tests, but can create baffling symptoms if | |
| side effects from one test to the next affect outcomes. ``DocTestFinder`` | |
| has been changed to sort the list of tests it returns. | |
| - The distutils version has been changed to 2.5.0, and is now kept | |
| in sync with sys.version_info[:3]. | |
| - Bug #978833: Really close underlying socket in _socketobject.close. | |
| - Bug #1459963: urllib and urllib2 now normalize HTTP header names with | |
| title(). | |
| - Patch #1525766: In pkgutil.walk_packages, correctly pass the onerror callback | |
| to recursive calls and call it with the failing package name. | |
| - Bug #1525817: Don't truncate short lines in IDLE's tool tips. | |
| - Patch #1515343: Fix printing of deprecated string exceptions with a | |
| value in the traceback module. | |
| - Resync optparse with Optik 1.5.3: minor tweaks for/to tests. | |
| - Patch #1524429: Use repr() instead of backticks in Tkinter again. | |
| - Bug #1520914: Change time.strftime() to accept a zero for any position in its | |
| argument tuple. For arguments where zero is illegal, the value is forced to | |
| the minimum value that is correct. This is to support an undocumented but | |
| common way people used to fill in inconsequential information in the time | |
| tuple pre-2.4. | |
| - Patch #1220874: Update the binhex module for Mach-O. | |
| - The email package has improved RFC 2231 support, specifically for | |
| recognizing the difference between encoded (name*0*=<blah>) and non-encoded | |
| (name*0=<blah>) parameter continuations. This may change the types of | |
| values returned from email.message.Message.get_param() and friends. | |
| Specifically in some cases where non-encoded continuations were used, | |
| get_param() used to return a 3-tuple of (None, None, string) whereas now it | |
| will just return the string (since non-encoded continuations don't have | |
| charset and language parts). | |
| Also, whereas % values were decoded in all parameter continuations, they are | |
| now only decoded in encoded parameter parts. | |
| - Bug #1517990: IDLE keybindings on MacOS X now work correctly | |
| - Bug #1517996: IDLE now longer shows the default Tk menu when a | |
| path browser, class browser or debugger is the frontmost window on MacOS X | |
| - Patch #1520294: Support for getset and member descriptors in types.py, | |
| inspect.py, and pydoc.py. Specifically, this allows for querying the type | |
| of an object against these built-in types and more importantly, for getting | |
| their docstrings printed in the interactive interpreter's help() function. | |
| Extension Modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Patch #1519025 and bug #926423: If a KeyboardInterrupt occurs during | |
| a socket operation on a socket with a timeout, the exception will be | |
| caught correctly. Previously, the exception was not caught. | |
| - Patch #1529514: The _ctypes extension is now compiled on more | |
| openbsd target platforms. | |
| - The ``__reduce__()`` method of the new ``collections.defaultdict`` had | |
| a memory leak, affecting pickles and deep copies. | |
| - Bug #1471938: Fix curses module build problem on Solaris 8; patch by | |
| Paul Eggert. | |
| - Patch #1448199: Release interpreter lock in _winreg.ConnectRegistry. | |
| - Patch #1521817: Index range checking on ctypes arrays containing | |
| exactly one element enabled again. This allows iterating over these | |
| arrays, without the need to check the array size before. | |
| - Bug #1521375: When the code in ctypes.util.find_library was | |
| run with root privileges, it could overwrite or delete | |
| /dev/null in certain cases; this is now fixed. | |
| - Bug #1467450: On Mac OS X 10.3, RTLD_GLOBAL is now used as the | |
| default mode for loading shared libraries in ctypes. | |
| - Because of a misspelled preprocessor symbol, ctypes was always | |
| compiled without thread support; this is now fixed. | |
| - pybsddb Bug #1527939: bsddb module DBEnv dbremove and dbrename | |
| methods now allow their database parameter to be None as the | |
| sleepycat API allows. | |
| - Bug #1526460: Fix socketmodule compile on NetBSD as it has a different | |
| bluetooth API compared with Linux and FreeBSD. | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| - Bug #1501330: Change test_ossaudiodev to be much more tolerant in terms of | |
| how long the test file should take to play. Now accepts taking 2.93 secs | |
| (exact time) +/- 10% instead of the hard-coded 3.1 sec. | |
| - Patch #1529686: The standard tests ``test_defaultdict``, ``test_iterlen``, | |
| ``test_uuid`` and ``test_email_codecs`` didn't actually run any tests when | |
| run via ``regrtest.py``. Now they do. | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - Bug #1439538: Drop usage of test -e in configure as it is not portable. | |
| Mac | |
| --- | |
| - PythonLauncher now works correctly when the path to the script contains | |
| characters that are treated specially by the shell (such as quotes). | |
| - Bug #1527397: PythonLauncher now launches scripts with the working directory | |
| set to the directory that contains the script instead of the user home | |
| directory. That latter was an implementation accident and not what users | |
| expect. | |
| What's New in Python 2.5 beta 2? | |
| ================================ | |
| *Release date: 11-JUL-2006* | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Bug #1441486: The literal representation of -(sys.maxint - 1) | |
| again evaluates to an int object, not a long. | |
| - Bug #1501934: The scope of global variables that are locally assigned | |
| using augmented assignment is now correctly determined. | |
| - Bug #927248: Recursive method-wrapper objects can now safely | |
| be released. | |
| - Bug #1417699: Reject locale-specific decimal point in float() | |
| and atof(). | |
| - Bug #1511381: codec_getstreamcodec() in codec.c is corrected to | |
| omit a default "error" argument for NULL pointer. This allows | |
| the parser to take a codec from cjkcodecs again. | |
| - Bug #1519018: 'as' is now validated properly in import statements. | |
| - On 64 bit systems, int literals that use less than 64 bits are | |
| now ints rather than longs. | |
| - Bug #1512814, Fix incorrect lineno's when code at module scope | |
| started after line 256. | |
| - New function ``sys._current_frames()`` returns a dict mapping thread | |
| id to topmost thread stack frame. This is for expert use, and is | |
| especially useful for debugging application deadlocks. The functionality | |
| was previously available in Fazal Majid's ``threadframe`` extension | |
| module, but it wasn't possible to do this in a wholly threadsafe way from | |
| an extension. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - Bug #1257728: Mention Cygwin in distutils error message about a missing | |
| VS 2003. | |
| - Patch #1519566: Update turtle demo, make begin_fill idempotent. | |
| - Bug #1508010: msvccompiler now requires the DISTUTILS_USE_SDK | |
| environment variable to be set in order to the SDK environment | |
| for finding the compiler, include files, etc. | |
| - Bug #1515998: Properly generate logical ids for files in bdist_msi. | |
| - warnings.py now ignores ImportWarning by default | |
| - string.Template() now correctly handles tuple-values. Previously, | |
| multi-value tuples would raise an exception and single-value tuples would | |
| be treated as the value they contain, instead. | |
| - Bug #822974: Honor timeout in telnetlib.{expect,read_until} | |
| even if some data are received. | |
| - Bug #1267547: Put proper recursive setup.py call into the | |
| spec file generated by bdist_rpm. | |
| - Bug #1514693: Update turtle's heading when switching between | |
| degrees and radians. | |
| - Reimplement turtle.circle using a polyline, to allow correct | |
| filling of arcs. | |
| - Bug #1514703: Only setup canvas window in turtle when the canvas | |
| is created. | |
| - Bug #1513223: .close() of a _socketobj now releases the underlying | |
| socket again, which then gets closed as it becomes unreferenced. | |
| - Bug #1504333: Make sgmllib support angle brackets in quoted | |
| attribute values. | |
| - Bug #853506: Fix IPv6 address parsing in unquoted attributes in | |
| sgmllib ('[' and ']' were not accepted). | |
| - Fix a bug in the turtle module's end_fill function. | |
| - Bug #1510580: The 'warnings' module improperly required that a Warning | |
| category be either a types.ClassType and a subclass of Warning. The proper | |
| check is just that it is a subclass with Warning as the documentation states. | |
| - The compiler module now correctly compiles the new try-except-finally | |
| statement (bug #1509132). | |
| - The wsgiref package is now installed properly on Unix. | |
| - A bug was fixed in logging.config.fileConfig() which caused a crash on | |
| shutdown when fileConfig() was called multiple times. | |
| - The sqlite3 module did cut off data from the SQLite database at the first | |
| null character before sending it to a custom converter. This has been fixed | |
| now. | |
| Extension Modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - #1494314: Fix a regression with high-numbered sockets in 2.4.3. This | |
| means that select() on sockets > FD_SETSIZE (typically 1024) work again. | |
| The patch makes sockets use poll() internally where available. | |
| - Assigning None to pointer type fields in ctypes structures possible | |
| overwrote the wrong fields, this is fixed now. | |
| - Fixed a segfault in _ctypes when ctypes.wintypes were imported | |
| on non-Windows platforms. | |
| - Bug #1518190: The ctypes.c_void_p constructor now accepts any | |
| integer or long, without range checking. | |
| - Patch #1517790: It is now possible to use custom objects in the ctypes | |
| foreign function argtypes sequence as long as they provide a from_param | |
| method, no longer is it required that the object is a ctypes type. | |
| - The '_ctypes' extension module now works when Python is configured | |
| with the --without-threads option. | |
| - Bug #1513646: os.access on Windows now correctly determines write | |
| access, again. | |
| - Bug #1512695: cPickle.loads could crash if it was interrupted with | |
| a KeyboardInterrupt. | |
| - Bug #1296433: parsing XML with a non-default encoding and | |
| a CharacterDataHandler could crash the interpreter in pyexpat. | |
| - Patch #1516912: improve Modules support for OpenVMS. | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - Automate Windows build process for the Win64 SSL module. | |
| - 'configure' now detects the zlib library the same way as distutils. | |
| Previously, the slight difference could cause compilation errors of the | |
| 'zlib' module on systems with more than one version of zlib. | |
| - The MSI compileall step was fixed to also support a TARGETDIR | |
| with spaces in it. | |
| - Bug #1517388: sqlite3.dll is now installed on Windows independent | |
| of Tcl/Tk. | |
| - Bug #1513032: 'make install' failed on FreeBSD 5.3 due to lib-old | |
| trying to be installed even though it's empty. | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| - Call os.waitpid() at the end of tests that spawn child processes in order | |
| to minimize resources (zombies). | |
| Documentation | |
| ------------- | |
| - Cover ImportWarning, PendingDeprecationWarning and simplefilter() in the | |
| documentation for the warnings module. | |
| - Patch #1509163: MS Toolkit Compiler no longer available. | |
| - Patch #1504046: Add documentation for xml.etree. | |
| What's New in Python 2.5 beta 1? | |
| ================================ | |
| *Release date: 20-JUN-2006* | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Patch #1507676: Error messages returned by invalid abstract object operations | |
| (such as iterating over an integer) have been improved and now include the | |
| type of the offending object to help with debugging. | |
| - Bug #992017: A classic class that defined a __coerce__() method that returned | |
| its arguments swapped would infinitely recurse and segfault the interpreter. | |
| - Fix the socket tests so they can be run concurrently. | |
| - Removed 5 integers from C frame objects (PyFrameObject). | |
| f_nlocals, f_ncells, f_nfreevars, f_stack_size, f_restricted. | |
| - Bug #532646: object.__call__() will continue looking for the __call__ | |
| attribute on objects until one without one is found. This leads to recursion | |
| when you take a class and set its __call__ attribute to an instance of the | |
| class. Originally fixed for classic classes, but this fix is for new-style. | |
| Removes the infinite_rec_3 crasher. | |
| - The string and unicode methods startswith() and endswith() now accept | |
| a tuple of prefixes/suffixes to look for. Implements RFE #1491485. | |
| - Buffer objects, at the C level, never used the char buffer | |
| implementation even when the char buffer for the wrapped object was | |
| explicitly requested (originally returned the read or write buffer). | |
| Now a TypeError is raised if the char buffer is not present but is | |
| requested. | |
| - Patch #1346214: Statements like "if 0: suite" are now again optimized | |
| away like they were in Python 2.4. | |
| - Builtin exceptions are now full-blown new-style classes instead of | |
| instances pretending to be classes, which speeds up exception handling | |
| by about 80% in comparison to 2.5a2. | |
| - Patch #1494554: Update unicodedata.numeric and unicode.isnumeric to | |
| Unicode 4.1. | |
| - Patch #921466: sys.path_importer_cache is now used to cache valid and | |
| invalid file paths for the built-in import machinery which leads to | |
| fewer open calls on startup. | |
| - Patch #1442927: ``long(str, base)`` is now up to 6x faster for non-power- | |
| of-2 bases. The largest speedup is for inputs with about 1000 decimal | |
| digits. Conversion from non-power-of-2 bases remains quadratic-time in | |
| the number of input digits (it was and remains linear-time for bases | |
| 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32). | |
| - Bug #1334662: ``int(string, base)`` could deliver a wrong answer | |
| when ``base`` was not 2, 4, 8, 10, 16 or 32, and ``string`` represented | |
| an integer close to ``sys.maxint``. This was repaired by patch | |
| #1335972, which also gives a nice speedup. | |
| - Patch #1337051: reduced size of frame objects. | |
| - PyErr_NewException now accepts a tuple of base classes as its | |
| "base" parameter. | |
| - Patch #876206: function call speedup by retaining allocated frame | |
| objects. | |
| - Bug #1462152: file() now checks more thoroughly for invalid mode | |
| strings and removes a possible "U" before passing the mode to the | |
| C library function. | |
| - Patch #1488312, Fix memory alignment problem on SPARC in unicode | |
| - Bug #1487966: Fix SystemError with conditional expression in assignment | |
| - WindowsError now has two error code attributes: errno, which carries | |
| the error values from errno.h, and winerror, which carries the error | |
| values from winerror.h. Previous versions put the winerror.h values | |
| (from GetLastError()) into the errno attribute. | |
| - Patch #1475845: Raise IndentationError for unexpected indent. | |
| - Patch #1479181: split open() and file() from being aliases for each other. | |
| - Patch #1497053 & bug #1275608: Exceptions occurring in ``__eq__()`` | |
| methods were always silently ignored by dictionaries when comparing keys. | |
| They are now passed through (except when using the C API function | |
| ``PyDict_GetItem()``, whose semantics did not change). | |
| - Bug #1456209: In some obscure cases it was possible for a class with a | |
| custom ``__eq__()`` method to confuse dict internals when class instances | |
| were used as a dict's keys and the ``__eq__()`` method mutated the dict. | |
| No, you don't have any code that did this ;-) | |
| Extension Modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Bug #1295808: expat symbols should be namespaced in pyexpat | |
| - Patch #1462338: Upgrade pyexpat to expat 2.0.0 | |
| - Change binascii.hexlify to accept a read-only buffer instead of only a char | |
| buffer and actually follow its documentation. | |
| - Fixed a potentially invalid memory access of CJKCodecs' shift-jis decoder. | |
| - Patch #1478788 (modified version): The functional extension module has | |
| been renamed to _functools and a functools Python wrapper module added. | |
| This provides a home for additional function related utilities that are | |
| not specifically about functional programming. See PEP 309. | |
| - Patch #1493701: performance enhancements for struct module. | |
| - Patch #1490224: time.altzone is now set correctly on Cygwin. | |
| - Patch #1435422: zlib's compress and decompress objects now have a | |
| copy() method. | |
| - Patch #1454481: thread stack size is now tunable at runtime for thread | |
| enabled builds on Windows and systems with Posix threads support. | |
| - On Win32, os.listdir now supports arbitrarily-long Unicode path names | |
| (up to the system limit of 32K characters). | |
| - Use Win32 API to implement os.{access,chdir,chmod,mkdir,remove,rename,rmdir,utime}. | |
| As a result, these functions now raise WindowsError instead of OSError. | |
| - ``time.clock()`` on Win64 should use the high-performance Windows | |
| ``QueryPerformanceCounter()`` now (as was already the case on 32-bit | |
| Windows platforms). | |
| - Calling Tk_Init twice is refused if the first call failed as that | |
| may deadlock. | |
| - bsddb: added the DB_ARCH_REMOVE flag and fixed db.DBEnv.log_archive() to | |
| accept it without potentially using an uninitialized pointer. | |
| - bsddb: added support for the DBEnv.log_stat() and DBEnv.lsn_reset() methods | |
| assuming BerkeleyDB >= 4.0 and 4.4 respectively. [pybsddb project SF | |
| patch numbers 1494885 and 1494902] | |
| - bsddb: added an interface for the BerkeleyDB >= 4.3 DBSequence class. | |
| [pybsddb project SF patch number 1466734] | |
| - bsddb: fix DBCursor.pget() bug with keyword argument names when no data | |
| parameter is supplied. [SF pybsddb bug #1477863] | |
| - bsddb: the __len__ method of a DB object has been fixed to return correct | |
| results. It could previously incorrectly return 0 in some cases. | |
| Fixes SF bug 1493322 (pybsddb bug 1184012). | |
| - bsddb: the bsddb.dbtables Modify method now raises the proper error and | |
| aborts the db transaction safely when a modifier callback fails. | |
| Fixes SF python patch/bug #1408584. | |
| - bsddb: multithreaded DB access using the simple bsddb module interface | |
| now works reliably. It has been updated to use automatic BerkeleyDB | |
| deadlock detection and the bsddb.dbutils.DeadlockWrap wrapper to retry | |
| database calls that would previously deadlock. [SF python bug #775414] | |
| - Patch #1446489: add support for the ZIP64 extensions to zipfile. | |
| - Patch #1506645: add Python wrappers for the curses functions | |
| is_term_resized, resize_term and resizeterm. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - Patch #815924: Restore ability to pass type= and icon= in tkMessageBox | |
| functions. | |
| - Patch #812986: Update turtle output even if not tracing. | |
| - Patch #1494750: Destroy master after deleting children in | |
| Tkinter.BaseWidget. | |
| - Patch #1096231: Add ``default`` argument to Tkinter.Wm.wm_iconbitmap. | |
| - Patch #763580: Add name and value arguments to Tkinter variable | |
| classes. | |
| - Bug #1117556: SimpleHTTPServer now tries to find and use the system's | |
| mime.types file for determining MIME types. | |
| - Bug #1339007: Shelf objects now don't raise an exception in their | |
| __del__ method when initialization failed. | |
| - Patch #1455898: The MBCS codec now supports the incremental mode for | |
| double-byte encodings. | |
| - ``difflib``'s ``SequenceMatcher.get_matching_blocks()`` was changed to | |
| guarantee that adjacent triples in the return list always describe | |
| non-adjacent blocks. Previously, a pair of matching blocks could end | |
| up being described by multiple adjacent triples that formed a partition | |
| of the matching pair. | |
| - Bug #1498146: fix optparse to handle Unicode strings in option help, | |
| description, and epilog. | |
| - Bug #1366250: minor optparse documentation error. | |
| - Bug #1361643: fix textwrap.dedent() so it handles tabs appropriately; | |
| clarify docs. | |
| - The wsgiref package has been added to the standard library. | |
| - The functions update_wrapper() and wraps() have been added to the functools | |
| module. These make it easier to copy relevant metadata from the original | |
| function when writing wrapper functions. | |
| - The optional ``isprivate`` argument to ``doctest.testmod()``, and the | |
| ``doctest.is_private()`` function, both deprecated in 2.4, were removed. | |
| - Patch #1359618: Speed up charmap encoder by using a trie structure | |
| for lookup. | |
| - The functions in the ``pprint`` module now sort dictionaries by key | |
| before computing the display. Before 2.5, ``pprint`` sorted a dictionary | |
| if and only if its display required more than one line, although that | |
| wasn't documented. The new behavior increases predictability; e.g., | |
| using ``pprint.pprint(a_dict)`` in a doctest is now reliable. | |
| - Patch #1497027: try HTTP digest auth before basic auth in urllib2 | |
| (thanks for J. J. Lee). | |
| - Patch #1496206: improve urllib2 handling of passwords with respect to | |
| default HTTP and HTTPS ports. | |
| - Patch #1080727: add "encoding" parameter to doctest.DocFileSuite. | |
| - Patch #1281707: speed up gzip.readline. | |
| - Patch #1180296: Two new functions were added to the locale module: | |
| format_string() to get the effect of "format % items" but locale-aware, | |
| and currency() to format a monetary number with currency sign. | |
| - Patch #1486962: Several bugs in the turtle Tk demo module were fixed | |
| and several features added, such as speed and geometry control. | |
| - Patch #1488881: add support for external file objects in bz2 compressed | |
| tarfiles. | |
| - Patch #721464: pdb.Pdb instances can now be given explicit stdin and | |
| stdout arguments, making it possible to redirect input and output | |
| for remote debugging. | |
| - Patch #1484695: Update the tarfile module to version 0.8. This fixes | |
| a couple of issues, notably handling of long file names using the | |
| GNU LONGNAME extension. | |
| - Patch #1478292. ``doctest.register_optionflag(name)`` shouldn't create a | |
| new flag when ``name`` is already the name of an option flag. | |
| - Bug #1385040: don't allow "def foo(a=1, b): pass" in the compiler | |
| package. | |
| - Patch #1472854: make the rlcompleter.Completer class usable on non- | |
| UNIX platforms. | |
| - Patch #1470846: fix urllib2 ProxyBasicAuthHandler. | |
| - Bug #1472827: correctly escape newlines and tabs in attribute values in | |
| the saxutils.XMLGenerator class. | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - Bug #1502728: Correctly link against librt library on HP-UX. | |
| - OpenBSD 3.9 is supported now. | |
| - Patch #1492356: Port to Windows CE. | |
| - Bug/Patch #1481770: Use .so extension for shared libraries on HP-UX for ia64. | |
| - Patch #1471883: Add --enable-universalsdk. | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| Tools | |
| ----- | |
| Documentation | |
| ------------- | |
| What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 2? | |
| ================================= | |
| *Release date: 27-APR-2006* | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Bug #1465834: 'bdist_wininst preinstall script support' was fixed | |
| by converting these apis from macros into exported functions again: | |
| PyParser_SimpleParseFile PyParser_SimpleParseString PyRun_AnyFile | |
| PyRun_AnyFileEx PyRun_AnyFileFlags PyRun_File PyRun_FileEx | |
| PyRun_FileFlags PyRun_InteractiveLoop PyRun_InteractiveOne | |
| PyRun_SimpleFile PyRun_SimpleFileEx PyRun_SimpleString | |
| PyRun_String Py_CompileString | |
| - Under COUNT_ALLOCS, types are not necessarily immortal anymore. | |
| - All uses of PyStructSequence_InitType have been changed to initialize | |
| the type objects only once, even if the interpreter is initialized | |
| multiple times. | |
| - Bug #1454485, array.array('u') could crash the interpreter. This was | |
| due to PyArgs_ParseTuple(args, 'u#', ...) trying to convert buffers (strings) | |
| to unicode when it didn't make sense. 'u#' now requires a unicode string. | |
| - Py_UNICODE is unsigned. It was always documented as unsigned, but | |
| due to a bug had a signed value in previous versions. | |
| - Patch #837242: ``id()`` of any Python object always gives a positive | |
| number now, which might be a long integer. ``PyLong_FromVoidPtr`` and | |
| ``PyLong_AsVoidPtr`` have been changed accordingly. Note that it has | |
| never been correct to implement a ``__hash()__`` method that returns the | |
| ``id()`` of an object: | |
| def __hash__(self): | |
| return id(self) # WRONG | |
| because a hash result must be a (short) Python int but it was always | |
| possible for ``id()`` to return a Python long. However, because ``id()`` | |
| could return negative values before, on a 32-bit box an ``id()`` result | |
| was always usable as a hash value before this patch. That's no longer | |
| necessarily so. | |
| - Python on OS X 10.3 and above now uses dlopen() (via dynload_shlib.c) | |
| to load extension modules and now provides the dl module. As a result, | |
| sys.setdlopenflags() now works correctly on these systems. (SF patch | |
| #1454844) | |
| - Patch #1463867: enhanced garbage collection to allow cleanup of cycles | |
| involving generators that have paused outside of any ``try`` or ``with`` | |
| blocks. (In 2.5a1, a paused generator that was part of a reference | |
| cycle could not be garbage collected, regardless of whether it was | |
| paused in a ``try`` or ``with`` block.) | |
| Extension Modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Patch #1191065: Fix preprocessor problems on systems where recvfrom | |
| is a macro. | |
| - Bug #1467952: os.listdir() now correctly raises an error if readdir() | |
| fails with an error condition. | |
| - Fixed bsddb.db.DBError derived exceptions so they can be unpickled. | |
| - Bug #1117761: bsddb.*open() no longer raises an exception when using | |
| the cachesize parameter. | |
| - Bug #1149413: bsddb.*open() no longer raises an exception when using | |
| a temporary db (file=None) with the 'n' flag to truncate on open. | |
| - Bug #1332852: bsddb module minimum BerkeleyDB version raised to 3.3 | |
| as older versions cause excessive test failures. | |
| - Patch #1062014: AF_UNIX sockets under Linux have a special | |
| abstract namespace that is now fully supported. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - Bug #1223937: subprocess.CalledProcessError reports the exit status | |
| of the process using the returncode attribute, instead of | |
| abusing errno. | |
| - Patch #1475231: ``doctest`` has a new ``SKIP`` option, which causes | |
| a doctest to be skipped (the code is not run, and the expected output | |
| or exception is ignored). | |
| - Fixed contextlib.nested to cope with exceptions being raised and | |
| caught inside exit handlers. | |
| - Updated optparse module to Optik 1.5.1 (allow numeric constants in | |
| hex, octal, or binary; add ``append_const`` action; keep going if | |
| gettext cannot be imported; added ``OptionParser.destroy()`` method; | |
| added ``epilog`` for better help generation). | |
| - Bug #1473760: ``tempfile.TemporaryFile()`` could hang on Windows, when | |
| called from a thread spawned as a side effect of importing a module. | |
| - The pydoc module now supports documenting packages contained in | |
| .zip or .egg files. | |
| - The pkgutil module now has several new utility functions, such | |
| as ``walk_packages()`` to support working with packages that are either | |
| in the filesystem or zip files. | |
| - The mailbox module can now modify and delete messages from | |
| mailboxes, in addition to simply reading them. Thanks to Gregory | |
| K. Johnson for writing the code, and to the 2005 Google Summer of | |
| Code for funding his work. | |
| - The ``__del__`` method of class ``local`` in module ``_threading_local`` | |
| returned before accomplishing any of its intended cleanup. | |
| - Patch #790710: Add breakpoint command lists in pdb. | |
| - Patch #1063914: Add Tkinter.Misc.clipboard_get(). | |
| - Patch #1191700: Adjust column alignment in bdb breakpoint lists. | |
| - SimpleXMLRPCServer relied on the fcntl module, which is unavailable on | |
| Windows. Bug #1469163. | |
| - The warnings, linecache, inspect, traceback, site, and doctest modules | |
| were updated to work correctly with modules imported from zipfiles or | |
| via other PEP 302 __loader__ objects. | |
| - Patch #1467770: Reduce usage of subprocess._active to processes which | |
| the application hasn't waited on. | |
| - Patch #1462222: Fix Tix.Grid. | |
| - Fix exception when doing glob.glob('anything*/') | |
| - The pstats.Stats class accepts an optional stream keyword argument to | |
| direct output to an alternate file-like object. | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - The Makefile now has a reindent target, which runs reindent.py on | |
| the library. | |
| - Patch #1470875: Building Python with MS Free Compiler | |
| - Patch #1161914: Add a python-config script. | |
| - Patch #1324762:Remove ccpython.cc; replace --with-cxx with | |
| --with-cxx-main. Link with C++ compiler only if --with-cxx-main was | |
| specified. (Can be overridden by explicitly setting LINKCC.) Decouple | |
| CXX from --with-cxx-main, see description in README. | |
| - Patch #1429775: Link extension modules with the shared libpython. | |
| - Fixed a libffi build problem on MIPS systems. | |
| - ``PyString_FromFormat``, ``PyErr_Format``, and ``PyString_FromFormatV`` | |
| now accept formats "%u" for unsigned ints, "%lu" for unsigned longs, | |
| and "%zu" for unsigned integers of type ``size_t``. | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| - test_contextlib now checks contextlib.nested can cope with exceptions | |
| being raised and caught inside exit handlers. | |
| - test_cmd_line now checks operation of the -m and -c command switches | |
| - The test_contextlib test in 2.5a1 wasn't actually run unless you ran | |
| it separately and by hand. It also wasn't cleaning up its changes to | |
| the current Decimal context. | |
| - regrtest.py now has a -M option to run tests that test the new limits of | |
| containers, on 64-bit architectures. Running these tests is only sensible | |
| on 64-bit machines with more than two gigabytes of memory. The argument | |
| passed is the maximum amount of memory for the tests to use. | |
| Tools | |
| ----- | |
| - Added the Python benchmark suite pybench to the Tools/ directory; | |
| contributed by Marc-Andre Lemburg. | |
| Documentation | |
| ------------- | |
| - Patch #1473132: Improve docs for ``tp_clear`` and ``tp_traverse``. | |
| - PEP 343: Added Context Types section to the library reference | |
| and attempted to bring other PEP 343 related documentation into | |
| line with the implementation and/or python-dev discussions. | |
| - Bug #1337990: clarified that ``doctest`` does not support examples | |
| requiring both expected output and an exception. | |
| What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1? | |
| ================================= | |
| *Release date: 05-APR-2006* | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - PEP 338: -m command line switch now delegates to runpy.run_module | |
| allowing it to support modules in packages and zipfiles | |
| - On Windows, .DLL is not an accepted file name extension for | |
| extension modules anymore; extensions are only found if they | |
| end in .PYD. | |
| - Bug #1421664: sys.stderr.encoding is now set to the same value as | |
| sys.stdout.encoding. | |
| - __import__ accepts keyword arguments. | |
| - Patch #1460496: round() now accepts keyword arguments. | |
| - Fixed bug #1459029 - unicode reprs were double-escaped. | |
| - Patch #1396919: The system scope threads are reenabled on FreeBSD | |
| 5.4 and later versions. | |
| - Bug #1115379: Compiling a Unicode string with an encoding declaration | |
| now gives a SyntaxError. | |
| - Previously, Python code had no easy way to access the contents of a | |
| cell object. Now, a ``cell_contents`` attribute has been added | |
| (closes patch #1170323). | |
| - Patch #1123430: Python's small-object allocator now returns an arena to | |
| the system ``free()`` when all memory within an arena becomes unused | |
| again. Prior to Python 2.5, arenas (256KB chunks of memory) were never | |
| freed. Some applications will see a drop in virtual memory size now, | |
| especially long-running applications that, from time to time, temporarily | |
| use a large number of small objects. Note that when Python returns an | |
| arena to the platform C's ``free()``, there's no guarantee that the | |
| platform C library will in turn return that memory to the operating system. | |
| The effect of the patch is to stop making that impossible, and in tests it | |
| appears to be effective at least on Microsoft C and gcc-based systems. | |
| Thanks to Evan Jones for hard work and patience. | |
| - Patch #1434038: property() now uses the getter's docstring if there is | |
| no "doc" argument given. This makes it possible to legitimately use | |
| property() as a decorator to produce a read-only property. | |
| - PEP 357, patch 1436368: add an __index__ method to int/long and a matching | |
| nb_index slot to the PyNumberMethods struct. The slot is consulted instead | |
| of requiring an int or long in slicing and a few other contexts, enabling | |
| other objects (e.g. Numeric Python's integers) to be used as slice indices. | |
| - Fixed various bugs reported by Coverity's Prevent tool. | |
| - PEP 352, patch #1104669: Make exceptions new-style objects. Introduced the | |
| new exception base class, BaseException, which has a new message attribute. | |
| KeyboardInterrupt and SystemExit to directly inherit from BaseException now. | |
| Raising a string exception now raises a DeprecationWarning. | |
| - Patch #1438387, PEP 328: relative and absolute imports. Imports can now be | |
| explicitly relative, using 'from .module import name' to mean 'from the same | |
| package as this module is in. Imports without dots still default to the | |
| old relative-then-absolute, unless 'from __future__ import | |
| absolute_import' is used. | |
| - Properly check if 'warnings' raises an exception (usually when a filter set | |
| to "error" is triggered) when raising a warning for raising string | |
| exceptions. | |
| - CO_GENERATOR_ALLOWED is no longer defined. This behavior is the default. | |
| The name was removed from Include/code.h. | |
| - PEP 308: conditional expressions were added: (x if cond else y). | |
| - Patch 1433928: | |
| - The copy module now "copies" function objects (as atomic objects). | |
| - dict.__getitem__ now looks for a __missing__ hook before raising | |
| KeyError. | |
| - PEP 343: with statement implemented. Needs ``from __future__ import | |
| with_statement``. Use of 'with' as a variable will generate a warning. | |
| Use of 'as' as a variable will also generate a warning (unless it's | |
| part of an import statement). | |
| The following objects have __context__ methods: | |
| - The built-in file type. | |
| - The thread.LockType type. | |
| - The following types defined by the threading module: | |
| Lock, RLock, Condition, Semaphore, BoundedSemaphore. | |
| - The decimal.Context class. | |
| - Fix the encodings package codec search function to only search | |
| inside its own package. Fixes problem reported in patch #1433198. | |
| Note: Codec packages should implement and register their own | |
| codec search function. PEP 100 has the details. | |
| - PEP 353: Using ``Py_ssize_t`` as the index type. | |
| - ``PYMALLOC_DEBUG`` builds now add ``4*sizeof(size_t)`` bytes of debugging | |
| info to each allocated block, since the ``Py_ssize_t`` changes (PEP 353) | |
| now allow Python to make use of memory blocks exceeding 2**32 bytes for | |
| some purposes on 64-bit boxes. A ``PYMALLOC_DEBUG`` build was limited | |
| to 4-byte allocations before. | |
| - Patch #1400181, fix unicode string formatting to not use the locale. | |
| This is how string objects work. u'%f' could use , instead of . | |
| for the decimal point. Now both strings and unicode always use periods. | |
| - Bug #1244610, #1392915, fix build problem on OpenBSD 3.7 and 3.8. | |
| configure would break checking curses.h. | |
| - Bug #959576: The pwd module is now built in. This allows Python to be | |
| built on UNIX platforms without $HOME set. | |
| - Bug #1072182, fix some potential problems if characters are signed. | |
| - Bug #889500, fix line number on SyntaxWarning for global declarations. | |
| - Bug #1378022, UTF-8 files with a leading BOM crashed the interpreter. | |
| - Support for converting hex strings to floats no longer works. | |
| This was not portable. float('0x3') now raises a ValueError. | |
| - Patch #1382163: Expose Subversion revision number to Python. New C API | |
| function Py_GetBuildNumber(). New attribute sys.subversion. Build number | |
| is now displayed in interactive prompt banner. | |
| - Implementation of PEP 341 - Unification of try/except and try/finally. | |
| "except" clauses can now be written together with a "finally" clause in | |
| one try statement instead of two nested ones. Patch #1355913. | |
| - Bug #1379994: Builtin unicode_escape and raw_unicode_escape codec | |
| now encodes backslash correctly. | |
| - Patch #1350409: Work around signal handling bug in Visual Studio 2005. | |
| - Bug #1281408: Py_BuildValue now works correctly even with unsigned longs | |
| and long longs. | |
| - SF Bug #1350188, "setdlopenflags" leads to crash upon "import" | |
| It was possible for dlerror() to return a NULL pointer, so | |
| it will now use a default error message in this case. | |
| - Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the | |
| new Unicode translate string feature in the built-in charmap | |
| codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available | |
| at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS | |
| encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo) | |
| - Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings | |
| - Sped up some Unicode operations. | |
| - A new AST parser implementation was completed. The abstract | |
| syntax tree is available for read-only (non-compile) access | |
| to Python code; an _ast module was added. | |
| - SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being produced for generator expressions. | |
| The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10)) | |
| - SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1. | |
| - SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory. | |
| Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line. | |
| - Fix segfault with invalid coding. | |
| - SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError. | |
| - All iterators now have a Boolean value of True. Formerly, some iterators | |
| supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator | |
| was empty. | |
| - On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be | |
| represented as a C int, raise OverflowError. | |
| - test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is | |
| present). | |
| - SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format | |
| codes. | |
| - Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3 | |
| with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF | |
| bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron). | |
| - Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on | |
| Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212). | |
| - Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them | |
| (fixes bug #1119418). | |
| - Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors. | |
| - SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for | |
| exceptions that cause a function to exit. | |
| - The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its | |
| own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3 | |
| and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged. | |
| - SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow(). | |
| - SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some | |
| reference counts in some error exit cases. | |
| - SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over | |
| a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified | |
| a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how | |
| much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so there's no | |
| portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's | |
| small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object | |
| realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C | |
| realloc. | |
| - SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when | |
| attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime(). | |
| - SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just | |
| like their int counterparts. | |
| - SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module | |
| Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple | |
| interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see | |
| http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html | |
| for a longer write-up of the problem). | |
| - SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when | |
| serializing floats. | |
| - SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats, | |
| the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations | |
| of floats now simply copy bytes around. | |
| - bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP | |
| 278. | |
| - patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the | |
| proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the | |
| magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way | |
| subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance | |
| to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of | |
| PyNumber_*(). | |
| Thanks Walter D�rwald. | |
| - Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is | |
| NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the | |
| attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent | |
| with the equivalent pure-Python implementation. | |
| - It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before | |
| PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there | |
| are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads() | |
| before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that | |
| have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet). | |
| - Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads | |
| disabled caused a crash. | |
| - Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method | |
| with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called. | |
| - Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this | |
| fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761 | |
| - Added two new builtins, any() and all(). | |
| - Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed | |
| (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error). | |
| Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package | |
| (thanks to logistix for that added support). | |
| - Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember. | |
| - Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was | |
| returning None. | |
| - Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character | |
| ('\') with a specific error message. | |
| - Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format. | |
| - Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was | |
| inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode. | |
| - Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and | |
| an ferror() call. | |
| - min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in | |
| list.sort(). | |
| - The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions: | |
| (2+3) --> (5). | |
| - set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985. | |
| - Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption | |
| in calls to os.read(). | |
| - The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal | |
| positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future | |
| statement occurs after anything other than a doc string. | |
| - Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a | |
| unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and | |
| calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance. | |
| - Patch #1413181: changed ``PyThreadState_Delete()`` to forget about the | |
| current thread state when the auto-GIL-state machinery knows about | |
| it (since the thread state is being deleted, continuing to remember it | |
| can't help, but can hurt if another thread happens to get created with | |
| the same thread id). | |
| Extension Modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Patch #1380952: fix SSL objects timing out on consecutive read()s | |
| - Patch #1309579: wait3 and wait4 were added to the posix module. | |
| - Patch #1231053: The audioop module now supports encoding/decoding of alaw. | |
| In addition, the existing ulaw code was updated. | |
| - RFE #567972: Socket objects' family, type and proto properties are | |
| now exposed via new attributes. | |
| - Everything under lib-old was removed. This includes the following modules: | |
| Para, addpack, cmp, cmpcache, codehack, dircmp, dump, find, fmt, grep, | |
| lockfile, newdir, ni, packmail, poly, rand, statcache, tb, tzparse, | |
| util, whatsound, whrandom, zmod | |
| - The following modules were removed: regsub, reconvert, regex, regex_syntax. | |
| - re and sre were swapped, so help(re) provides full help. importing sre | |
| is deprecated. The undocumented re.engine variable no longer exists. | |
| - Bug #1448490: Fixed a bug that ISO-2022 codecs could not handle | |
| SS2 (single-shift 2) escape sequences correctly. | |
| - The unicodedata module was updated to the 4.1 version of the Unicode | |
| database. The 3.2 version is still available as unicodedata.db_3_2_0 | |
| for applications that require this specific version (such as IDNA). | |
| - The timing module is no longer built by default. It was deprecated | |
| in PEP 4 in Python 2.0 or earlier. | |
| - Patch 1433928: Added a new type, defaultdict, to the collections module. | |
| This uses the new __missing__ hook behavior added to dict (see above). | |
| - Bug #854823: socketmodule now builds on Sun platforms even when | |
| INET_ADDRSTRLEN is not defined. | |
| - Patch #1393157: os.startfile() now has an optional argument to specify | |
| a "command verb" to invoke on the file. | |
| - Bug #876637, prevent stack corruption when socket descriptor | |
| is larger than FD_SETSIZE. | |
| - Patch #1407135, bug #1424041: harmonize mmap behavior of anonymous memory. | |
| mmap.mmap(-1, size) now returns anonymous memory in both Unix and Windows. | |
| mmap.mmap(0, size) should not be used on Windows for anonymous memory. | |
| - Patch #1422385: The nis module now supports access to domains other | |
| than the system default domain. | |
| - Use Win32 API to implement os.stat/fstat. As a result, subsecond timestamps | |
| are reported, the limit on path name lengths is removed, and stat reports | |
| WindowsError now (instead of OSError). | |
| - Add bsddb.db.DBEnv.set_tx_timestamp allowing time based database recovery. | |
| - Bug #1413192, fix seg fault in bsddb if a transaction was deleted | |
| before the env. | |
| - Patch #1103116: Basic AF_NETLINK support. | |
| - Bug #1402308, (possible) segfault when using mmap.mmap(-1, ...) | |
| - Bug #1400822, _curses over{lay,write} doesn't work when passing 6 ints. | |
| Also fix ungetmouse() which did not accept arguments properly. | |
| The code now conforms to the documented signature. | |
| - Bug #1400115, Fix segfault when calling curses.panel.userptr() | |
| without prior setting of the userptr. | |
| - Fix 64-bit problems in bsddb. | |
| - Patch #1365916: fix some unsafe 64-bit mmap methods. | |
| - Bug #1290333: Added a workaround for cjkcodecs' _codecs_cn build | |
| problem on AIX. | |
| - Bug #869197: os.setgroups rejects long integer arguments | |
| - Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint | |
| - Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors | |
| - Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract | |
| REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs. | |
| - Patch #1407992, fixes broken bsddb module db associate when using | |
| BerkeleyDB 3.3, 4.0 or 4.1. | |
| - Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 4.4 | |
| - Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 3.2 | |
| - Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1, | |
| but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format | |
| - Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads. | |
| - Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on | |
| FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3). | |
| - Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error | |
| returns in cStringIO.c. | |
| - Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec, | |
| MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter | |
| - Fix memory leak in posix.access(). | |
| - Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode. | |
| - Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in | |
| the file system encoding. | |
| - Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for | |
| platforms that don't have inet_aton(). | |
| - Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets. | |
| - Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one | |
| line without newlines. | |
| - Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did | |
| on Windows. | |
| - Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen, | |
| st_birthtime for FreeBSD. | |
| - Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for | |
| the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour | |
| for large or negative values. | |
| - Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows | |
| implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false. | |
| - Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly. | |
| - Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as an attribute | |
| if available on the platform. | |
| - Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if | |
| available on the platform. | |
| - Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions | |
| were set in a different thread than that which called readline. | |
| - collections.deque objects now support a remove() method. | |
| - operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving | |
| multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple | |
| keys (primary, secondary, etc). | |
| - os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems. | |
| - Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer | |
| in pyexpat.GetInputContext. | |
| - Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current | |
| file size. | |
| - Added functional.partial(). See PEP309. | |
| - Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline. | |
| {remove_history,replace_history} | |
| - The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password | |
| database. | |
| - stat_float_times is now True. | |
| - array.array objects are now picklable. | |
| - the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the | |
| args tuple returned by __reduce__(). | |
| - itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments. | |
| This allows islice() to work more readily with slices: | |
| islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step) | |
| - datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to | |
| create datetime object using a string and format. | |
| - Patch #1117961: Replace the MD5 implementation from RSA Data Security Inc | |
| with the implementation from http://sourceforge.net/projects/libmd5-rfc/. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - Patch #1388073: Numerous __-prefixed attributes of unittest.TestCase have | |
| been renamed to have only a single underscore prefix. This was done to | |
| make subclassing easier. | |
| - PEP 338: new module runpy defines a run_module function to support | |
| executing modules which provide access to source code or a code object | |
| via the PEP 302 import mechanisms. | |
| - The email module's parsedate_tz function now sets the daylight savings | |
| flag to -1 (unknown) since it can't tell from the date whether it should | |
| be set. | |
| - Patch #624325: urlparse.urlparse() and urlparse.urlsplit() results | |
| now sport attributes that provide access to the parts of the result. | |
| - Patch #1462498: sgmllib now handles entity and character references | |
| in attribute values. | |
| - Added the sqlite3 package. This is based on pysqlite2.1.3, and provides | |
| a DB-API interface in the standard library. You'll need sqlite 3.0.8 or | |
| later to build this - if you have an earlier version, the C extension | |
| module will not be built. | |
| - Bug #1460340: ``random.sample(dict)`` failed in various ways. Dicts | |
| aren't officially supported here, and trying to use them will probably | |
| raise an exception some day. But dicts have been allowed, and "mostly | |
| worked", so support for them won't go away without warning. | |
| - Bug #1445068: getpass.getpass() can now be given an explicit stream | |
| argument to specify where to write the prompt. | |
| - Patch #1462313, bug #1443328: the pickle modules now can handle classes | |
| that have __private names in their __slots__. | |
| - Bug #1250170: mimetools now handles socket.gethostname() failures gracefully. | |
| - patch #1457316: "setup.py upload" now supports --identity to select the | |
| key to be used for signing the uploaded code. | |
| - Queue.Queue objects now support .task_done() and .join() methods | |
| to make it easier to monitor when daemon threads have completed | |
| processing all enqueued tasks. Patch #1455676. | |
| - popen2.Popen objects now preserve the command in a .cmd attribute. | |
| - Added the ctypes ffi package. | |
| - email 4.0 package now integrated. This is largely the same as the email 3.0 | |
| package that was included in Python 2.3, except that PEP 8 module names are | |
| now used (e.g. mail.message instead of email.Message). The MIME classes | |
| have been moved to a subpackage (e.g. email.mime.text instead of | |
| email.MIMEText). The old names are still supported for now. Several | |
| deprecated Message methods have been removed and lots of bugs have been | |
| fixed. More details can be found in the email package documentation. | |
| - Patches #1436130/#1443155: codecs.lookup() now returns a CodecInfo object | |
| (a subclass of tuple) that provides incremental decoders and encoders | |
| (a way to use stateful codecs without the stream API). Python functions | |
| codecs.getincrementaldecoder() and codecs.getincrementalencoder() as well | |
| as C functions PyCodec_IncrementalEncoder() and PyCodec_IncrementalDecoder() | |
| have been added. | |
| - Patch #1359365: Calling next() on a closed StringIO.String object raises | |
| a ValueError instead of a StopIteration now (like file and cString.String do). | |
| cStringIO.StringIO.isatty() will raise a ValueError now if close() has been | |
| called before (like file and StringIO.StringIO do). | |
| - A regrtest option -w was added to re-run failed tests in verbose mode. | |
| - Patch #1446372: quit and exit can now be called from the interactive | |
| interpreter to exit. | |
| - The function get_count() has been added to the gc module, and gc.collect() | |
| grew an optional 'generation' argument. | |
| - A library msilib to generate Windows Installer files, and a distutils | |
| command bdist_msi have been added. | |
| - PEP 343: new module contextlib.py defines decorator @contextmanager | |
| and helpful context managers nested() and closing(). | |
| - The compiler package now supports future imports after the module docstring. | |
| - Bug #1413790: zipfile now sanitizes absolute archive names that are | |
| not allowed by the specs. | |
| - Patch #1215184: FileInput now can be given an opening hook which can | |
| be used to control how files are opened. | |
| - Patch #1212287: fileinput.input() now has a mode parameter for | |
| specifying the file mode input files should be opened with. | |
| - Patch #1215184: fileinput now has a fileno() function for getting the | |
| current file number. | |
| - Patch #1349274: gettext.install() now optionally installs additional | |
| translation functions other than _() in the builtins namespace. | |
| - Patch #1337756: fileinput now accepts Unicode filenames. | |
| - Patch #1373643: The chunk module can now read chunks larger than | |
| two gigabytes. | |
| - Patch #1417555: SimpleHTTPServer now returns Last-Modified headers. | |
| - Bug #1430298: It is now possible to send a mail with an empty | |
| return address using smtplib. | |
| - Bug #1432260: The names of lambda functions are now properly displayed | |
| in pydoc. | |
| - Patch #1412872: zipfile now sets the creator system to 3 (Unix) | |
| unless the system is Win32. | |
| - Patch #1349118: urllib now supports user:pass@ style proxy | |
| specifications, raises IOErrors when proxies for unsupported protocols | |
| are defined, and uses the https proxy on https redirections. | |
| - Bug #902075: urllib2 now supports 'host:port' style proxy specifications. | |
| - Bug #1407902: Add support for sftp:// URIs to urlparse. | |
| - Bug #1371247: Update Windows locale identifiers in locale.py. | |
| - Bug #1394565: SimpleHTTPServer now doesn't choke on query parameters | |
| any more. | |
| - Bug #1403410: The warnings module now doesn't get confused | |
| when it can't find out the module name it generates a warning for. | |
| - Patch #1177307: Added a new codec utf_8_sig for UTF-8 with a BOM signature. | |
| - Patch #1157027: cookielib mishandles RFC 2109 cookies in Netscape mode | |
| - Patch #1117398: cookielib.LWPCookieJar and .MozillaCookieJar now raise | |
| LoadError as documented, instead of IOError. For compatibility, | |
| LoadError subclasses IOError. | |
| - Added the hashlib module. It provides secure hash functions for MD5 and | |
| SHA1, 224, 256, 384, and 512. Note that recent developments make the | |
| historic MD5 and SHA1 unsuitable for cryptographic-strength applications. | |
| In <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-December/058850.html> | |
| Ronald L. Rivest offered this advice for Python: | |
| "The consensus of researchers in this area (at least as | |
| expressed at the NIST Hash Function Workshop 10/31/05), | |
| is that SHA-256 is a good choice for the time being, but | |
| that research should continue, and other alternatives may | |
| arise from this research. The larger SHA's also seem OK." | |
| - Added a subset of Fredrik Lundh's ElementTree package. Available | |
| modules are xml.etree.ElementTree, xml.etree.ElementPath, and | |
| xml.etree.ElementInclude, from ElementTree 1.2.6. | |
| - Patch #1162825: Support non-ASCII characters in IDLE window titles. | |
| - Bug #1365984: urllib now opens "data:" URLs again. | |
| - Patch #1314396: prevent deadlock for threading.Thread.join() when an exception | |
| is raised within the method itself on a previous call (e.g., passing in an | |
| illegal argument) | |
| - Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there | |
| is an error in the format string. | |
| - Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann). | |
| - Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional | |
| "parent" argument. | |
| - Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes | |
| for padding. | |
| - Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the | |
| socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows. | |
| - Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE | |
| to get the correct encoding. | |
| - Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of | |
| languages. | |
| - Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance. | |
| - Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime(). | |
| - Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0. | |
| - Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook | |
| functionality. | |
| - Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty. | |
| - Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output | |
| separator and do not output trailing semicolon. | |
| - Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named | |
| ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not | |
| match the Content-Length header. | |
| - Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings. | |
| - Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers | |
| even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in | |
| correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code. | |
| - Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb. | |
| - Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py. | |
| - Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath | |
| to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath. | |
| - Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus | |
| __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking | |
| Tkdnd. | |
| - Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and | |
| docstrings to either "article number" or "message id". | |
| - Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a | |
| parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None". | |
| - textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2). | |
| Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly). | |
| - urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code | |
| to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944. | |
| - Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom, | |
| as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors. | |
| - Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module; | |
| it can be missing in embedded interpreters | |
| - Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib. | |
| - Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via | |
| error messages. | |
| - Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code. | |
| - The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors. | |
| Bug #1224621. | |
| - The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full | |
| roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python source code. In addition, | |
| the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that | |
| terminates by raising StopIteration. | |
| - Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor. | |
| - Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first | |
| component of the path. | |
| - Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent, | |
| support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set | |
| to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper | |
| class at all. | |
| - distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution | |
| files to PyPI. | |
| - distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting | |
| them to PyPI. | |
| - decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented | |
| instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This | |
| allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them | |
| work as expected. | |
| - Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to | |
| hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError. | |
| - Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the | |
| stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r. | |
| - Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile. | |
| - Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing | |
| to build. | |
| - Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring | |
| symbolic links on Windows. | |
| - Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in | |
| profile.py if available. | |
| - Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py. | |
| - Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values | |
| in LWPCookieJar. | |
| - Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests. | |
| - Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder. | |
| - Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush. | |
| - Patch #1107973: Allow iterating over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject. | |
| - Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands. | |
| - Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands. | |
| - Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False. | |
| - Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583. | |
| - Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This | |
| disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can | |
| be exploited in various ways. | |
| - Bug #1222790: in SimpleXMLRPCServer, set the reuse-address and close-on-exec | |
| flags on the HTTP listening socket. | |
| - Bug #792570: SimpleXMLRPCServer had problems if the request grew too large. | |
| Fixed by reading the HTTP body in chunks instead of one big socket.read(). | |
| - Patches #893642, #1039083: add allow_none, encoding arguments to | |
| constructors of SimpleXMLRPCServer and CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler. | |
| - Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again. | |
| - Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options. | |
| - os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience. | |
| - Enhancements to the csv module: | |
| + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better | |
| reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with | |
| PEP 305. | |
| + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error | |
| reporting. | |
| + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305 | |
| dictates. | |
| + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters. | |
| + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric | |
| types, rather than any object that can be represented as a numeric. | |
| + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields | |
| to floats. | |
| + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed | |
| \n to be quoted). | |
| + writer doublequote handling improved. | |
| + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by | |
| the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required | |
| this, but the mechanism was unreliable). | |
| + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal | |
| C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects. | |
| + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable. | |
| + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications | |
| as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects | |
| without first creating a dialect class. | |
| + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added - | |
| previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire | |
| file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported. | |
| + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets | |
| the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial | |
| limit is 128kB. | |
| + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks | |
| the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not | |
| the same as the number of records returned, as records can span | |
| multiple lines. | |
| + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC. | |
| This has been fixed. | |
| - _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is | |
| inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The | |
| lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on | |
| a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632. | |
| - The imghdr module now detects Exif files. | |
| - StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute. | |
| (Bug #951915). | |
| - locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using | |
| Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale | |
| alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's | |
| encoding alias table. | |
| - moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache. | |
| - the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the | |
| args tuple returned by __reduce__(). | |
| - optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py. | |
| - the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter. | |
| - the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter. | |
| - the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method. | |
| - the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument. | |
| - unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully | |
| extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would | |
| be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905). | |
| - heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with | |
| the same meaning as in list.sort(). | |
| - Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only | |
| once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the | |
| tokenizer with very long source lines. | |
| - Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called | |
| immediately after creating the object, without any intervening | |
| ``.decompress()`` calls. | |
| - The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The | |
| reconvert module now has some simple documentation. | |
| - ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in | |
| ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__`` | |
| - Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05") | |
| correctly. | |
| - Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by | |
| ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more | |
| character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper | |
| line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split | |
| between two lines. | |
| - Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain | |
| about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error | |
| handlers. | |
| - Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads | |
| from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct | |
| encoding instead of a unicode string. | |
| - Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than | |
| considering it exactly like a '*'. | |
| - Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to | |
| ``encodings.aliases``. | |
| - ` uu.encode()`` and ``uu.decode()`` now support unicode filenames. | |
| - Patch #1413711: Certain patterns of differences were making difflib | |
| touch the recursion limit. | |
| - Bug #947906: An object oriented interface has been added to the calendar | |
| module. It's possible to generate HTML calendar now and the module can be | |
| called as a script (e.g. via ``python -mcalendar``). Localized month and | |
| weekday names can be output (even if an exotic encoding is used) using | |
| special classes that use unicode. | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - Fix test_float, test_long, and test_struct failures on Tru64 with gcc | |
| by using -mieee gcc option. | |
| - Patch #1432345: Make python compile on DragonFly. | |
| - Build support for Win64-AMD64 was added. | |
| - Patch #1428494: Prefer linking against ncursesw over ncurses library. | |
| - Patch #881820: look for openpty and forkpty also in libbsd. | |
| - The sources of zlib are now part of the Python distribution (zlib 1.2.3). | |
| The zlib module is now built in on Windows. | |
| - Use -xcode=pic32 for CCSHARED on Solaris with SunPro. | |
| - Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary | |
| value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0. | |
| - Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security | |
| vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2. | |
| - EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler | |
| flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to | |
| distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during | |
| compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils. | |
| - SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance, | |
| and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic | |
| no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right. | |
| - Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again. | |
| - spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is | |
| defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X. | |
| - setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option | |
| and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include | |
| directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has | |
| led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes | |
| the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since | |
| the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink, | |
| ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for | |
| Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts). | |
| - Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone | |
| to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec). | |
| Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined. | |
| Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond. | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| - ``PyMem_{Del, DEL}`` and ``PyMem_{Free, FREE}`` no longer map to | |
| ``PyObject_{Free, FREE}``. They map to the system ``free()`` now. If memory | |
| is obtained via the ``PyObject_`` family, it must be released via the | |
| ``PyObject_`` family, and likewise for the ``PyMem_`` family. This has | |
| always been officially true, but when Python's small-object allocator was | |
| introduced, an attempt was made to cater to a few extension modules | |
| discovered at the time that obtained memory via ``PyObject_New`` but | |
| released it via ``PyMem_DEL``. It's years later, and if such code still | |
| exists it will fail now (probably with segfaults, but calling wrong | |
| low-level memory management functions can yield many symptoms). | |
| - Added a C API for set and frozenset objects. | |
| - Removed PyRange_New(). | |
| - Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the | |
| mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values | |
| greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined | |
| mappings. | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| - In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME. | |
| - Patch #1276356: New resource "urlfetch" is implemented. This enables | |
| even impatient people to run tests that require remote files. | |
| Documentation | |
| ------------- | |
| - Bug #1402224: Add warning to dl docs about crashes. | |
| - Bug #1396471: Document that Windows' ftell() can return invalid | |
| values for text files with UNIX-style line endings. | |
| - Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc(). | |
| - Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py. | |
| - Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation. | |
| - Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S. | |
| - Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows. | |
| - Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference. | |
| - Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1. | |
| - Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag. | |
| - Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property(). | |
| - Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module. | |
| Closes bug #1166582. | |
| - Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for | |
| Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X. | |
| Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen. | |
| Mac | |
| --- | |
| New platforms | |
| ------------- | |
| - FreeBSD 7 support is added. | |
| Tools/Demos | |
| ----------- | |
| - Created Misc/Vim/vim_syntax.py to auto-generate a python.vim file in that | |
| directory for syntax highlighting in Vim. Vim directory was added and placed | |
| vimrc to it (was previous up a level). | |
| - Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively | |
| finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python | |
| source files that need an encoding declaration. | |
| Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann. | |
| - Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable. | |
| - Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__. | |
| - Fixed a display glitch in Pynche, which could cause the right arrow to | |
| wiggle over by a pixel. | |
| What's New in Python 2.4 final? | |
| =============================== | |
| *Release date: 30-NOV-2004* | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by | |
| forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when | |
| things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls(). | |
| What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1) | |
| ============================================== | |
| *Release date: 18-NOV-2004* | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced | |
| the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson | |
| aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an | |
| attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception | |
| raised is re-raised. | |
| - ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to | |
| doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed. | |
| - Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``, | |
| and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct | |
| spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at | |
| any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is | |
| indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these | |
| recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is | |
| much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an | |
| integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed | |
| now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed | |
| by the slice are recomputed now. | |
| - Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py. | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices | |
| and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile() | |
| which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito. | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| - The PyRange_New() function is deprecated. | |
| What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2? | |
| ================================ | |
| *Release date: 03-NOV-2004* | |
| License | |
| ------- | |
| The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python | |
| is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other | |
| changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for | |
| Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The | |
| intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more | |
| durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that | |
| the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation | |
| License:: | |
| http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php | |
| says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only | |
| to Python 2.1.1. | |
| The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation | |
| License Version 2. | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that | |
| calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an | |
| insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via | |
| running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a | |
| weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread | |
| that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running | |
| in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible" | |
| ``AttributeError`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly | |
| referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable | |
| objects before allowing any callbacks to run. | |
| - Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value. | |
| Extension Modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for | |
| functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing | |
| traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code | |
| object was first defined rather than the function being executed. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that | |
| no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is | |
| returned. | |
| - Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments. | |
| - Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative | |
| paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile(). | |
| - The whichdb module can now be run from the command line. | |
| - Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of | |
| the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified. | |
| - Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox | |
| - Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode() | |
| - Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if | |
| the source code is updated and reloaded. | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also. | |
| What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1? | |
| ================================ | |
| *Release date: 15-OCT-2004* | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on | |
| BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal(). | |
| - The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used | |
| by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not | |
| thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and | |
| including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example. | |
| - Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the | |
| module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.) | |
| - The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single | |
| constant. | |
| - SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when | |
| an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float. | |
| That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very | |
| large), and to anomalies such as | |
| ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no | |
| longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``, | |
| ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed | |
| correctly now. | |
| Extension modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage | |
| collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or | |
| an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks, | |
| better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque | |
| comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for | |
| specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify | |
| options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell | |
| --swig-cpp. | |
| - Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if | |
| it is set. | |
| - Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details. | |
| - time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific | |
| strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when | |
| the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)". | |
| Closes bug #1039270. | |
| - Updates for the email package: | |
| + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support. | |
| + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed: | |
| _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(), | |
| Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode() | |
| + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(), | |
| Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to | |
| the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1. | |
| + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291). | |
| + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'. | |
| + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be | |
| added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't. | |
| + Updates to documentation. | |
| - re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument | |
| just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented | |
| the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and | |
| finditer() methods of regular expression objects. | |
| - rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers. | |
| - The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed; | |
| applications should use the getmember function. | |
| - httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes. | |
| - SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a | |
| ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day. | |
| Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``, | |
| ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison | |
| operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the | |
| base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by | |
| forcing using of the appropriate date method; e.g., | |
| ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month | |
| and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal. | |
| - bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch, | |
| {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and | |
| {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script. | |
| - SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support | |
| decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted). | |
| ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper | |
| readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()`` | |
| has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to | |
| return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and | |
| ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``. | |
| Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false. | |
| - The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all | |
| the new public features (of which there are many). | |
| - ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again | |
| updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call | |
| contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but | |
| some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is | |
| encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest | |
| integration features instead. | |
| - httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs. | |
| - SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys, | |
| processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied, | |
| consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set | |
| options. | |
| - SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in | |
| ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in | |
| rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing | |
| ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the | |
| conditions under which non-string values work. | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for | |
| building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as | |
| a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/> | |
| - pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the | |
| platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN. | |
| Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform- | |
| specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override | |
| pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now. | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| - SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns | |
| non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called. | |
| - The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed. | |
| - The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()`` | |
| are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding | |
| the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645 | |
| demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family | |
| of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of | |
| its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator | |
| isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its | |
| own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()`` | |
| call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type. | |
| - PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well. | |
| - SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and | |
| ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful | |
| decoding. | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| - test__locale ported to unittest | |
| Mac | |
| --- | |
| - ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new | |
| interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)`` | |
| and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)`` | |
| Tools/Demos | |
| ----------- | |
| - The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now | |
| read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them | |
| from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that, | |
| e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends | |
| have no lines in common. | |
| What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3? | |
| ================================= | |
| *Release date: 02-SEP-2004* | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name | |
| list to be surrounded by parentheses. | |
| - Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool | |
| multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool | |
| squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half | |
| the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation | |
| uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time | |
| to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due | |
| to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised, | |
| since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was | |
| aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched | |
| from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small | |
| bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does | |
| 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute | |
| 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds. | |
| - OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to | |
| occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default, | |
| nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user | |
| code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and | |
| corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5. | |
| - Py_InitializeEx has been added. | |
| - Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up; | |
| the first decorator listed is the last one called. | |
| - SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while | |
| calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function | |
| modified the list. | |
| - The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined | |
| functions is now writable. | |
| - code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently | |
| carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls | |
| to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case | |
| that the returned code object might be entirely insane. | |
| - Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of | |
| interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for | |
| example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string | |
| via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt | |
| to intern a string subclass will have no effect. | |
| - Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented | |
| what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly. | |
| Extension modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff. | |
| - os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random | |
| data. | |
| - Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the | |
| position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original | |
| StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was | |
| supposed to have been truncated away. | |
| - Added socket.socketpair(). | |
| - Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber | |
| members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object. | |
| - The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier | |
| versions of Python, have now been removed. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using | |
| heuristics for filtering out imported names. | |
| - Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken | |
| symlinks, unlike os.path.exists(). | |
| - the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available. | |
| Added a new generator based on os.urandom(). | |
| - difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML. | |
| - bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and | |
| replaces - by ``_`` in version and release. | |
| - distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the | |
| path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts. | |
| - PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module. | |
| - tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default. | |
| - HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method. | |
| - Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon | |
| Percivall. | |
| - logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed; | |
| the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp. | |
| - A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing | |
| font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument | |
| which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather | |
| than creating a new one. | |
| - Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the | |
| latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification. | |
| Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign | |
| and exponent. | |
| - The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies. | |
| - Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc | |
| attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit | |
| will just become the one preferred way to do it. | |
| - patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions | |
| to the readline module. | |
| - bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods | |
| of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer | |
| frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around. | |
| - bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the | |
| path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it | |
| contains symlinks. | |
| - bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a | |
| file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball. | |
| - bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath() | |
| so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is | |
| reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers. | |
| - doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of | |
| this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now | |
| deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the | |
| isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble | |
| "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what | |
| you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration | |
| already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the | |
| new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by | |
| hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the | |
| start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If | |
| you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used | |
| to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by | |
| any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance. | |
| - Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)). | |
| Tools/Demos | |
| ----------- | |
| - IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that | |
| Control-V works the same as Control-v. | |
| - pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format. | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time | |
| error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't | |
| divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new | |
| 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the | |
| restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by | |
| falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no | |
| plans to do so. | |
| - bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no | |
| attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs. | |
| - The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the | |
| processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms. | |
| - patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match | |
| GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings. | |
| - Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on | |
| GNU/k*BSD systems. | |
| - bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings | |
| found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64. | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| .. | |
| Documentation | |
| ------------- | |
| - patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain | |
| an underscore when viewed with Acrobat. | |
| - bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if | |
| it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment | |
| since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well. | |
| New platforms | |
| ------------- | |
| - FreeBSD 6 is now supported. | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| .. | |
| Windows | |
| ------- | |
| - Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from | |
| the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough | |
| bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams | |
| within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were | |
| able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program | |
| test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows | |
| "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any | |
| kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be | |
| the problem. | |
| Mac | |
| --- | |
| .. | |
| What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2? | |
| ================================= | |
| *Release date: 05-AUG-2004* | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements | |
| of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations. | |
| Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance | |
| sensitive code. | |
| - PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are | |
| implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so:: | |
| @staticmethod | |
| def foo(bar): | |
| (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state) | |
| - When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M | |
| in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would | |
| succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much | |
| of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised. | |
| Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially- | |
| initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad | |
| trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state, | |
| arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent | |
| imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the | |
| source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later | |
| attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception). | |
| This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably | |
| working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of | |
| breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged | |
| module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests | |
| deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from | |
| sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an | |
| unconditional del sys.modules[M]. | |
| - u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to | |
| obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found. | |
| - Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to | |
| PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman. | |
| - Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode() | |
| methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode() | |
| which was missing for no apparent reason. | |
| - An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with | |
| signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour. | |
| It's quite possible that there are still bugs here. | |
| - Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of | |
| types that support garbage collection. | |
| - Compiler now treats None as a constant. | |
| - The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__, | |
| __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type | |
| will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of | |
| Jython. | |
| - Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module. | |
| - Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split | |
| and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales. | |
| - Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and | |
| the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension | |
| module. | |
| - Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode | |
| now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This | |
| allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly. | |
| Extension modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and | |
| TIS-620 | |
| - Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and | |
| many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now | |
| the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage. | |
| The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior | |
| (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual | |
| output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected | |
| output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context | |
| diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to | |
| normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an | |
| ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output. | |
| - Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options. | |
| - The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(), | |
| and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the | |
| same as when the argument is omitted). | |
| [SF bug 658254, patch 663482] | |
| - nntplib does now allow ignoring a .netrc file. | |
| - urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication | |
| schemes are offered. | |
| - Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames. | |
| - gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the | |
| underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is | |
| needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile. | |
| - imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights. | |
| - nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They | |
| use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description. | |
| - Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being | |
| raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit | |
| when dummy_threading is being used. | |
| - Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link | |
| from a tarfile. | |
| - Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using | |
| GNU longname/longlink creation. | |
| - The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The built-in fcntl module | |
| has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python | |
| 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating | |
| a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly. | |
| - Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004, | |
| iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004. | |
| - Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new | |
| implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time | |
| Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and | |
| Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the | |
| queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of | |
| course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling | |
| thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could | |
| also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation | |
| to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked | |
| by some other method in progress). | |
| - Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the | |
| case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and | |
| unified_diff(), | |
| - Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr. | |
| - Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by | |
| returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks | |
| AM Kuchling. | |
| - Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the | |
| drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now | |
| as well. Thanks Paul Moore. | |
| - bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data | |
| for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed | |
| instead of unsigned. | |
| - decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are | |
| no longer part of the public API. | |
| - codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode() | |
| which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and | |
| string methods of the same name). | |
| - Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3. | |
| SF patch 945642. | |
| - doctest unittest integration improvements: | |
| o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests | |
| o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating | |
| DocTestSuites. | |
| - The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects | |
| that provide thread-local data. | |
| - Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl() | |
| no longer returns spurious empty fields. | |
| - Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module. | |
| - Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions, | |
| which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding, | |
| as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding(). | |
| - optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes: | |
| - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string | |
| "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of | |
| that option's default value, or "none" if no default value. | |
| - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are | |
| now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this | |
| allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can | |
| be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False). | |
| - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback | |
| options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'. | |
| - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options | |
| that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add | |
| set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to | |
| HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting. | |
| - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user- | |
| targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If | |
| you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python | |
| -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from | |
| http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .) | |
| - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for | |
| wrapping help output. | |
| - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed | |
| to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings. | |
| (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.) | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| - PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an | |
| error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's | |
| entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call | |
| one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all | |
| ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish | |
| to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's | |
| code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must | |
| arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules. | |
| PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original | |
| module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that | |
| its visible semantics have not changed. | |
| - A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented, | |
| thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010). | |
| Documentation | |
| ------------- | |
| - Improved the tutorial on creating types in C. | |
| - point out the importance of reassigning data members before | |
| assigning their values | |
| - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh. | |
| - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros. | |
| - Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions. | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| - The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on | |
| platforms that use the Makefile. | |
| - SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained | |
| CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in | |
| test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out. | |
| What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1? | |
| ================================= | |
| *Release date: 08-JUL-2004* | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - weakref.ref is now the type object also known as | |
| weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style | |
| class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary | |
| objects now (one object instead of three). | |
| - Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain | |
| Windows DLLs. | |
| - Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now | |
| accept any mapping type. | |
| - marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces | |
| a new .pyc magic. | |
| - Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't | |
| have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always | |
| be there. | |
| - Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be | |
| the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing | |
| the LC_NUMERIC category. | |
| - Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of | |
| datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane | |
| objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix. | |
| - Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory. | |
| - Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width(). | |
| These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode | |
| TR11. | |
| - Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in | |
| common cases. Fixes bug #942952. | |
| - Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo. | |
| - Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check | |
| new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details | |
| - Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string) | |
| - Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject | |
| - Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and | |
| "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%. | |
| - Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance() | |
| and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter. | |
| Fixes bug #858016 . | |
| - Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each | |
| and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the | |
| methods: keys(), values(), and items(). | |
| - Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies | |
| the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further | |
| improves their performance (about 35%). | |
| - Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make | |
| comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the | |
| underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics. | |
| - Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create | |
| intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the | |
| needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in | |
| advance -- this halves the time to extend the list. | |
| - Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system | |
| realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops, | |
| list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable | |
| length is not known). | |
| - Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists, | |
| overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%. | |
| For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now, | |
| the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space | |
| utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists. | |
| - Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list | |
| instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free(). | |
| - The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms | |
| as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or | |
| keyword arguments. | |
| - Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer | |
| interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was | |
| only possible to create from C code) has been removed. | |
| - Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and | |
| weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all | |
| cases. | |
| - Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy() | |
| assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list | |
| would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since | |
| GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was | |
| invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during | |
| creation for a new weakref object for a referent which already | |
| has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from | |
| cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a | |
| segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in | |
| a release build. | |
| - input() built-in function now respects compiler flags such as | |
| __future__ statements. SF patch 876178. | |
| - Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains | |
| deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued. | |
| - At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage | |
| collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The | |
| call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much | |
| of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref | |
| callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence | |
| of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced | |
| by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature | |
| of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been | |
| destroyed. | |
| - Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions | |
| and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.) | |
| This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by | |
| PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing | |
| 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that | |
| changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not | |
| implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to | |
| hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now. | |
| - For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust() | |
| methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill | |
| character other than a space. | |
| - When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either | |
| by the function object or by the method object, the function | |
| object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that | |
| this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special | |
| methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is | |
| really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now | |
| on, all method attributes will have precedence over function | |
| attributes with the same name. | |
| - Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback, | |
| its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of | |
| cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order | |
| in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for | |
| the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate | |
| segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to | |
| resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises) | |
| later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc | |
| had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When | |
| weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those | |
| weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then, | |
| preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just | |
| as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so | |
| that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference. | |
| - Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection | |
| happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class | |
| instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build; | |
| in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after). | |
| This has been repaired. | |
| - Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__. | |
| - Added two built-in types, set() and frozenset(). | |
| - Added a reversed() built-in function that returns a reverse iterator | |
| over a sequence. | |
| - Added a sorted() built-in function that returns a new sorted list | |
| from any iterable. | |
| - CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr. | |
| - list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse. | |
| The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a | |
| comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower). | |
| The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the | |
| sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition, | |
| the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts | |
| starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of | |
| records with equal keys is unchanged). | |
| - Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not | |
| usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the | |
| unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type. | |
| - Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could | |
| lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier, | |
| non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the | |
| freelist. | |
| - The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to | |
| '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented. | |
| - complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or | |
| number. | |
| - zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising | |
| a TypeError exception. | |
| - obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch | |
| 820195. | |
| - Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons. | |
| When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it | |
| will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639. | |
| - str and unicode built-in types now have an rsplit() method that is | |
| same as split() except that it scans the string from the end | |
| working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847. | |
| - Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure | |
| to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute | |
| fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior. | |
| - buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to | |
| the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer | |
| method is called as necessary. | |
| - fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated | |
| close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on | |
| the first call. | |
| Extension modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in | |
| getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional. | |
| - time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise | |
| ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the | |
| timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance | |
| that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such | |
| cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted | |
| fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module | |
| were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996. | |
| - fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified. | |
| - nt now properly allows referring to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat(). | |
| - the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array, | |
| sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets. | |
| - operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give | |
| fewer false positives. | |
| - socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added | |
| socket.error to the socket module's C API. | |
| - Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on | |
| nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed. | |
| - array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing | |
| scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves | |
| the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations. | |
| Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument | |
| for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array. | |
| - cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes | |
| the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once. | |
| Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and | |
| makes suitable for use with generator expressions. | |
| - time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument | |
| are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the | |
| platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly | |
| break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause | |
| problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug | |
| #897625. | |
| - The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the | |
| system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h> | |
| - Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(), | |
| offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends | |
| and pops on either side of the deque. | |
| - Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for | |
| improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc. | |
| - The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and | |
| itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor | |
| functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and | |
| other functions that expect a function argument. | |
| - socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added. | |
| - os.getsid was added. | |
| - The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as | |
| struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name | |
| is still supported for backwards compatibility.) | |
| - The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7. | |
| - socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added. | |
| - readline.clear_history was added. | |
| - select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments. | |
| - cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute. | |
| - The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available). | |
| - curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124] | |
| - Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X | |
| - Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI | |
| - Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624). | |
| - Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936). | |
| - random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default | |
| seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so | |
| that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences. | |
| - random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int | |
| with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API | |
| for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits() | |
| can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly, | |
| randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see | |
| SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now | |
| issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large. | |
| - itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables | |
| into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function). | |
| It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of | |
| the Unix uniq filter. | |
| - itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent | |
| iterators from a single iterable. | |
| - itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead | |
| of raising a TypeError exception. | |
| - Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string | |
| as parameter. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - Added a new module: cProfile, a C profiler with the same interface as the | |
| profile module. cProfile avoids some of the drawbacks of the hotshot | |
| profiler and provides a bit more information than the other two profilers. | |
| Based on "lsprof" (patch #1212837). | |
| - Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__. | |
| - Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects | |
| the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror() | |
| handler can now also be os.listdir. | |
| - Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during | |
| interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the | |
| original exception. | |
| - Added decimal.py per PEP 327. | |
| - Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a | |
| "netloc" portion of a URL. | |
| - Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself. | |
| Thanks Johannes Gijsbers. | |
| - Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker. | |
| - Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its | |
| API matches math.log(). | |
| - Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions | |
| that generate a -debuginfo.rpm | |
| - os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms. | |
| - Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command | |
| on cygwin and mingw32. | |
| - urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly. | |
| - refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the | |
| module. | |
| - The distutils install command now supports the --home option and | |
| installation scheme for all platforms. | |
| - asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to | |
| looping forever. | |
| - The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in | |
| addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold | |
| administrative files for the Subversion source control system. | |
| - Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP | |
| clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so | |
| urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies. | |
| - stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set(). | |
| - Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder | |
| - Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD. | |
| Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected. | |
| - Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object | |
| for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different | |
| type pattern with the same value exists. | |
| - Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg | |
| when run from the command prompt). | |
| - Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was | |
| not taken into consideration when caching value. | |
| - Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and | |
| default sort). | |
| - Added global runctx function to profile module | |
| - Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods. | |
| - The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support. | |
| - Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2. | |
| - The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases | |
| first before starting to try the import of the codec module. | |
| This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external | |
| packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs | |
| package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases | |
| accordingly. | |
| - base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and | |
| decoding standards. | |
| - urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that | |
| implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are | |
| called for all requests. | |
| - distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as | |
| they are passed to the compiler. | |
| - pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters | |
| indent, width and depth. | |
| - Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple | |
| and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__(). | |
| - Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6 | |
| compiler because of incomplete registry entries. | |
| - httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding. | |
| - Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages | |
| - imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added. | |
| - Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of | |
| os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible. | |
| - bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations | |
| for better performance. | |
| - heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest(). | |
| - traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns | |
| a string). | |
| - xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added. | |
| - poplib.POP3_SSL has been added. | |
| - tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative. | |
| - urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant. | |
| - The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now | |
| optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the | |
| list of fieldnames. | |
| - encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression | |
| using "a long string".encode('bz2') | |
| - Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS. | |
| - dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning | |
| empty lists. | |
| - The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and | |
| mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries | |
| and shelves. | |
| - The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword | |
| arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation. | |
| - The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing | |
| CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter | |
| parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes. | |
| - sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions | |
| for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to | |
| allow any iterable. | |
| - _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most | |
| recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive | |
| patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe. | |
| - random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3 | |
| and removed in Py2.4. | |
| - Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again. | |
| - Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs. | |
| Tools/Demos | |
| ----------- | |
| - A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that | |
| makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler. | |
| - The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files. | |
| - The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed. | |
| It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with | |
| db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by | |
| destination in situations where both files are given. | |
| - The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for | |
| modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation | |
| base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can | |
| be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable. | |
| - texcheck.py now detects double word errors. | |
| - md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a | |
| silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again | |
| opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags | |
| remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default | |
| now. | |
| - py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is | |
| in effect | |
| - py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to | |
| C-c C-h | |
| - Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no | |
| -d option was given. | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework | |
| build under OS X. | |
| - Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with | |
| --enable-profiling. | |
| - Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python | |
| is configured --with-tsc. | |
| - In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use | |
| on AMD64. | |
| - Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect | |
| getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support. | |
| - Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was | |
| removed. | |
| - Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer | |
| supported (see PEP 11). | |
| - Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11). | |
| - Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11). | |
| - Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed | |
| (see PEP 11). | |
| - Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that | |
| sizeof(char) must be 1. | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| - Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API | |
| containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the | |
| Python/C API Reference Manual for details. | |
| - Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python | |
| timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds | |
| checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be | |
| good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there. | |
| - New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose | |
| generator objects. | |
| - New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the | |
| functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for | |
| runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob | |
| Ippolito. | |
| - Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's | |
| underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping. | |
| - Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded | |
| even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__ | |
| method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This | |
| is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls | |
| whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined. | |
| - Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like | |
| PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes | |
| about 10% faster. | |
| - Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE. | |
| Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them. | |
| - Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a | |
| variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke | |
| the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c) | |
| is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c). | |
| Windows | |
| ------- | |
| - The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry | |
| values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is | |
| uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n), | |
| as appropriate, followed by a size check. | |
| - file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update | |
| (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before | |
| the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631. | |
| What's New in Python 2.3 final? | |
| =============================== | |
| *Release date: 29-Jul-2003* | |
| IDLE | |
| ---- | |
| - Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer. | |
| This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to | |
| the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE" | |
| context-menu actions. | |
| - IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall" | |
| kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their | |
| own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking | |
| on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not | |
| visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received | |
| from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE, | |
| asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes, | |
| and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking | |
| place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start. | |
| What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2? | |
| ============================================= | |
| *Release date: 24-Jul-2003* | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional | |
| data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a | |
| comment at the end are still unsupported. | |
| Extension modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause | |
| fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more | |
| than once. This has been fixed. | |
| - Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method | |
| with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type | |
| caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every | |
| call. | |
| - Fixed some leaks in the locale module. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly | |
| uses the first Python interpreter on your path. | |
| - Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to | |
| fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch | |
| was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not | |
| restored. | |
| IDLE | |
| ---- | |
| - Calltips patches. | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion | |
| on Panther (OSX 10.3). | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| Windows | |
| ------- | |
| - The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK | |
| was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired. | |
| - Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin. | |
| Mac | |
| --- | |
| - Various fixes to pimp. | |
| - Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access. | |
| - Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes | |
| more problems than it solves. | |
| What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1? | |
| ============================================= | |
| *Release date: 18-Jul-2003* | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set | |
| by sys.setcheckinterval(). | |
| - Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been | |
| fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without | |
| reporting an error. SF patch 763201. | |
| - The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings | |
| module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs, | |
| earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could | |
| not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097. | |
| - A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow | |
| builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed. | |
| - It is not possible to create subclasses of built-in types like str | |
| and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3 | |
| allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems. | |
| - The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug | |
| 770247. | |
| - SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError. | |
| Extension modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects | |
| defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError. | |
| - SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects. | |
| - On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files. | |
| - time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation | |
| contained within the _strptime module. | |
| - The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was | |
| not consistent with the object's repr slot. | |
| - The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not | |
| character or block devices. SF patch 708374. | |
| - The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse | |
| the find_class attribute, if present. | |
| - There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module. | |
| bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor | |
| (SF bug 763298). | |
| The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take | |
| a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in | |
| addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising | |
| an exception. | |
| A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - distutils now supports MSVC 7.1 | |
| - doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would | |
| skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore | |
| naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that | |
| user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could | |
| break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put | |
| failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage | |
| is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod() | |
| or Tester(). | |
| - There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital | |
| that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data | |
| and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states. | |
| dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the | |
| database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could | |
| prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to | |
| get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race | |
| has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve | |
| can guarantee data is written to disk. | |
| The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint. | |
| - The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they | |
| weren't before was an oversight. | |
| - The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct | |
| auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime. | |
| - SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods | |
| when there are no lines. | |
| - SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel | |
| which could occur with Tk 8.4 | |
| - SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment | |
| to child processes. | |
| - SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__. | |
| - SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful. | |
| - SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in | |
| xmlrpclib. | |
| - SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301 | |
| responses. | |
| - SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files | |
| generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX. | |
| - SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as | |
| -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight`` | |
| is true when it should only when time.daylight is true. | |
| - SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be | |
| used as patterns. | |
| - SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples | |
| of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values | |
| than Tk 8.3. | |
| - SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division. | |
| - The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute. | |
| Tools/Demos | |
| ----------- | |
| - See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news. | |
| - SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories. | |
| - The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library. | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696). | |
| - The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10. | |
| - An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF | |
| patch 764560). | |
| - Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the | |
| __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as | |
| needed. | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| - Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C | |
| API can use it without deferring to the encodings package. | |
| Windows | |
| ------- | |
| - The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never | |
| checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result, | |
| it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft | |
| _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is | |
| on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the | |
| Python exception :: | |
| thread.error: can't start new thread | |
| is raised now. | |
| - SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in | |
| use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize() | |
| instead of from DLL teardown. | |
| Mac | |
| --- | |
| - Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was | |
| previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead | |
| of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to | |
| specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set | |
| the executable in the bundle. | |
| - Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling. | |
| - pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed. | |
| - Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass | |
| on Panther. | |
| What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2? | |
| ================================ | |
| *Release date: 29-Jun-2003* | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some | |
| string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the | |
| interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked | |
| with the -i option. | |
| - list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar | |
| changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014. | |
| - SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix | |
| for SF bug 742860 (the next item). | |
| - SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This | |
| wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict)) | |
| instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another | |
| thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function | |
| mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't | |
| present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly | |
| referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict | |
| invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole | |
| set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow | |
| the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are | |
| considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all | |
| that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in | |
| code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior. | |
| - SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when | |
| compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension | |
| embedded in a lambda expression. | |
| - SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow() | |
| raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong | |
| in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0 | |
| if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent | |
| is (mathematically) an exact even integer. | |
| - SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must | |
| return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This | |
| matches the restriction on classic classes. | |
| - The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to | |
| the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows. | |
| - The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight. | |
| It's writable again. | |
| - Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and | |
| tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly | |
| instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is | |
| preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden. | |
| - SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in | |
| garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to | |
| occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types. | |
| Extension modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow | |
| timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors. | |
| - SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in | |
| user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any | |
| exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise | |
| specific exceptions like AttributeError. | |
| - cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage | |
| collection. | |
| - mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times, | |
| especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed | |
| unique within a single program run. | |
| - thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread. | |
| dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior. | |
| - array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative | |
| to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313) | |
| - The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now | |
| properly subclassable. | |
| - _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added. | |
| - itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented. | |
| Fixes SF bug #730685. | |
| - the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance - | |
| /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true | |
| for many BSD-derived systems. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to | |
| doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two | |
| primary ones: | |
| doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object | |
| in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running | |
| on that file. This is great when a doctest fails. | |
| doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest | |
| TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which | |
| runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in | |
| doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests | |
| in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing | |
| framework features (which doctest lacks). | |
| - For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected | |
| output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block | |
| consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly | |
| for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical. | |
| The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module | |
| constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional | |
| argument. | |
| - ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously, | |
| a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem | |
| in the archive. | |
| - The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making | |
| LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler. | |
| - The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch | |
| 569574). | |
| - A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at | |
| SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is | |
| no more. | |
| - Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used | |
| to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace | |
| code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can | |
| generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of | |
| code coverage. | |
| - The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile() | |
| that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys | |
| module. A function registered with the threading module will | |
| be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this | |
| to provide tracing for code running in threads. | |
| - copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven | |
| Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself | |
| didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.) | |
| Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304. | |
| - difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff(). | |
| - More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use | |
| GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the | |
| HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes | |
| an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD | |
| - Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error | |
| handling. | |
| - inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display | |
| __doc__ of data descriptors. | |
| - Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class | |
| in socket.py. | |
| - timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports. | |
| - urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't | |
| have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like | |
| inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an | |
| opener with proxy support. | |
| - Iterators have been added for dbm keys. | |
| - random.Random objects can now be pickled. | |
| Tools/Demos | |
| ----------- | |
| - pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics. | |
| - Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib. | |
| - diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats, | |
| providing a command line interface to difflib.py. | |
| - texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX | |
| files. | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a | |
| different root directory. | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| - PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc | |
| (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's | |
| tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define | |
| a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free. | |
| Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a | |
| segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free | |
| slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type | |
| (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base | |
| type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type | |
| is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del. | |
| - PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only | |
| from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is | |
| intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it | |
| from Python. | |
| New platforms | |
| ------------- | |
| None this time. | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| - test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a | |
| side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest"). | |
| Windows | |
| ------- | |
| - The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1). | |
| - The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C: | |
| drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation | |
| wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive | |
| usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive | |
| instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines | |
| where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now | |
| suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the | |
| directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog -- | |
| that's what it's for. | |
| Mac | |
| --- | |
| - There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to | |
| automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop | |
| goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only | |
| supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version. | |
| - The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the | |
| toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology). | |
| - The Package Manager can now update itself. | |
| SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied | |
| ------------------------------------ | |
| 430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434, | |
| 598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891, | |
| 622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022, | |
| 661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347, | |
| 683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777, | |
| 697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902, | |
| 713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962, | |
| 724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051, | |
| 727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103, | |
| 729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170, | |
| 730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504, | |
| 731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124, | |
| 732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951, | |
| 733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527, | |
| 735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055, | |
| 740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911, | |
| 744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525, | |
| 745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667, | |
| 747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759, | |
| 749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107, | |
| 751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451, | |
| 753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031, | |
| 755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058, | |
| 757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889, | |
| 760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455 | |
| What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1? | |
| ================================ | |
| *Release date: 25-Apr-2003* | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for | |
| PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value. | |
| - New built-in function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the | |
| items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers, | |
| and cannot be strings). | |
| - bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than | |
| raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the | |
| constructors for the other built-in types -- called without argument | |
| they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135) | |
| - In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible | |
| from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a | |
| few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with | |
| Python itself. | |
| - The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of | |
| the referenced object, if it has one. | |
| - super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See | |
| the thread started at | |
| http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html | |
| - list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be | |
| interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the | |
| list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not | |
| placed on a list index. | |
| - range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude | |
| larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence | |
| fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list: | |
| [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.) | |
| - Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction | |
| between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious" | |
| getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method, | |
| but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable | |
| only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted | |
| unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to | |
| a segfault could happen. That's been repaired. | |
| - dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default | |
| value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not | |
| given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised. | |
| Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin. | |
| [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.) | |
| - sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose | |
| Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding. | |
| - New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is | |
| rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects | |
| referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch | |
| #693195.) | |
| - On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys | |
| if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659. | |
| - Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static | |
| variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the | |
| unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive | |
| interpreter executions, would fail. | |
| - "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a | |
| TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises an OverflowError instead | |
| of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127. | |
| Extension modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop | |
| for converting between string and packed representation of IP | |
| addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is | |
| True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327. | |
| - Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly | |
| to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings. | |
| - The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the | |
| recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron | |
| and Greg Chapman.) | |
| - New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code | |
| recursively. | |
| - New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects | |
| directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's | |
| tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory | |
| leaks. | |
| - The iconv module has been removed from this release. | |
| - The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats | |
| (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1 | |
| pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to | |
| propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f | |
| could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2 | |
| away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug | |
| #705836. | |
| - New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset() | |
| function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.) | |
| - Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions | |
| on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter. | |
| See SF bug #692416. | |
| - Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed | |
| mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation). | |
| - Made user requested changes to the itertools module. | |
| Subsumed the times() function into repeat(). | |
| Added chain() and cycle(). | |
| - The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses | |
| is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python | |
| has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries. | |
| - The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on | |
| platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly | |
| on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing | |
| timeouts to work properly. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to | |
| os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk() | |
| isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a | |
| future release. | |
| - Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools | |
| for querying platform dependent features. | |
| - netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords. | |
| - shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes | |
| pickle protocol versions. | |
| - Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument | |
| which specifies a file where to divert the command's output | |
| (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468) | |
| - The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added. | |
| - Support for internationalized domain names has been added through | |
| the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the | |
| 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib | |
| modules. | |
| - htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps | |
| HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers). | |
| codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017. | |
| - pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through | |
| arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt. | |
| - unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now | |
| return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired | |
| result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__. | |
| - sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the | |
| MS Office extensions. | |
| - The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol. | |
| SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon. | |
| - New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the | |
| execution speed of expressions and statements. | |
| - sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead | |
| of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object, | |
| x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made | |
| for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info | |
| about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug | |
| report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>. | |
| - On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument, | |
| it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier | |
| to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().) | |
| - Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified | |
| in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but | |
| not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog) | |
| - New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files. | |
| - Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings, | |
| including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and | |
| commands. An iterator interface was also implemented. | |
| Tools/Demos | |
| ----------- | |
| - New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output. | |
| See the module docstring for details. | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted | |
| preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.) | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| - Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect(). | |
| - PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or | |
| issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This | |
| makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active. | |
| - LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and | |
| need compatibility with previous versions can use this: | |
| #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG | |
| #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG | |
| #endif | |
| - Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the | |
| typical case where the method returns its self argument. | |
| - The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style | |
| classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now | |
| exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.) | |
| New platforms | |
| ------------- | |
| None this time. | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| - test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run. | |
| See SF bug #692988. | |
| Windows | |
| ------- | |
| - os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit() | |
| function. | |
| - New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API | |
| MessageBeep(). | |
| Mac | |
| --- | |
| - os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with | |
| a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library". | |
| - A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access | |
| the window manager, false otherwise. | |
| - EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is | |
| currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground | |
| before displaying. | |
| - OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now | |
| be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less | |
| complete. | |
| - The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation | |
| in Apple Help Viewer format. | |
| What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2? | |
| ================================= | |
| *Release date: 19-Feb-2003* | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now | |
| treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions | |
| that are out of bounds raise an IndexError. | |
| - sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now | |
| turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string. | |
| (SF patch #664376.) | |
| - Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending | |
| with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError. | |
| This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except | |
| codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be | |
| invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior; | |
| this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py | |
| files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.) | |
| - If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its | |
| constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the | |
| constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code | |
| that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op | |
| __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``. | |
| - Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know | |
| Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants | |
| with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign. | |
| ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the | |
| range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have | |
| always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.) | |
| E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would | |
| come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through | |
| 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that | |
| value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This | |
| will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455) | |
| - int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only | |
| does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the | |
| sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit | |
| machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python | |
| 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and | |
| int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347) | |
| - super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e. | |
| issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X). | |
| - isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent | |
| to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously | |
| only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the | |
| case.) | |
| - compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code | |
| passed as unicode strings. | |
| - int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int. | |
| See SF bug #683467. | |
| - long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power | |
| of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string). | |
| - filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments. | |
| - raw_input can now return Unicode objects. | |
| - List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function. | |
| Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no | |
| arguments. | |
| - Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self. | |
| See SF bug #667147. | |
| - Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying | |
| to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit. | |
| See SF bug #676155. | |
| - Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to | |
| the name of the module in which the function was defined. This | |
| applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods | |
| defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(), | |
| which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2 | |
| whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined | |
| at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions). | |
| Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name. | |
| Extension modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or | |
| nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL | |
| tp_as_number pointer. | |
| - The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import | |
| lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a | |
| reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when | |
| this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with | |
| imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.) | |
| - Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307). | |
| - Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518. | |
| - Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib | |
| extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the | |
| zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and | |
| patch #678531.) | |
| - Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient | |
| looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML. | |
| - The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF | |
| patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552). | |
| - os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends). | |
| - Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal | |
| errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background | |
| thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.) | |
| - fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants. | |
| - Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on | |
| an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913) | |
| - Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation. | |
| - datetime changes: | |
| The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908) | |
| The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single | |
| datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single | |
| time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted | |
| exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't | |
| enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler | |
| now. | |
| today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest | |
| microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an | |
| irritation most likely seen on Windows systems. | |
| In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration, | |
| ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it | |
| as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in | |
| time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports | |
| DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes, | |
| meaning that DST is never in effect). | |
| The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object | |
| (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that | |
| was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein | |
| they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI. | |
| The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced | |
| by a later example coded by Guido. | |
| datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the | |
| input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time | |
| zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight | |
| time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time | |
| ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics | |
| the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time. | |
| dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware | |
| datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo | |
| object, without any conversion of date and time members, use | |
| dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a | |
| tzinfo subclass instance. | |
| A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses | |
| to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to | |
| a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc() | |
| as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding | |
| fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will | |
| be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the | |
| creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc() | |
| allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python. | |
| datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's | |
| repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough | |
| already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date | |
| and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time | |
| members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current | |
| date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to :: | |
| tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc)) | |
| where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without | |
| a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time, | |
| as a naive datetime object. | |
| datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than | |
| useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See | |
| also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>. | |
| date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from | |
| falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these | |
| raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type. | |
| They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute, | |
| in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other | |
| datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the | |
| comparison. | |
| date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception | |
| for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if | |
| the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is | |
| != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator | |
| only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, :: | |
| if some_datetime in some_sequence: | |
| and :: | |
| some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever | |
| to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the | |
| sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This | |
| seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons | |
| that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.] | |
| The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise | |
| ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap | |
| seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's | |
| possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where | |
| datetimes constructed from them are equal. | |
| The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed | |
| completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no | |
| longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__() | |
| methods no longer exist either. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed | |
| to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning(). | |
| - The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling | |
| protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several | |
| extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__ | |
| etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization | |
| API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__. | |
| See PEP 307 for details. | |
| - The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi | |
| as the default repository. (See PEP 301.) | |
| - the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep, | |
| pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform | |
| dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these | |
| variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be | |
| available from the os module. | |
| (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>). | |
| - array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see | |
| <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>). | |
| - The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle | |
| internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as | |
| a symbolic pickle disassembler. | |
| - xmlrpclib.py now supports the built-in boolean type. | |
| - py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError | |
| exception. | |
| - SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler | |
| class. | |
| - The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that | |
| sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison | |
| operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests. | |
| - Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in | |
| Python 2.2. or 2.3. | |
| - realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``. | |
| It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath. | |
| See SF bug #659228. | |
| - New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface | |
| to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression. | |
| See SF patch #651082. | |
| - urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024. | |
| - Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support | |
| the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259. | |
| - Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets. | |
| See SF patch #642974. | |
| - The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating | |
| DOS paths from other platforms. | |
| Tools/Demos | |
| ----------- | |
| - Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the | |
| Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module | |
| to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is | |
| compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the | |
| underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library, | |
| run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it | |
| to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script | |
| using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For | |
| example: | |
| % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle | |
| % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle | |
| Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message. | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and | |
| test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is | |
| because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and | |
| software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like :: | |
| ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev | |
| - On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which | |
| used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two | |
| groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and | |
| debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry | |
| compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some | |
| platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by | |
| default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required | |
| flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without | |
| fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build. | |
| - On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the | |
| relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to | |
| take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project | |
| <http://fink.sf.net/>. | |
| - A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts | |
| from the Tools/scripts directory. | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| - PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *`` | |
| instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.) | |
| - PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float | |
| slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL | |
| tp_as_number pointer. | |
| - A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer | |
| will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one. | |
| (SF #681367) | |
| - The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float | |
| argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b', | |
| 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will | |
| raise a TypeError. | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| - Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py, | |
| test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py, | |
| test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to | |
| developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to | |
| make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or | |
| pydoc.) | |
| - Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module. | |
| - Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding. | |
| Windows | |
| ------- | |
| - The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has | |
| now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the | |
| time). | |
| - distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to | |
| the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198. | |
| - The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest | |
| release without strong cryptography. | |
| - sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an | |
| absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.) | |
| - The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It | |
| wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight. | |
| Mac | |
| --- | |
| - There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave | |
| and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated. | |
| - Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference | |
| of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules | |
| in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future. | |
| - Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented. | |
| This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again. | |
| - There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and | |
| accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download | |
| and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary | |
| form. Only in MacPython-OSX. | |
| - Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make | |
| them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The | |
| downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the | |
| Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1. | |
| What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1? | |
| ================================= | |
| *Release date: 31-Dec-2002* | |
| Type/class unification and new-style classes | |
| -------------------------------------------- | |
| - One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes. | |
| - dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2) | |
| is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly, | |
| the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has | |
| been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has | |
| a different meaning than before. | |
| - int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the | |
| integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will | |
| all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError. | |
| - Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new | |
| class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an | |
| extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool. | |
| - New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up | |
| significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation | |
| and deallocation. | |
| - The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the | |
| right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]). | |
| - The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The | |
| types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and | |
| instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in | |
| names but are accessible through the types module, are now also | |
| callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy. | |
| - Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are | |
| now detected by the garbage collector. | |
| - Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected. | |
| [SF bug 519621] | |
| - Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python | |
| identifier. | |
| - The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and | |
| takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor | |
| ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a | |
| module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this | |
| created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did. | |
| [SF bug 563060] | |
| - A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type | |
| for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of | |
| types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string": | |
| isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This | |
| is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly. | |
| - Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__ | |
| method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is | |
| not called. [SF bug #537450] | |
| - Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444] | |
| - If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but | |
| doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised. | |
| This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always | |
| raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the | |
| state of the slots would be lost.) | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed | |
| on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python | |
| modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the | |
| zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not | |
| the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are | |
| compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since | |
| Jython 2.1. | |
| - PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to | |
| support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism. | |
| Several new variables have been added to the sys module: | |
| sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these | |
| make extending the import statement much more convenient than | |
| overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of | |
| these, see PEP 302. | |
| - A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a | |
| trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to | |
| exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835] | |
| - The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a built-in | |
| module to assure that at least the built-in codecs are available | |
| to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263. | |
| - issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like | |
| isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to | |
| ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``. | |
| - Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash | |
| by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list | |
| during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of | |
| attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or | |
| length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language. | |
| The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations, | |
| and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that | |
| all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across | |
| releases or implementations. | |
| - Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented. | |
| All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute, | |
| which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere. | |
| - Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented. | |
| Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized. | |
| - A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern(): | |
| interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference | |
| to the return value intern() around to get the benefit. | |
| - Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now | |
| issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword. | |
| - SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to | |
| call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call | |
| PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up | |
| to date when there is a trace function set). | |
| - There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn | |
| about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer | |
| result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer | |
| unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that | |
| PEP. The warnings are about the following situations: | |
| - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range | |
| [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but | |
| in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit | |
| pattern. | |
| - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose | |
| bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be | |
| precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value | |
| as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n. | |
| - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as | |
| unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; | |
| this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string | |
| formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will | |
| show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff"; | |
| in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1"). | |
| - The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have | |
| been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be | |
| per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables. | |
| In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100 | |
| bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that | |
| relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded | |
| applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will | |
| increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount. | |
| - When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called | |
| Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the | |
| inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits, | |
| Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is | |
| log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may | |
| be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides | |
| the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm | |
| appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers | |
| (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a | |
| simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with, | |
| e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package | |
| devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it. | |
| - u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an | |
| integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals. | |
| - The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The | |
| mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are | |
| mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the | |
| higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile(). | |
| Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the | |
| new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same | |
| functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe | |
| interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks | |
| to Zack Weinberg! | |
| - When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__, | |
| 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously | |
| invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int | |
| type. This has been fixed now. | |
| - Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1. | |
| This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of | |
| any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now. | |
| - File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now | |
| returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to | |
| f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a | |
| readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing | |
| f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right. | |
| Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations | |
| don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost | |
| to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding | |
| module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh! | |
| - Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A | |
| comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first | |
| or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding. | |
| - list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results | |
| may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many | |
| kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation, | |
| and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on | |
| several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A | |
| precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too), | |
| although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A | |
| potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of | |
| len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible | |
| for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function | |
| does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details. | |
| - All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been | |
| raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also | |
| raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to | |
| this behavior, which could have caused confusion or subtle program | |
| breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an | |
| iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce | |
| this.) | |
| - Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with | |
| other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught, | |
| and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the | |
| process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will | |
| interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes | |
| created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work | |
| reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.) | |
| [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232] | |
| - sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This | |
| returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows | |
| currently running. | |
| - Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return | |
| a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time, | |
| but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count | |
| was one or when the slice range was all inclusive. | |
| - Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated | |
| as directory names. | |
| - Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith built-in methods | |
| so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951] | |
| - Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the | |
| finally clause. [SF bug 567538] | |
| - Most built-in sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices | |
| with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1] | |
| gives "dlrow olleh". | |
| - A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide | |
| direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated. | |
| The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending | |
| deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning:: | |
| as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code. | |
| - Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as | |
| promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist() | |
| method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been | |
| removed. | |
| - New built-in function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example: | |
| enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c"). | |
| The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object. | |
| - The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means | |
| that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value | |
| to __debug__. | |
| - A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric | |
| string to the left with zeros. For example, | |
| "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123". | |
| - Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but | |
| these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being | |
| deprecated now. | |
| - String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take | |
| an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For | |
| example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo". | |
| - There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict | |
| class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a | |
| dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a | |
| single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing | |
| duplicates from sequences. | |
| - Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the | |
| value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949] | |
| - A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in | |
| names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry | |
| other operations that return a truth value have been changed to | |
| return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this | |
| is backward compatible. | |
| - Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions, | |
| deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the | |
| garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code; | |
| access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable | |
| could access a pointer to freed memory. | |
| - The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by | |
| default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and | |
| deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included, | |
| Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions | |
| and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2 | |
| onwards. | |
| - PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions | |
| that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors. | |
| - The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates | |
| correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones. | |
| - Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U' | |
| instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line | |
| ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is | |
| recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to | |
| '\n', the standard Python line end character. | |
| - file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed: | |
| Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise | |
| a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called. | |
| - sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument. | |
| An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used. | |
| - Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the | |
| general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will | |
| evaluate f1 first. | |
| - Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read() | |
| could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error. | |
| - The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat | |
| slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots. | |
| This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807). | |
| - Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945). | |
| Extension modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Added three operators to the operator module: | |
| operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b. | |
| operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b. | |
| operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b. | |
| - posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx. | |
| - A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip | |
| archives. | |
| - The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and | |
| times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and | |
| favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See | |
| http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage | |
| - _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which | |
| have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects | |
| are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method, | |
| or Tkinter.wantobjects. | |
| - The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has | |
| been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is | |
| still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore, | |
| and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from | |
| 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which | |
| probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see | |
| the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos | |
| section above. | |
| - unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization | |
| and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs. | |
| - resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints. | |
| - readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if | |
| sys.stdin/stdout changes. | |
| - The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for | |
| Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are | |
| supported. | |
| - cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class. | |
| - The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers | |
| after stat_float_times has been called. | |
| - If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the | |
| file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792] | |
| - The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence. | |
| - The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a | |
| Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it). | |
| - The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that | |
| only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer | |
| functions but callable type objects. | |
| - The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename. | |
| This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be | |
| written to disk. | |
| - posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and | |
| posix.getpgid have been added where available. | |
| - The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It | |
| also has a new function getpreferredencoding. | |
| - A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular | |
| third party compression library used by some Python modules. The | |
| hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of | |
| Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4. | |
| - pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic | |
| field names. | |
| - array.array is now a type object. A new format character | |
| 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and | |
| .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__ | |
| and __imul__. | |
| - dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case | |
| of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open | |
| is called. | |
| - The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates | |
| to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the | |
| interpreter was compiled. | |
| - Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab') | |
| when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now | |
| returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of | |
| lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example, | |
| when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be | |
| 1, not 2. | |
| - Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit | |
| before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite | |
| loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer | |
| limit. | |
| - The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the | |
| letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes | |
| bug #623464. | |
| - The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by | |
| ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of | |
| OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the | |
| OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder). | |
| - Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library; | |
| slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule | |
| reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow | |
| with Python 2.3a2. | |
| - os.path exposes getctime. | |
| - unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual() | |
| and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison | |
| by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing | |
| the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for | |
| unit tests of floating point results. | |
| - calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than | |
| the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates | |
| has been increased. | |
| - pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be | |
| executed. | |
| - The distutils created windows installers now can run a | |
| postinstallation script. | |
| - doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to | |
| test the current module. | |
| - When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard | |
| interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on | |
| client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to | |
| the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that | |
| this behavior needs to be controlled. | |
| - A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for | |
| command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg | |
| Ward's Optik package. | |
| - UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary | |
| methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface. | |
| This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable | |
| for dictionaries (such as the shelve module). | |
| - shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports | |
| all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent | |
| storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind. | |
| - shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional | |
| binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the | |
| shelf are binary pickles. | |
| - A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP | |
| 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip. | |
| - StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs | |
| modules are iterators now. | |
| - gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work | |
| now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large | |
| file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can | |
| record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that | |
| some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file | |
| size. | |
| - xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references | |
| with their entity value. | |
| - Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument. | |
| - Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple | |
| option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s. | |
| - Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that | |
| tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a | |
| dictionary when invoked with no argument. | |
| - Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of | |
| calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or | |
| whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you | |
| want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve | |
| all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the | |
| following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's | |
| main(): | |
| import locale | |
| locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "") | |
| - shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an | |
| exception at the end, instead of printing error messages. | |
| - Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only | |
| replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric | |
| characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python | |
| package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated | |
| to the new standard. | |
| - mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which | |
| returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and | |
| add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and | |
| an extension to the database. | |
| - New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable | |
| set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's | |
| also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets | |
| or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which | |
| is the base class of the two. | |
| - Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement. | |
| Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population. | |
| - random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises | |
| OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start' | |
| and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's | |
| bounded integers. | |
| - Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core | |
| generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C, | |
| threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically | |
| large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit | |
| precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator | |
| in existence. | |
| The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new | |
| generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the | |
| existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead() | |
| continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of | |
| non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies | |
| on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward. | |
| The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for | |
| the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a | |
| new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward | |
| compatibility and to make an alternate generator available. | |
| - New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to | |
| Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining | |
| write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps. | |
| - New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos. | |
| - binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit | |
| platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs, | |
| crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value | |
| as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform. | |
| - xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding | |
| argument. | |
| - Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its | |
| __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on | |
| the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of | |
| custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type' | |
| [SF patch 560794]. | |
| - Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is | |
| a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception | |
| if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout | |
| mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function, | |
| socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets | |
| created henceforth. | |
| - getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option | |
| processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments. | |
| - Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for | |
| exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects | |
| changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error, | |
| tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error. | |
| - Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE, | |
| BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte | |
| Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and | |
| big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names | |
| BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2. | |
| - Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians(). | |
| - math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]). | |
| - ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing | |
| for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which | |
| was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may | |
| create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior | |
| and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not | |
| identical to None. | |
| - random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else, | |
| and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other | |
| words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of | |
| results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly | |
| mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different | |
| results now. | |
| - The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that | |
| provided by cPickle.Pickler. | |
| - difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of | |
| which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For | |
| comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better | |
| than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk | |
| argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is | |
| that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied | |
| to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program | |
| text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines). | |
| - New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module. | |
| - New distutils commands for building packagers were added to | |
| support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX. | |
| - distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class | |
| command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers. | |
| This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage | |
| people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD | |
| and other systems. | |
| - The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a | |
| NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they | |
| used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error -- | |
| UTF-16 is a 2-byte encoding and the C lib's line reading APIs don't | |
| work well with these. | |
| - compileall now supports quiet operation. | |
| - The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent | |
| connections. | |
| - socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main | |
| _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper | |
| which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working. | |
| - encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character | |
| sets | |
| - ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use | |
| "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host | |
| name. | |
| - webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that | |
| arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was | |
| passed in. | |
| - gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and | |
| gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback | |
| on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means | |
| of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext. | |
| - distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option. | |
| - warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument. | |
| - The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create | |
| circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed | |
| to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474] | |
| - The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless | |
| of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF, | |
| or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments | |
| has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always | |
| honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified. | |
| - distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++ | |
| compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if | |
| running under \*nix. | |
| - New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression | |
| library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression | |
| functions, and types for sequential (de)compression. | |
| - New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints | |
| the value of its expression argument. | |
| - Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in | |
| the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in | |
| the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file. | |
| - Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a | |
| unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for | |
| skipstone browser was included. | |
| - Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of | |
| strings were used as parameters for certain functions. | |
| Tools/Demos | |
| ----------- | |
| - pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module | |
| names in addition to accepting file names. | |
| - The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they | |
| were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions | |
| are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are | |
| still used and useful.) | |
| - IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also | |
| deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It | |
| allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them | |
| in the locale's encoding. | |
| - freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules, | |
| unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in | |
| the generated binary. | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically. | |
| - The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless | |
| except in the hands of experts. | |
| - The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC | |
| and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions | |
| will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros | |
| are deprecated. | |
| - A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or | |
| get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected. | |
| Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires | |
| that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that | |
| COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug | |
| builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS | |
| builds. | |
| - Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option. | |
| The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges | |
| that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules | |
| that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension | |
| type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the | |
| Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used | |
| to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the | |
| new type. | |
| - According to Annex F of the current C standard, | |
| The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs, | |
| HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are | |
| positive infinities. | |
| Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol | |
| Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL. | |
| pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered | |
| other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines | |
| HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something | |
| that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about | |
| is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here: | |
| http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm | |
| Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help! | |
| - The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the | |
| doc strings from the built-in functions and modules; this reduces the | |
| size of the executable. | |
| - The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix | |
| it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the | |
| configure script. On other platforms, remove | |
| WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h. | |
| - On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared. | |
| - All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS | |
| preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they | |
| controlled stopped being experimental long ago. | |
| - The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as | |
| well as Unix. | |
| - The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version | |
| skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the | |
| installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these | |
| modules in the README file for details. | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| - PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects. | |
| This is a result of these types having a partially defined | |
| tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that | |
| PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior. | |
| It may be deprecated.) | |
| - The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member | |
| ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some | |
| platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of | |
| the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been | |
| incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned | |
| strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned | |
| strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API, | |
| PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings. | |
| (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while | |
| making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in | |
| it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer | |
| aligned.) | |
| - The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods' | |
| argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common | |
| now that factories can be types rather than functions. | |
| - New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C | |
| level. | |
| - New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and | |
| PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to | |
| PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and | |
| PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow specifying | |
| the exception type to raise. Available on Windows. | |
| - Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It | |
| was previously declared without const. This should not affect working | |
| code. | |
| - Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls | |
| sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without | |
| adjusting for negative indices. | |
| - PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1. | |
| This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange | |
| object. | |
| - PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's | |
| coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the | |
| CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies. | |
| - The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to | |
| "``void (*)(void *)``". | |
| - PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros. | |
| - A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously, | |
| when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it | |
| was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type, | |
| where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type. | |
| - PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does. | |
| - The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed. | |
| - The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is | |
| without going through the buffer API. | |
| - The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``. | |
| - An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This | |
| hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has | |
| been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created | |
| conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless. | |
| - Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided | |
| to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish! | |
| - Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number | |
| scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details. | |
| New platforms | |
| ------------- | |
| - OpenVMS is now supported. | |
| - AtheOS is now supported. | |
| - the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported. | |
| - GNU/Hurd is now supported. | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| - The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow | |
| all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything | |
| except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'. | |
| Windows | |
| ------- | |
| - The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the | |
| Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge | |
| improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many | |
| bugs. | |
| XXX What are the licensing issues here? | |
| XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of | |
| XXX Python, what must they do to convert it? | |
| XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt). | |
| XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1. | |
| - The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL) | |
| module (_ssl.pyd) | |
| - The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it | |
| previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2). | |
| - When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now | |
| includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under | |
| MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is | |
| the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6. | |
| - Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause | |
| of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in- | |
| use files" uninstall option). | |
| - Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031] | |
| - The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local | |
| equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install. | |
| - file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values. | |
| It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a | |
| limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used). | |
| - os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block | |
| until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly | |
| the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for | |
| a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn() | |
| functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms. | |
| See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that | |
| spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on | |
| Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id). | |
| - New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't | |
| need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune | |
| to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it | |
| got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the | |
| underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine. | |
| However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C | |
| level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were | |
| open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then | |
| doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's | |
| C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f | |
| blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow | |
| deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to | |
| work around. | |
| - The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the | |
| low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are | |
| O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL. | |
| The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT, | |
| O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary | |
| to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY | |
| (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless | |
| specified with O_CREAT too). | |
| Mac | |
| ---- | |
| - Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here. | |
| - Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM | |
| version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file | |
| system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir(). | |
| - The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython | |
| refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the | |
| CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX. | |
| - All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build, | |
| including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this | |
| will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot | |
| talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app | |
| bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script | |
| with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should | |
| be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including | |
| Tkinter or wxPython scripts). | |
| - Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in | |
| MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib | |
| are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc). | |
| - A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or | |
| .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are | |
| run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw | |
| files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal | |
| window, but all this can be customized. | |
| - MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and | |
| possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier | |
| releases. | |
| - Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command | |
| line interface too. | |
| - All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can | |
| subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should | |
| now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's | |
| documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still | |
| available for convenience. | |
| - New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h) | |
| and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs built-in module is | |
| gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules. | |
| - Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses | |
| unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames | |
| (also when running on Mac OS X). | |
| - New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager. | |
| There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation | |
| (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer. | |
| See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a | |
| Help Viewer compatible form and installing it. | |
| - OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now | |
| mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes. | |
| - MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file. | |
| This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278). | |
| - The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer | |
| mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on | |
| other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them | |
| you can change this in site.py. | |
| What's New in Python 2.2 final? | |
| =============================== | |
| *Release date: 21-Dec-2001* | |
| Type/class unification and new-style classes | |
| -------------------------------------------- | |
| - pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes | |
| with a custom metaclass. | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both | |
| are proxies. | |
| Extension modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding | |
| very short strings. | |
| - cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack | |
| overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion | |
| limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects | |
| performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT | |
| when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h). | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at | |
| close or delete time). | |
| - rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None | |
| instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module). | |
| - xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles. | |
| - test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code | |
| when run from the standard regression test. | |
| Tools/Demos | |
| ----------- | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| New platforms | |
| ------------- | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| Windows | |
| ------- | |
| - distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst). | |
| - tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper | |
| instances are deleted at process exit time. | |
| - socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are | |
| deleted at process exit time. | |
| - posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending | |
| in backslash. | |
| Mac | |
| ---- | |
| - The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers | |
| 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have | |
| been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX. | |
| What's New in Python 2.2c1? | |
| =========================== | |
| *Release date: 14-Dec-2001* | |
| Type/class unification and new-style classes | |
| -------------------------------------------- | |
| - Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has | |
| been extensively updated. See | |
| http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html | |
| That remains the primary documentation in this area. | |
| - Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never | |
| deleted! | |
| - The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called | |
| __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly | |
| called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition | |
| with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods | |
| are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.) | |
| - Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed: | |
| (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still | |
| return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super). | |
| (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This | |
| is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of | |
| super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data | |
| attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not | |
| supported anyway. | |
| (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an | |
| instance of the type used in creation of the super instance. | |
| - Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type | |
| (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising | |
| TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling | |
| dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError | |
| (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__). | |
| - New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for | |
| all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty | |
| dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further. | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on | |
| the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead | |
| of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all" | |
| means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in | |
| your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in | |
| educational environments with control over the libraries in use. | |
| Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails | |
| under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true | |
| division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is | |
| testing the current rules). | |
| - complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string | |
| argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string | |
| or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string. | |
| Extension modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter | |
| lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done | |
| this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling | |
| an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads | |
| until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs | |
| relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design. | |
| - webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now. | |
| - Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show. | |
| - The charset alias windows_1252 has been added. | |
| - types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types; | |
| usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled | |
| without Unicode support it will be just (str,). | |
| - The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML. | |
| Tools/Demos | |
| ----------- | |
| - A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires | |
| off a search on Google. | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the | |
| preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent). | |
| In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in | |
| Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension | |
| authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in | |
| release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to | |
| other platforms should do likewise. | |
| - It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a | |
| case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build | |
| directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python. | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| - New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the built-in dict | |
| constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object | |
| producing key-value pairs. | |
| - PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in | |
| the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This | |
| wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even | |
| dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result, | |
| PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that | |
| previously went unchallenged. | |
| New platforms | |
| ------------- | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| Windows | |
| ------- | |
| Mac | |
| ---- | |
| - In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin", | |
| without any trailing digits. | |
| - Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons. | |
| Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to | |
| the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python | |
| home. | |
| What's New in Python 2.2b2? | |
| =========================== | |
| *Release date: 16-Nov-2001* | |
| Type/class unification and new-style classes | |
| -------------------------------------------- | |
| - Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the | |
| list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now: | |
| class Classic: pass | |
| class Mixed(Classic, object): pass | |
| The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected | |
| according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed | |
| using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class. | |
| This needs to be documented. | |
| - The new built-in dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have | |
| been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage. | |
| - dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For | |
| example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument, | |
| and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects. | |
| - New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called | |
| when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes). | |
| - Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are | |
| instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base | |
| class forbids it). | |
| - Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments | |
| (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods | |
| that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__. | |
| - The socket function has been converted to a type; see below. | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This | |
| was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1" | |
| (see below) says. | |
| - Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator | |
| (like 1 + ''). | |
| Extension modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for | |
| both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and | |
| copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on | |
| Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a | |
| uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across | |
| platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this! | |
| - By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in | |
| unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all | |
| instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized | |
| to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes. | |
| - The socket module defines a new method for socket objects, | |
| sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to | |
| send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has | |
| been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.) | |
| before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing. | |
| - Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite | |
| for the curses module (you have to run it manually). | |
| - binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57 | |
| bytes on its input. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory | |
| convenience function. | |
| - Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For | |
| example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a | |
| single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously. | |
| Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time; | |
| previously, the error went undetected, and results were | |
| unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and | |
| pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an | |
| experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works | |
| like findall() but returns an iterator. | |
| - Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox, | |
| DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the | |
| methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog, | |
| tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions. | |
| - Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so | |
| cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause | |
| permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled). | |
| - os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the | |
| separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except | |
| RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable | |
| unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS. | |
| - mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly | |
| found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an | |
| optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether | |
| recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we | |
| know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are | |
| new -l and -e options. | |
| - statcache is now deprecated. | |
| - email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style | |
| dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates | |
| hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is | |
| added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings | |
| time properly taken into account. | |
| - In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by | |
| transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception | |
| propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__ | |
| in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle. | |
| Tools/Demos | |
| ----------- | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module | |
| is built with libdb3 if available. | |
| - Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement. | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| - New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non- | |
| NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling | |
| PySequence_Size(). | |
| - New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added. | |
| - New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and | |
| PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more | |
| convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C. | |
| - PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's | |
| possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before. | |
| - New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its | |
| argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface. | |
| New platforms | |
| ------------- | |
| - We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00, | |
| *with* threads, and passes the test suite. | |
| - Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build | |
| again under OS/2 Visual Age C++. | |
| - Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger. | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| - Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically; | |
| regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it. | |
| Windows | |
| ------- | |
| Mac | |
| ---- | |
| - PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be | |
| removed completely in the next release. | |
| - It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and | |
| OSX. | |
| - The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side | |
| result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII. | |
| - Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1 | |
| What's New in Python 2.2b1? | |
| =========================== | |
| *Release date: 19-Oct-2001* | |
| Type/class unification and new-style classes | |
| -------------------------------------------- | |
| - New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and | |
| extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I | |
| no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic | |
| remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you | |
| must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the | |
| __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack | |
| of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the | |
| future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I | |
| can prove that it actually speeds things up). | |
| - C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it | |
| always returned None, even when there was a class docstring). | |
| - doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes, | |
| class methods, static methods, and properties. | |
| Core and builtins | |
| ----------------- | |
| - A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed. | |
| For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in | |
| this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a' | |
| iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce', | |
| 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be', | |
| 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error. | |
| Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say | |
| [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost. | |
| - getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as | |
| documented, rather than returning the default value for all | |
| exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for | |
| example). | |
| - Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API. | |
| A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved | |
| proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a | |
| built-in exception. | |
| - unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary | |
| objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists. | |
| unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still | |
| require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument. | |
| - isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a | |
| class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the | |
| second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a | |
| class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance() | |
| will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the | |
| things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g. | |
| isinstance(x, (A, B)) | |
| returns true if x is an instance of A or B. | |
| Extension modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None). | |
| - binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp. | |
| - readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the | |
| pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function. | |
| - os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where | |
| available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions | |
| now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be | |
| accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for | |
| backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence. | |
| Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as | |
| attributes. | |
| - time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a | |
| pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with | |
| attributes like tm_year etc. | |
| - Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional | |
| second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount | |
| of memory to use for the uncompressed data. | |
| - optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL | |
| functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls | |
| are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not | |
| automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile | |
| arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional. | |
| - posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now | |
| exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module | |
| being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg. | |
| - HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has | |
| been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling, | |
| but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and | |
| documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final). | |
| - profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception | |
| raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used | |
| to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive | |
| functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function. | |
| The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile | |
| profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if | |
| you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile | |
| intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more | |
| than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended | |
| to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and | |
| that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but | |
| without losing information). | |
| - Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver | |
| a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can | |
| now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or | |
| instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code. | |
| Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile | |
| module). | |
| Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses. | |
| Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of | |
| profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details | |
| and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed | |
| a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines. | |
| - quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter, | |
| which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q' | |
| encoding. | |
| - The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after | |
| finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.) | |
| - The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument | |
| to allow saving the message body to a file. | |
| - The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which | |
| only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body. | |
| Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing | |
| audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter). | |
| - ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB. | |
| - ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO, | |
| ON, and OFF. | |
| - xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute | |
| and item() method as required by the DOM specifications. | |
| Tools/Demos | |
| ----------- | |
| - Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package | |
| derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see | |
| http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net. | |
| - The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have | |
| been added: -X and -E. | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and | |
| the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler. | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| - The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that | |
| the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is | |
| not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in | |
| Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for | |
| "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return. | |
| - PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments. | |
| Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well | |
| as long) arguments. | |
| - PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread | |
| ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no | |
| thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only | |
| the thread module used this API). This code has only really been | |
| tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and | |
| report any bugs or strange behavior). | |
| - PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as | |
| input. | |
| New platforms | |
| ------------- | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| Windows | |
| ------- | |
| - Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension | |
| registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry | |
| is created for .py and .pyw files. | |
| - The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven | |
| Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK | |
| action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via | |
| signal.signal(). For example:: | |
| # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C | |
| # (SIGINT) behavior. | |
| import signal | |
| signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler) | |
| try: | |
| while 1: | |
| pass | |
| except KeyboardInterrupt: | |
| # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed | |
| # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the | |
| # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup). | |
| print "Clean exit" | |
| What's New in Python 2.2a4? | |
| =========================== | |
| *Release date: 28-Sep-2001* | |
| Type/class unification and new-style classes | |
| -------------------------------------------- | |
| - pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes; | |
| e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper | |
| documentation for all operations on list objects. | |
| - Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely | |
| be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with | |
| Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass | |
| examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work | |
| with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write | |
| webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug | |
| report on SourceForge.) | |
| - property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc. | |
| These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__' | |
| in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't | |
| discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows | |
| associating a docstring with a property. | |
| - Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For | |
| example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str | |
| instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most | |
| other built-in object types. | |
| - The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type | |
| 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>, | |
| *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type | |
| 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or | |
| otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects). | |
| - The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>; | |
| previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>. | |
| - For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now | |
| called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for | |
| *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the | |
| one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular | |
| attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute | |
| access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If | |
| both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises | |
| AttributeError, __getattr__ is called. | |
| - The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to. | |
| The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old | |
| class. | |
| - The built-in file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern, | |
| "file" is the name of the built-in type, and file() is a new built-in | |
| constructor, with the same signature as the built-in open() function. | |
| file() is now the preferred way to open a file. | |
| - Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to | |
| the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential | |
| and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so | |
| now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments. | |
| - Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or | |
| unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired. | |
| - Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an | |
| immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode), | |
| where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the | |
| operation was handled by the built-in type), could return that | |
| instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of | |
| a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str | |
| with the same value as s. | |
| - Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added. | |
| Core | |
| ---- | |
| - file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings. | |
| - PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like | |
| PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str | |
| on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This | |
| makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer | |
| objects. | |
| - PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write | |
| method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target | |
| of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must | |
| at least convert them into ASCII strings. | |
| - Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer | |
| necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order | |
| to let other runnable threads be scheduled. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support | |
| read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods. | |
| These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such | |
| by the instances. | |
| - The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the | |
| mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes | |
| and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators. | |
| - difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This | |
| restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output | |
| before the entire comparison is complete. | |
| - StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support | |
| iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is | |
| called for each iteration until it returns an empty string). | |
| - The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access | |
| built-in codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(), | |
| getwriter(). | |
| - SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer) | |
| simplifies writing XML RPC servers. | |
| - os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname | |
| after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this | |
| is an alias for os.path.abspath(). | |
| - operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any | |
| iterable object. | |
| - smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of | |
| the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods. | |
| - hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message | |
| authentication. | |
| - mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the | |
| same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed. | |
| - The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of | |
| Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a | |
| Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as | |
| a sample driver.) | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports | |
| it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at | |
| least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large | |
| files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is | |
| still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your | |
| kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose | |
| kernel has large file support. | |
| - The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a | |
| cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied | |
| values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works | |
| flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of | |
| autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN). | |
| - The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser | |
| generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when | |
| using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py. | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| - The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read | |
| and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode. | |
| New platforms | |
| ------------- | |
| - Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution | |
| (http://familiar.handhelds.org). | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| - The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to | |
| an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at | |
| the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a | |
| variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences. | |
| This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting. | |
| - The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main() | |
| convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being | |
| imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and | |
| flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework. | |
| - regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now, | |
| especially in regard to reporting errors. | |
| Windows | |
| ------- | |
| - Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems | |
| that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in | |
| Python 2.2a3" for more detail. | |
| What's New in Python 2.2a3? | |
| =========================== | |
| *Release Date: 07-Sep-2001* | |
| Core | |
| ---- | |
| - Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too | |
| big to represent as a C double. | |
| - The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument | |
| if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of | |
| integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case | |
| the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same | |
| restriction). | |
| - The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much | |
| more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes | |
| reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base | |
| classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned | |
| an empty list. In 2.2a3, | |
| >>> dir([]) | |
| ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__', | |
| '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__', | |
| '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__', | |
| '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__', | |
| '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__', | |
| 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove', | |
| 'reverse', 'sort'] | |
| dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though. | |
| - Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather | |
| than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP | |
| 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for | |
| this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old | |
| OverflowError exception. | |
| - A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time | |
| warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible | |
| values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is | |
| -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no | |
| warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about | |
| all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall | |
| also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments | |
| (for use with fixdiv.py). | |
| [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became | |
| obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] :: | |
| Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but | |
| only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or | |
| -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and | |
| warns about classic division everywhere else. | |
| - Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int, | |
| long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and | |
| dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.) | |
| Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in | |
| types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading | |
| __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances | |
| will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value" | |
| (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance | |
| once it is created. | |
| - The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a | |
| mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its | |
| (key, value) pairs. | |
| - A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making | |
| "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an | |
| explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation | |
| - A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the | |
| creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by | |
| getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or | |
| write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__. | |
| See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property | |
| - The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been | |
| liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now | |
| legal that were SyntaxErrors before: | |
| 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008. | |
| - An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete | |
| exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for | |
| setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing | |
| of suboptions. | |
| - The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to | |
| ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new | |
| freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow- | |
| checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all | |
| platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable | |
| in this area anymore). | |
| - Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class | |
| threading.Timer. | |
| - math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge | |
| long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0. | |
| - A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is | |
| currently held. See the docs for the imp module. | |
| - pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read | |
| dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes. | |
| When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are | |
| converted to Python longs. | |
| - In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling | |
| code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole. | |
| - unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks | |
| generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references | |
| to objects that should be garbage collected between tests. | |
| Tools | |
| ----- | |
| - Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix | |
| division operators as per PEP 238. | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at | |
| Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac | |
| application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa. | |
| Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please. | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| - New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj). | |
| - Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no | |
| callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow | |
| errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check:: | |
| double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object); | |
| if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) { | |
| /* The conversion failed. */ | |
| } | |
| - The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still | |
| compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension | |
| module: | |
| - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC | |
| - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and | |
| PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them | |
| - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini | |
| to PyObject_GC_UnTrack | |
| - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations | |
| - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC | |
| - Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV(). | |
| These can be used safely to construct string objects from a | |
| sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported | |
| by PyErr_Format()). | |
| New platforms | |
| ------------- | |
| - Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile | |
| under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran | |
| out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError | |
| when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and | |
| causing later failures too. | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| Windows | |
| ------- | |
| - Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on | |
| Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek() | |
| to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough | |
| disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large | |
| partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte) | |
| filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there. | |
| FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now. | |
| NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be | |
| used from Python now. | |
| - The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC | |
| points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan). | |
| What's New in Python 2.2a2? | |
| =========================== | |
| *Release Date: 22-Aug-2001* | |
| Build | |
| ----- | |
| - Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1, | |
| generously donated to us by Wise Solutions. | |
| - configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values | |
| ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode | |
| type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter. | |
| - A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework, | |
| which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting | |
| point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org | |
| if you are interested in helping. | |
| - The NeXT platform is no longer supported. | |
| - The 'new' module is now statically linked. | |
| Tools | |
| ----- | |
| - The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically | |
| edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See | |
| the module docstring for details. | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| - regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some | |
| platforms, allowing clearer test result output to be given. regrtest | |
| also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests | |
| which require network access or consume significant disk resources. | |
| - Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to | |
| Nick Mathewson. | |
| Core | |
| ---- | |
| - The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP | |
| 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until | |
| Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in | |
| which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator | |
| module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented | |
| assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable | |
| methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion: | |
| <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html> | |
| - Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells | |
| (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael | |
| Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full | |
| details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>. | |
| - The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the | |
| trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of | |
| some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing | |
| bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to | |
| come a long way). | |
| - Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import | |
| now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to | |
| write filters for these warnings). | |
| - A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a | |
| dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None, | |
| but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it | |
| to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes | |
| have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None. | |
| - A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of | |
| all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically | |
| significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with | |
| "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if | |
| the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an | |
| older distribution. | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py. | |
| These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py, | |
| for programmatic reuse. | |
| - New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute | |
| value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more | |
| reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values. | |
| - Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added. | |
| - Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings. | |
| - Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore() | |
| - Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module. | |
| - The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags. | |
| - The gc module offers the get_referents function. | |
| New platforms | |
| ------------- | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| - Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added | |
| which provide a cross-platform implementations for the | |
| relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to | |
| the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions | |
| apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection | |
| against buffer overruns. | |
| - Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters | |
| and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to | |
| impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension | |
| will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make | |
| sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by | |
| using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension. | |
| - Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition | |
| tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a | |
| single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than | |
| calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now | |
| deprecated. | |
| Windows | |
| ------- | |
| - "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else | |
| relevant is found. | |
| What's New in Python 2.2a1? | |
| =========================== | |
| *Release date: 18-Jul-2001* | |
| Core | |
| ---- | |
| - TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's | |
| described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP | |
| 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released | |
| with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately | |
| through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this | |
| with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is | |
| possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release | |
| this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards | |
| incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be | |
| repaired. | |
| - Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see | |
| below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or | |
| more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new | |
| keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a | |
| future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236). | |
| Generators will become a standard feature in a future release | |
| (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an | |
| ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used. | |
| (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of | |
| PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.) | |
| - The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now | |
| only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then | |
| only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a | |
| leading BMO character). | |
| - Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already | |
| existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access | |
| to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs. | |
| To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special | |
| casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects | |
| were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding). | |
| Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the | |
| requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will | |
| return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1") | |
| will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs | |
| for various simple to use conversions. | |
| New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode() | |
| and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects): | |
| +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+ | |
| |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description | | |
| +=========+===========+===========+=============================+ | |
| |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) | | |
| +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+ | |
| |base64 | string | string | base64 codec | | |
| +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+ | |
| |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec | | |
| +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+ | |
| |zlib | string | string | zlib compression | | |
| +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+ | |
| |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec | | |
| +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+ | |
| |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec| | |
| +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+ | |
| - Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode | |
| encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs' | |
| as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium | |
| term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than | |
| 'mbcs'. | |
| On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for | |
| functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python | |
| string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for | |
| the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's | |
| default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing | |
| it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python | |
| would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than | |
| the default encoding for the file system. | |
| In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with | |
| Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect, | |
| increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context. | |
| See [????] for more details, including examples. | |
| - Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full | |
| precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a | |
| .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the | |
| 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754 | |
| floating arithmetic, | |
| x = 9007199254740992.0 | |
| print long(x) | |
| printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000 | |
| if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using | |
| str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal | |
| now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full | |
| machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion | |
| functions are of good quality). | |
| This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and | |
| usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable | |
| algorithms to break. | |
| - The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed | |
| benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(), | |
| dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a | |
| given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should | |
| rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the | |
| order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a | |
| dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new | |
| sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted | |
| order. | |
| - Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster | |
| operation along the most common code paths. | |
| - Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means | |
| the same as dict.has_key(x). | |
| - The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping | |
| objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys() | |
| and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example, | |
| {}.update(UserDict()) | |
| - Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values | |
| to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter() | |
| to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value | |
| from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the | |
| tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators | |
| using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C). | |
| Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys. | |
| Iterating over a file generates its lines. | |
| - The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator | |
| arguments:: | |
| map(), filter(), reduce(), zip() | |
| list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API) | |
| max(), min() | |
| join() method of strings | |
| extend() method of lists | |
| 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API) | |
| operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API) | |
| right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as :: | |
| x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values | |
| - Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example, | |
| random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute). | |
| - Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even | |
| if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==. | |
| - Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were | |
| insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python | |
| to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or | |
| values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down. | |
| - Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help | |
| dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict | |
| d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x | |
| faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and | |
| the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never). | |
| - repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple). | |
| Library | |
| ------- | |
| - The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase | |
| were added to the string module. These a locale-independent | |
| constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now | |
| use in appropriate locations in the standard library. | |
| - The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using | |
| sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags. | |
| - Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This | |
| provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition, | |
| Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based, | |
| one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation. | |
| - The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing, | |
| repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist() | |
| method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260. | |
| - A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added. | |
| - calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale. | |
| - strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6), | |
| and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items | |
| that are still imported into string.py). | |
| - Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings. | |
| - pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects. | |
| Now it does. | |
| - pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict). | |
| - New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C | |
| types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In | |
| native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports | |
| these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config | |
| process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types. | |
| In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are | |
| 8-byte integral types. | |
| - The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes | |
| pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help', | |
| it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or | |
| 'help(object)'. | |
| Tests | |
| ----- | |
| - New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value | |
| comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This | |
| rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint | |
| of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!). | |
| - New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and | |
| pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple | |
| cases produce correct output. | |
| C API | |
| ----- | |
| - Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal | |
| _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating. | |
| What's New in Python 2.1 (final)? | |
| ================================= | |
| We only changed a few things since the last release candidate, all in | |
| Python library code: | |
| - A bug in the locale module was fixed that affected locales which | |
| define no grouping for numeric formatting. | |
| - A few bugs in the weakref module's implementations of weak | |
| dictionaries (WeakValueDictionary and WeakKeyDictionary) were fixed, | |
| and the test suite was updated to check for these bugs. | |
| - An old bug in the os.path.walk() function (introduced in Python | |
| 2.0!) was fixed: a non-existent file would cause an exception | |
| instead of being ignored. | |
| - Fixed a few bugs in the new symtable module found by Neil Norwitz's | |
| PyChecker. | |
| What's New in Python 2.1c2? | |
| =========================== | |
| A flurry of small changes, and one showstopper fixed in the nick of | |
| time made it necessary to release another release candidate. The list | |
| here is the *complete* list of patches (except version updates): | |
| Core | |
| - Tim discovered a nasty bug in the dictionary code, caused by | |
| PyDict_Next() calling dict_resize(), and the GC code's use of | |
| PyDict_Next() violating an assumption in dict_items(). This was | |
| fixed with considerable amounts of band-aid, but the net effect is a | |
| saner and more robust implementation. | |
| - Made a bunch of symbols static that were accidentally global. | |
| Build and Ports | |
| - The setup.py script didn't check for a new enough version of zlib | |
| (1.1.3 is needed). Now it does. | |
| - Changed "make clean" target to also remove shared libraries. | |
| - Added a more general warning about the SGI Irix optimizer to README. | |
| Library | |
| - Fix a bug in urllib.basejoin("http://host", "../file.html") which | |
| omitted the slash between host and file.html. | |
| - The mailbox module's _Mailbox class contained a completely broken | |
| and undocumented seek() method. Ripped it out. | |
| - Fixed a bunch of typos in various library modules (urllib2, smtpd, | |
| sgmllib, netrc, chunk) found by Neil Norwitz's PyChecker. | |
| - Fixed a few last-minute bugs in unittest. | |
| Extensions | |
| - Reverted the patch to the OpenSSL code in socketmodule.c to support | |
| RAND_status() and the EGD, and the subsequent patch that tried to | |
| fix it for pre-0.9.5 versions; the problem with the patch is that on | |
| some systems it issues a warning whenever socket is imported, and | |
| that's unacceptable. | |
| Tests | |
| - Fixed the pickle tests to work with "import test.test_pickle". | |
| - Tweaked test_locale.py to actually run the test Windows. | |
| - In distutils/archive_util.py, call zipfile.ZipFile() with mode "w", | |
| not "wb" (which is not a valid mode at all). | |
| - Fix pstats browser crashes. Import readline if it exists to make | |
| the user interface nicer. | |
| - Add "import thread" to the top of test modules that import the | |
| threading module (test_asynchat and test_threadedtempfile). This | |
| prevents test failures caused by a broken threading module resulting | |
| from a previously caught failed import. | |
| - Changed test_asynchat.py to set the SO_REUSEADDR option; this was | |
| needed on some platforms (e.g. Solaris 8) when the tests are run | |
| twice in succession. | |
| - Skip rather than fail test_sunaudiodev if no audio device is found. | |
| What's New in Python 2.1c1? | |
| =========================== | |
| This list was significantly updated when 2.1c2 was released; the 2.1c1 | |
| release didn't mention most changes that were actually part of 2.1c1: | |
| Legal | |
| - Copyright was assigned to the Python Software Foundation (PSF) and a | |
| PSF license (very similar to the CNRI license) was added. | |
| - The CNRI copyright notice was updated to include 2001. | |
| Core | |
| - After a public outcry, assignment to __debug__ is no longer illegal; | |
| instead, a warning is issued. It will become illegal in 2.2. | |
| - Fixed a core dump with "%#x" % 0, and changed the semantics so that | |
| "%#x" now always prepends "0x", even if the value is zero. | |
| - Fixed some nits in the bytecode compiler. | |
| - Fixed core dumps when calling certain kinds of non-functions. | |
| - Fixed various core dumps caused by reference count bugs. | |
| Build and Ports | |
| - Use INSTALL_SCRIPT to install script files. | |
| - New port: SCO Unixware 7, by Billy G. Allie. | |
| - Updated RISCOS port. | |
| - Updated BeOS port and notes. | |
| - Various other porting problems resolved. | |
| Library | |
| - The TERMIOS and SOCKET modules are now truly obsolete and | |
| unnecessary. Their symbols are incorporated in the termios and | |
| socket modules. | |
| - Fixed some 64-bit bugs in pickle, cPickle, and struct, and added | |
| better tests for pickling. | |
| - threading: make Condition.wait() robust against KeyboardInterrupt. | |
| - zipfile: add support to zipfile to support opening an archive | |
| represented by an open file rather than a file name. Fix bug where | |
| the archive was not properly closed. Fixed a bug in this bugfix | |
| where flush() was called for a read-only file. | |
| - imputil: added an uninstall() method to the ImportManager. | |
| - Canvas: fixed bugs in lower() and tkraise() methods. | |
| - SocketServer: API change (added overridable close_request() method) | |
| so that the TCP server can explicitly close the request. | |
| - pstats: Eric Raymond added a simple interactive statistics browser, | |
| invoked when the module is run as a script. | |
| - locale: fixed a problem in format(). | |
| - webbrowser: made it work when the BROWSER environment variable has a | |
| value like "/usr/bin/netscape". Made it auto-detect Konqueror for | |
| KDE 2. Fixed some other nits. | |
| - unittest: changes to allow using a different exception than | |
| AssertionError, and added a few more function aliases. Some other | |
| small changes. | |
| - urllib, urllib2: fixed redirect problems and a coupleof other nits. | |
| - asynchat: fixed a critical bug in asynchat that slipped through the | |
| 2.1b2 release. Fixed another rare bug. | |
| - Fix some unqualified except: clauses (always a bad code example). | |
| XML | |
| - pyexpat: new API get_version_string(). | |
| - Fixed some minidom bugs. | |
| Extensions | |
| - Fixed a core dump in _weakref. Removed the weakref.mapping() | |
| function (it adds nothing to the API). | |
| - Rationalized the use of header files in the readline module, to make | |
| it compile (albeit with some warnings) with the very recent readline | |
| 4.2, without breaking for earlier versions. | |
| - Hopefully fixed a buffering problem in linuxaudiodev. | |
| - Attempted a fix to make the OpenSSL support in the socket module | |
| work again with pre-0.9.5 versions of OpenSSL. | |
| Tests | |
| - Added a test case for asynchat and asyncore. | |
| - Removed coupling between tests where one test failing could break | |
| another. | |
| Tools | |
| - Ping added an interactive help browser to pydoc, fixed some nits | |
| in the rest of the pydoc code, and added some features to his | |
| inspect module. | |
| - An updated python-mode.el version 4.1 which integrates Ken | |
| Manheimer's pdbtrack.el. This makes debugging Python code via pdb | |
| much nicer in XEmacs and Emacs. When stepping through your program | |
| with pdb, in either the shell window or the *Python* window, the | |
| source file and line will be tracked by an arrow. Very cool! | |
| - IDLE: syntax warnings in interactive mode are changed into errors. | |
| - Some improvements to Tools/webchecker (ignore some more URL types, | |
| follow some more links). | |
| - Brought the Tools/compiler package up to date. | |
| What's New in Python 2.1 beta 2? | |
| ================================ | |
| (Unlisted are many fixed bugs, more documentation, etc.) | |
| Core language, builtins, and interpreter | |
| - The nested scopes work (enabled by "from __future__ import | |
| nested_scopes") is completed; in particular, the future now extends | |
| into code executed through exec, eval() and execfile(), and into the | |
| interactive interpreter. | |
| - When calling a base class method (e.g. BaseClass.__init__(self)), | |
| this is now allowed even if self is not strictly spoken a class | |
| instance (e.g. when using metaclasses or the Don Beaudry hook). | |
| - Slice objects are now comparable but not hashable; this prevents | |
| dict[:] from being accepted but meaningless. | |
| - Complex division is now calculated using less braindead algorithms. | |
| This doesn't change semantics except it's more likely to give useful | |
| results in extreme cases. Complex repr() now uses full precision | |
| like float repr(). | |
| - sgmllib.py now calls handle_decl() for simple <!...> declarations. | |
| - It is illegal to assign to the name __debug__, which is set when the | |
| interpreter starts. It is effectively a compile-time constant. | |
| - A warning will be issued if a global statement for a variable | |
| follows a use or assignment of that variable. | |
| Standard library | |
| - unittest.py, a unit testing framework by Steve Purcell (PyUNIT, | |
| inspired by JUnit), is now part of the standard library. You now | |
| have a choice of two testing frameworks: unittest requires you to | |
| write testcases as separate code, doctest gathers them from | |
| docstrings. Both approaches have their advantages and | |
| disadvantages. | |
| - A new module Tix was added, which wraps the Tix extension library | |
| for Tk. With that module, it is not necessary to statically link | |
| Tix with _tkinter, since Tix will be loaded with Tcl's "package | |
| require" command. See Demo/tix/. | |
| - tzparse.py is now obsolete. | |
| - In gzip.py, the seek() and tell() methods are removed -- they were | |
| non-functional anyway, and it's better if callers can test for their | |
| existence with hasattr(). | |
| Python/C API | |
| - PyDict_Next(): it is now safe to call PyDict_SetItem() with a key | |
| that's already in the dictionary during a PyDict_Next() iteration. | |
| This used to fail occasionally when a dictionary resize operation | |
| could be triggered that would rehash all the keys. All other | |
| modifications to the dictionary are still off-limits during a | |
| PyDict_Next() iteration! | |
| - New extended APIs related to passing compiler variables around. | |
| - New abstract APIs PyObject_IsInstance(), PyObject_IsSubclass() | |
| implement isinstance() and issubclass(). | |
| - Py_BuildValue() now has a "D" conversion to create a Python complex | |
| number from a Py_complex C value. | |
| - Extensions types which support weak references must now set the | |
| field allocated for the weak reference machinery to NULL themselves; | |
| this is done to avoid the cost of checking each object for having a | |
| weakly referencable type in PyObject_INIT(), since most types are | |
| not weakly referencable. | |
| - PyFrame_FastToLocals() and PyFrame_LocalsToFast() copy bindings for | |
| free variables and cell variables to and from the frame's f_locals. | |
| - Variants of several functions defined in pythonrun.h have been added | |
| to support the nested_scopes future statement. The variants all end | |
| in Flags and take an extra argument, a PyCompilerFlags *; examples: | |
| PyRun_AnyFileExFlags(), PyRun_InteractiveLoopFlags(). These | |
| variants may be removed in Python 2.2, when nested scopes are | |
| mandatory. | |
| Distutils | |
| - the sdist command now writes a PKG-INFO file, as described in PEP 241, | |
| into the release tree. | |
| - several enhancements to the bdist_wininst command from Thomas Heller | |
| (an uninstaller, more customization of the installer's display) | |
| - from Jack Jansen: added Mac-specific code to generate a dialog for | |
| users to specify the command-line (because providing a command-line with | |
| MacPython is awkward). Jack also made various fixes for the Mac | |
| and the Metrowerks compiler. | |
| - added 'platforms' and 'keywords' to the set of metadata that can be | |
| specified for a distribution. | |
| - applied patches from Jason Tishler to make the compiler class work with | |
| Cygwin. | |
| What's New in Python 2.1 beta 1? | |
| ================================ | |
| Core language, builtins, and interpreter | |
| - Following an outcry from the community about the amount of code | |
| broken by the nested scopes feature introduced in 2.1a2, we decided | |
| to make this feature optional, and to wait until Python 2.2 (or at | |
| least 6 months) to make it standard. The option can be enabled on a | |
| per-module basis by adding "from __future__ import nested_scopes" at | |
| the beginning of a module (before any other statements, but after | |
| comments and an optional docstring). See PEP 236 (Back to the | |
| __future__) for a description of the __future__ statement. PEP 227 | |
| (Statically Nested Scopes) has been updated to reflect this change, | |
| and to clarify the semantics in a number of endcases. | |
| - The nested scopes code, when enabled, has been hardened, and most | |
| bugs and memory leaks in it have been fixed. | |
| - Compile-time warnings are now generated for a number of conditions | |
| that will break or change in meaning when nested scopes are enabled: | |
| - Using "from...import *" or "exec" without in-clause in a function | |
| scope that also defines a lambda or nested function with one or | |
| more free (non-local) variables. The presence of the import* or | |
| bare exec makes it impossible for the compiler to determine the | |
| exact set of local variables in the outer scope, which makes it | |
| impossible to determine the bindings for free variables in the | |
| inner scope. To avoid the warning about import *, change it into | |
| an import of explicitly name object, or move the import* statement | |
| to the global scope; to avoid the warning about bare exec, use | |
| exec...in... (a good idea anyway -- there's a possibility that | |
| bare exec will be deprecated in the future). | |
| - Use of a global variable in a nested scope with the same name as a | |
| local variable in a surrounding scope. This will change in | |
| meaning with nested scopes: the name in the inner scope will | |
| reference the variable in the outer scope rather than the global | |
| of the same name. To avoid the warning, either rename the outer | |
| variable, or use a global statement in the inner function. | |
| - An optional object allocator has been included. This allocator is | |
| optimized for Python objects and should be faster and use less memory | |
| than the standard system allocator. It is not enabled by default | |
| because of possible thread safety problems. The allocator is only | |
| protected by the Python interpreter lock and it is possible that some | |
| extension modules require a thread safe allocator. The object | |
| allocator can be enabled by providing the "--with-pymalloc" option to | |
| configure. | |
| Standard library | |
| - pyexpat now detects the expat version if expat.h defines it. A | |
| number of additional handlers are provided, which are only available | |
| since expat 1.95. In addition, the methods SetParamEntityParsing and | |
| GetInputContext of Parser objects are available with 1.95.x | |
| only. Parser objects now provide the ordered_attributes and | |
| specified_attributes attributes. A new module expat.model was added, | |
| which offers a number of additional constants if 1.95.x is used. | |
| - xml.dom offers the new functions registerDOMImplementation and | |
| getDOMImplementation. | |
| - xml.dom.minidom offers a toprettyxml method. A number of DOM | |
| conformance issues have been resolved. In particular, Element now | |
| has a hasAttributes method, and the handling of namespaces was | |
| improved. | |
| - Ka-Ping Yee contributed two new modules: inspect.py, a module for | |
| getting information about live Python code, and pydoc.py, a module | |
| for interactively converting docstrings to HTML or text. | |
| Tools/scripts/pydoc, which is now automatically installed into | |
| <prefix>/bin, uses pydoc.py to display documentation; try running | |
| "pydoc -h" for instructions. "pydoc -g" pops up a small GUI that | |
| lets you browse the module docstrings using a web browser. | |
| - New library module difflib.py, primarily packaging the SequenceMatcher | |
| class at the heart of the popular ndiff.py file-comparison tool. | |
| - doctest.py (a framework for verifying Python code examples in docstrings) | |
| is now part of the std library. | |
| Windows changes | |
| - A new entry in the Start menu, "Module Docs", runs "pydoc -g" -- a | |
| small GUI that lets you browse the module docstrings using your | |
| default web browser. | |
| - Import is now case-sensitive. PEP 235 (Import on Case-Insensitive | |
| Platforms) is implemented. See | |
| http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0235.html | |
| for full details, especially the "Current Lower-Left Semantics" section. | |
| The new Windows import rules are simpler than before: | |
| A. If the PYTHONCASEOK environment variable exists, same as | |
| before: silently accept the first case-insensitive match of any | |
| kind; raise ImportError if none found. | |
| B. Else search sys.path for the first case-sensitive match; raise | |
| ImportError if none found. | |
| The same rules have been implemented on other platforms with case- | |
| insensitive but case-preserving filesystems too (including Cygwin, and | |
| several flavors of Macintosh operating systems). | |
| - winsound module: Under Win9x, winsound.Beep() now attempts to simulate | |
| what it's supposed to do (and does do under NT and 2000) via direct | |
| port manipulation. It's unknown whether this will work on all systems, | |
| but it does work on my Win98SE systems now and was known to be useless on | |
| all Win9x systems before. | |
| - Build: Subproject _test (effectively) renamed to _testcapi. | |
| New platforms | |
| - 2.1 should compile and run out of the box under MacOS X, even using HFS+. | |
| Thanks to Steven Majewski! | |
| - 2.1 should compile and run out of the box on Cygwin. Thanks to Jason | |
| Tishler! | |
| - 2.1 contains new files and patches for RISCOS, thanks to Dietmar | |
| Schwertberger! See RISCOS/README for more information -- it seems | |
| that because of the bizarre filename conventions on RISCOS, no port | |
| to that platform is easy. | |
| What's New in Python 2.1 alpha 2? | |
| ================================= | |
| Core language, builtins, and interpreter | |
| - Scopes nest. If a name is used in a function or class, but is not | |
| local, the definition in the nearest enclosing function scope will | |
| be used. One consequence of this change is that lambda statements | |
| could reference variables in the namespaces where the lambda is | |
| defined. In some unusual cases, this change will break code. | |
| In all previous version of Python, names were resolved in exactly | |
| three namespaces -- the local namespace, the global namespace, and | |
| the builtins namespace. According to this old definition, if a | |
| function A is defined within a function B, the names bound in B are | |
| not visible in A. The new rules make names bound in B visible in A, | |
| unless A contains a name binding that hides the binding in B. | |
| Section 4.1 of the reference manual describes the new scoping rules | |
| in detail. The test script in Lib/test/test_scope.py demonstrates | |
| some of the effects of the change. | |
| The new rules will cause existing code to break if it defines nested | |
| functions where an outer function has local variables with the same | |
| name as globals or builtins used by the inner function. Example: | |
| def munge(str): | |
| def helper(x): | |
| return str(x) | |
| if type(str) != type(''): | |
| str = helper(str) | |
| return str.strip() | |
| Under the old rules, the name str in helper() is bound to the | |
| built-in function str(). Under the new rules, it will be bound to | |
| the argument named str and an error will occur when helper() is | |
| called. | |
| - The compiler will report a SyntaxError if "from ... import *" occurs | |
| in a function or class scope. The language reference has documented | |
| that this case is illegal, but the compiler never checked for it. | |
| The recent introduction of nested scope makes the meaning of this | |
| form of name binding ambiguous. In a future release, the compiler | |
| may allow this form when there is no possibility of ambiguity. | |
| - repr(string) is easier to read, now using hex escapes instead of octal, | |
| and using \t, \n and \r instead of \011, \012 and \015 (respectively): | |
| >>> "\texample \r\n" + chr(0) + chr(255) | |
| '\texample \r\n\x00\xff' # in 2.1 | |
| '\011example \015\012\000\377' # in 2.0 | |
| - Functions are now compared and hashed by identity, not by value, since | |
| the func_code attribute is writable. | |
| - Weak references (PEP 205) have been added. This involves a few | |
| changes in the core, an extension module (_weakref), and a Python | |
| module (weakref). The weakref module is the public interface. It | |
| includes support for "explicit" weak references, proxy objects, and | |
| mappings with weakly held values. | |
| - A 'continue' statement can now appear in a try block within the body | |
| of a loop. It is still not possible to use continue in a finally | |
| clause. | |
| Standard library | |
| - mailbox.py now has a new class, PortableUnixMailbox which is | |
| identical to UnixMailbox but uses a more portable scheme for | |
| determining From_ separators. Also, the constructors for all the | |
| classes in this module have a new optional `factory' argument, which | |
| is a callable used when new message classes must be instantiated by | |
| the next() method. | |
| - random.py is now self-contained, and offers all the functionality of | |
| the now-deprecated whrandom.py. See the docs for details. random.py | |
| also supports new functions getstate() and setstate(), for saving | |
| and restoring the internal state of the generator; and jumpahead(n), | |
| for quickly forcing the internal state to be the same as if n calls to | |
| random() had been made. The latter is particularly useful for multi- | |
| threaded programs, creating one instance of the random.Random() class for | |
| each thread, then using .jumpahead() to force each instance to use a | |
| non-overlapping segment of the full period. | |
| - random.py's seed() function is new. For bit-for-bit compatibility with | |
| prior releases, use the whseed function instead. The new seed function | |
| addresses two problems: (1) The old function couldn't produce more than | |
| about 2**24 distinct internal states; the new one about 2**45 (the best | |
| that can be done in the Wichmann-Hill generator). (2) The old function | |
| sometimes produced identical internal states when passed distinct | |
| integers, and there was no simple way to predict when that would happen; | |
| the new one guarantees to produce distinct internal states for all | |
| arguments in [0, 27814431486576L). | |
| - The socket module now supports raw packets on Linux. The socket | |
| family is AF_PACKET. | |
| - test_capi.py is a start at running tests of the Python C API. The tests | |
| are implemented by the new Modules/_testmodule.c. | |
| - A new extension module, _symtable, provides provisional access to the | |
| internal symbol table used by the Python compiler. A higher-level | |
| interface will be added on top of _symtable in a future release. | |
| - Removed the obsolete soundex module. | |
| - xml.dom.minidom now uses the standard DOM exceptions. Node supports | |
| the isSameNode method; NamedNodeMap the get method. | |
| - xml.sax.expatreader supports the lexical handler property; it | |
| generates comment, startCDATA, and endCDATA events. | |
| Windows changes | |
| - Build procedure: the zlib project is built in a different way that | |
| ensures the zlib header files used can no longer get out of synch with | |
| the zlib binary used. See PCbuild\readme.txt for details. Your old | |
| zlib-related directories can be deleted; you'll need to download fresh | |
| source for zlib and unpack it into a new directory. | |
| - Build: New subproject _test for the benefit of test_capi.py (see above). | |
| - Build: New subproject _symtable, for new DLL _symtable.pyd (a nascent | |
| interface to some Python compiler internals). | |
| - Build: Subproject ucnhash is gone, since the code was folded into the | |
| unicodedata subproject. | |
| What's New in Python 2.1 alpha 1? | |
| ================================= | |
| Core language, builtins, and interpreter | |
| - There is a new Unicode companion to the PyObject_Str() API | |
| called PyObject_Unicode(). It behaves in the same way as the | |
| former, but assures that the returned value is a Unicode object | |
| (applying the usual coercion if necessary). | |
| - The comparison operators support "rich comparison overloading" (PEP | |
| 207). C extension types can provide a rich comparison function in | |
| the new tp_richcompare slot in the type object. The cmp() function | |
| and the C function PyObject_Compare() first try the new rich | |
| comparison operators before trying the old 3-way comparison. There | |
| is also a new C API PyObject_RichCompare() (which also falls back on | |
| the old 3-way comparison, but does not constrain the outcome of the | |
| rich comparison to a Boolean result). | |
| The rich comparison function takes two objects (at least one of | |
| which is guaranteed to have the type that provided the function) and | |
| an integer indicating the opcode, which can be Py_LT, Py_LE, Py_EQ, | |
| Py_NE, Py_GT, Py_GE (for <, <=, ==, !=, >, >=), and returns a Python | |
| object, which may be NotImplemented (in which case the tp_compare | |
| slot function is used as a fallback, if defined). | |
| Classes can overload individual comparison operators by defining one | |
| or more of the methods__lt__, __le__, __eq__, __ne__, __gt__, | |
| __ge__. There are no explicit "reflected argument" versions of | |
| these; instead, __lt__ and __gt__ are each other's reflection, | |
| likewise for__le__ and __ge__; __eq__ and __ne__ are their own | |
| reflection (similar at the C level). No other implications are | |
| made; in particular, Python does not assume that == is the Boolean | |
| inverse of !=, or that < is the Boolean inverse of >=. This makes | |
| it possible to define types with partial orderings. | |
| Classes or types that want to implement (in)equality tests but not | |
| the ordering operators (i.e. unordered types) should implement == | |
| and !=, and raise an error for the ordering operators. | |
| It is possible to define types whose rich comparison results are not | |
| Boolean; e.g. a matrix type might want to return a matrix of bits | |
| for A < B, giving elementwise comparisons. Such types should ensure | |
| that any interpretation of their value in a Boolean context raises | |
| an exception, e.g. by defining __nonzero__ (or the tp_nonzero slot | |
| at the C level) to always raise an exception. | |
| - Complex numbers use rich comparisons to define == and != but raise | |
| an exception for <, <=, > and >=. Unfortunately, this also means | |
| that cmp() of two complex numbers raises an exception when the two | |
| numbers differ. Since it is not mathematically meaningful to compare | |
| complex numbers except for equality, I hope that this doesn't break | |
| too much code. | |
| - The outcome of comparing non-numeric objects of different types is | |
| not defined by the language, other than that it's arbitrary but | |
| consistent (see the Reference Manual). An implementation detail changed | |
| in 2.1a1 such that None now compares less than any other object. Code | |
| relying on this new behavior (like code that relied on the previous | |
| behavior) does so at its own risk. | |
| - Functions and methods now support getting and setting arbitrarily | |
| named attributes (PEP 232). Functions have a new __dict__ | |
| (a.k.a. func_dict) which hold the function attributes. Methods get | |
| and set attributes on their underlying im_func. It is a TypeError | |
| to set an attribute on a bound method. | |
| - The xrange() object implementation has been improved so that | |
| xrange(sys.maxint) can be used on 64-bit platforms. There's still a | |
| limitation that in this case len(xrange(sys.maxint)) can't be | |
| calculated, but the common idiom "for i in xrange(sys.maxint)" will | |
| work fine as long as the index i doesn't actually reach 2**31. | |
| (Python uses regular ints for sequence and string indices; fixing | |
| that is much more work.) | |
| - Two changes to from...import: | |
| 1) "from M import X" now works even if (after loading module M) | |
| sys.modules['M'] is not a real module; it's basically a getattr() | |
| operation with AttributeError exceptions changed into ImportError. | |
| 2) "from M import *" now looks for M.__all__ to decide which names to | |
| import; if M.__all__ doesn't exist, it uses M.__dict__.keys() but | |
| filters out names starting with '_' as before. Whether or not | |
| __all__ exists, there's no restriction on the type of M. | |
| - File objects have a new method, xreadlines(). This is the fastest | |
| way to iterate over all lines in a file: | |
| for line in file.xreadlines(): | |
| ...do something to line... | |
| See the xreadlines module (mentioned below) for how to do this for | |
| other file-like objects. | |
| - Even if you don't use file.xreadlines(), you may expect a speedup on | |
| line-by-line input. The file.readline() method has been optimized | |
| quite a bit in platform-specific ways: on systems (like Linux) that | |
| support flockfile(), getc_unlocked(), and funlockfile(), those are | |
| used by default. On systems (like Windows) without getc_unlocked(), | |
| a complicated (but still thread-safe) method using fgets() is used by | |
| default. | |
| You can force use of the fgets() method by #define'ing | |
| USE_FGETS_IN_GETLINE at build time (it may be faster than | |
| getc_unlocked()). | |
| You can force fgets() not to be used by #define'ing | |
| DONT_USE_FGETS_IN_GETLINE (this is the first thing to try if std test | |
| test_bufio.py fails -- and let us know if it does!). | |
| - In addition, the fileinput module, while still slower than the other | |
| methods on most platforms, has been sped up too, by using | |
| file.readlines(sizehint). | |
| - Support for run-time warnings has been added, including a new | |
| command line option (-W) to specify the disposition of warnings. | |
| See the description of the warnings module below. | |
| - Extensive changes have been made to the coercion code. This mostly | |
| affects extension modules (which can now implement mixed-type | |
| numerical operators without having to use coercion), but | |
| occasionally, in boundary cases the coercion semantics have changed | |
| subtly. Since this was a terrible gray area of the language, this | |
| is considered an improvement. Also note that __rcmp__ is no longer | |
| supported -- instead of calling __rcmp__, __cmp__ is called with | |
| reflected arguments. | |
| - In connection with the coercion changes, a new built-in singleton | |
| object, NotImplemented is defined. This can be returned for | |
| operations that wish to indicate they are not implemented for a | |
| particular combination of arguments. From C, this is | |
| Py_NotImplemented. | |
| - The interpreter accepts now bytecode files on the command line even | |
| if they do not have a .pyc or .pyo extension. On Linux, after executing | |
| import imp,sys,string | |
| magic = string.join(["\\x%.2x" % ord(c) for c in imp.get_magic()],"") | |
| reg = ':pyc:M::%s::%s:' % (magic, sys.executable) | |
| open("/proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register","wb").write(reg) | |
| any byte code file can be used as an executable (i.e. as an argument | |
| to execve(2)). | |
| - %[xXo] formats of negative Python longs now produce a sign | |
| character. In 1.6 and earlier, they never produced a sign, | |
| and raised an error if the value of the long was too large | |
| to fit in a Python int. In 2.0, they produced a sign if and | |
| only if too large to fit in an int. This was inconsistent | |
| across platforms (because the size of an int varies across | |
| platforms), and inconsistent with hex() and oct(). Example: | |
| >>> "%x" % -0x42L | |
| '-42' # in 2.1 | |
| 'ffffffbe' # in 2.0 and before, on 32-bit machines | |
| >>> hex(-0x42L) | |
| '-0x42L' # in all versions of Python | |
| The behavior of %d formats for negative Python longs remains | |
| the same as in 2.0 (although in 1.6 and before, they raised | |
| an error if the long didn't fit in a Python int). | |
| %u formats don't make sense for Python longs, but are allowed | |
| and treated the same as %d in 2.1. In 2.0, a negative long | |
| formatted via %u produced a sign if and only if too large to | |
| fit in an int. In 1.6 and earlier, a negative long formatted | |
| via %u raised an error if it was too big to fit in an int. | |
| - Dictionary objects have an odd new method, popitem(). This removes | |
| an arbitrary item from the dictionary and returns it (in the form of | |
| a (key, value) pair). This can be useful for algorithms that use a | |
| dictionary as a bag of "to do" items and repeatedly need to pick one | |
| item. Such algorithms normally end up running in quadratic time; | |
| using popitem() they can usually be made to run in linear time. | |
| Standard library | |
| - In the time module, the time argument to the functions strftime, | |
| localtime, gmtime, asctime and ctime is now optional, defaulting to | |
| the current time (in the local timezone). | |
| - The ftplib module now defaults to passive mode, which is deemed a | |
| more useful default given that clients are often inside firewalls | |
| these days. Note that this could break if ftplib is used to connect | |
| to a *server* that is inside a firewall, from outside; this is | |
| expected to be a very rare situation. To fix that, you can call | |
| ftp.set_pasv(0). | |
| - The module site now treats .pth files not only for path configuration, | |
| but also supports extensions to the initialization code: Lines starting | |
| with import are executed. | |
| - There's a new module, warnings, which implements a mechanism for | |
| issuing and filtering warnings. There are some new built-in | |
| exceptions that serve as warning categories, and a new command line | |
| option, -W, to control warnings (e.g. -Wi ignores all warnings, -We | |
| turns warnings into errors). warnings.warn(message[, category]) | |
| issues a warning message; this can also be called from C as | |
| PyErr_Warn(category, message). | |
| - A new module xreadlines was added. This exports a single factory | |
| function, xreadlines(). The intention is that this code is the | |
| absolutely fastest way to iterate over all lines in an open | |
| file(-like) object: | |
| import xreadlines | |
| for line in xreadlines.xreadlines(file): | |
| ...do something to line... | |
| This is equivalent to the previous the speed record holder using | |
| file.readlines(sizehint). Note that if file is a real file object | |
| (as opposed to a file-like object), this is equivalent: | |
| for line in file.xreadlines(): | |
| ...do something to line... | |
| - The bisect module has new functions bisect_left, insort_left, | |
| bisect_right and insort_right. The old names bisect and insort | |
| are now aliases for bisect_right and insort_right. XXX_right | |
| and XXX_left methods differ in what happens when the new element | |
| compares equal to one or more elements already in the list: the | |
| XXX_left methods insert to the left, the XXX_right methods to the | |
| right. Code that doesn't care where equal elements end up should | |
| continue to use the old, short names ("bisect" and "insort"). | |
| - The new curses.panel module wraps the panel library that forms part | |
| of SYSV curses and ncurses. Contributed by Thomas Gellekum. | |
| - The SocketServer module now sets the allow_reuse_address flag by | |
| default in the TCPServer class. | |
| - A new function, sys._getframe(), returns the stack frame pointer of | |
| the caller. This is intended only as a building block for | |
| higher-level mechanisms such as string interpolation. | |
| - The pyexpat module supports a number of new handlers, which are | |
| available only in expat 1.2. If invocation of a callback fails, it | |
| will report an additional frame in the traceback. Parser objects | |
| participate now in garbage collection. If expat reports an unknown | |
| encoding, pyexpat will try to use a Python codec; that works only | |
| for single-byte charsets. The parser type objects is exposed as | |
| XMLParserObject. | |
| - xml.dom now offers standard definitions for symbolic node type and | |
| exception code constants, and a hierarchy of DOM exceptions. minidom | |
| was adjusted to use them. | |
| - The conformance of xml.dom.minidom to the DOM specification was | |
| improved. It detects a number of additional error cases; the | |
| previous/next relationship works even when the tree is modified; | |
| Node supports the normalize() method; NamedNodeMap, DocumentType and | |
| DOMImplementation classes were added; Element supports the | |
| hasAttribute and hasAttributeNS methods; and Text supports the splitText | |
| method. | |
| Build issues | |
| - For Unix (and Unix-compatible) builds, configuration and building of | |
| extension modules is now greatly automated. Rather than having to | |
| edit the Modules/Setup file to indicate which modules should be | |
| built and where their include files and libraries are, a | |
| distutils-based setup.py script now takes care of building most | |
| extension modules. All extension modules built this way are built | |
| as shared libraries. Only a few modules that must be linked | |
| statically are still listed in the Setup file; you won't need to | |
| edit their configuration. | |
| - Python should now build out of the box on Cygwin. If it doesn't, | |
| mail to Jason Tishler (jlt63 at users.sourceforge.net). | |
| - Python now always uses its own (renamed) implementation of getopt() | |
| -- there's too much variation among C library getopt() | |
| implementations. | |
| - C++ compilers are better supported; the CXX macro is always set to a | |
| C++ compiler if one is found. | |
| Windows changes | |
| - select module: By default under Windows, a select() call | |
| can specify no more than 64 sockets. Python now boosts | |
| this Microsoft default to 512. If you need even more than | |
| that, see the MS docs (you'll need to #define FD_SETSIZE | |
| and recompile Python from source). | |
| - Support for Windows 3.1, DOS and OS/2 is gone. The Lib/dos-8x3 | |
| subdirectory is no more! | |
| What's New in Python 2.0? | |
| ========================= | |
| Below is a list of all relevant changes since release 1.6. Older | |
| changes are in the file HISTORY. If you are making the jump directly | |
| from Python 1.5.2 to 2.0, make sure to read the section for 1.6 in the | |
| HISTORY file! Many important changes listed there. | |
| Alternatively, a good overview of the changes between 1.5.2 and 2.0 is | |
| the document "What's New in Python 2.0" by Kuchling and Moshe Zadka: | |
| http://www.amk.ca/python/2.0/. | |
| --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/) | |
| ====================================================================== | |
| What's new in 2.0 (since release candidate 1)? | |
| ============================================== | |
| Standard library | |
| - The copy_reg module was modified to clarify its intended use: to | |
| register pickle support for extension types, not for classes. | |
| pickle() will raise a TypeError if it is passed a class. | |
| - Fixed a bug in gettext's "normalize and expand" code that prevented | |
| it from finding an existing .mo file. | |
| - Restored support for HTTP/0.9 servers in httplib. | |
| - The math module was changed to stop raising OverflowError in case of | |
| underflow, and return 0 instead in underflow cases. Whether Python | |
| used to raise OverflowError in case of underflow was platform- | |
| dependent (it did when the platform math library set errno to ERANGE | |
| on underflow). | |
| - Fixed a bug in StringIO that occurred when the file position was not | |
| at the end of the file and write() was called with enough data to | |
| extend past the end of the file. | |
| - Fixed a bug that caused Tkinter error messages to get lost on | |
| Windows. The bug was fixed by replacing direct use of | |
| interp->result with Tcl_GetStringResult(interp). | |
| - Fixed bug in urllib2 that caused it to fail when it received an HTTP | |
| redirect response. | |
| - Several changes were made to distutils: Some debugging code was | |
| removed from util. Fixed the installer used when an external zip | |
| program (like WinZip) is not found; the source code for this | |
| installer is in Misc/distutils. check_lib() was modified to behave | |
| more like AC_CHECK_LIB by add other_libraries() as a parameter. The | |
| test for whether installed modules are on sys.path was changed to | |
| use both normcase() and normpath(). | |
| - Several minor bugs were fixed in the xml package (the minidom, | |
| pulldom, expatreader, and saxutils modules). | |
| - The regression test driver (regrtest.py) behavior when invoked with | |
| -l changed: It now reports a count of objects that are recognized as | |
| garbage but not freed by the garbage collector. | |
| - The regression test for the math module was changed to test | |
| exceptional behavior when the test is run in verbose mode. Python | |
| cannot yet guarantee consistent exception behavior across platforms, | |
| so the exception part of test_math is run only in verbose mode, and | |
| may fail on your platform. | |
| Internals | |
| - PyOS_CheckStack() has been disabled on Win64, where it caused | |
| test_sre to fail. | |
| Build issues | |
| - Changed compiler flags, so that gcc is always invoked with -Wall and | |
| -Wstrict-prototypes. Users compiling Python with GCC should see | |
| exactly one warning, except if they have passed configure the | |
| --with-pydebug flag. The expected warning is for getopt() in | |
| Modules/main.c. This warning will be fixed for Python 2.1. | |
| - Fixed configure to add -threads argument during linking on OSF1. | |
| Tools and other miscellany | |
| - The compiler in Tools/compiler was updated to support the new | |
| language features introduced in 2.0: extended print statement, list | |
| comprehensions, and augmented assignments. The new compiler should | |
| also be backwards compatible with Python 1.5.2; the compiler will | |
| always generate code for the version of the interpreter it runs | |
| under. | |
| What's new in 2.0 release candidate 1 (since beta 2)? | |
| ===================================================== | |
| What is release candidate 1? | |
| We believe that release candidate 1 will fix all known bugs that we | |
| intend to fix for the 2.0 final release. This release should be a bit | |
| more stable than the previous betas. We would like to see even more | |
| widespread testing before the final release, so we are producing this | |
| release candidate. The final release will be exactly the same unless | |
| any show-stopping (or brown bag) bugs are found by testers of the | |
| release candidate. | |
| All the changes since the last beta release are bug fixes or changes | |
| to support building Python for specific platforms. | |
| Core language, builtins, and interpreter | |
| - A bug that caused crashes when __coerce__ was used with augmented | |
| assignment, e.g. +=, was fixed. | |
| - Raise ZeroDivisionError when raising zero to a negative number, | |
| e.g. 0.0 ** -2.0. Note that math.pow is unrelated to the built-in | |
| power operator and the result of math.pow(0.0, -2.0) will vary by | |
| platform. On Linux, it raises a ValueError. | |
| - A bug in Unicode string interpolation was fixed that occasionally | |
| caused errors with formats including "%%". For example, the | |
| following expression "%% %s" % u"abc" no longer raises a TypeError. | |
| - Compilation of deeply nested expressions raises MemoryError instead | |
| of SyntaxError, e.g. eval("[" * 50 + "]" * 50). | |
| - In 2.0b2 on Windows, the interpreter wrote .pyc files in text mode, | |
| rendering them useless. They are now written in binary mode again. | |
| Standard library | |
| - Keyword arguments are now accepted for most pattern and match object | |
| methods in SRE, the standard regular expression engine. | |
| - In SRE, fixed error with negative lookahead and lookbehind that | |
| manifested itself as a runtime error in patterns like "(?<!abc)(def)". | |
| - Several bugs in the Unicode handling and error handling in _tkinter | |
| were fixed. | |
| - Fix memory management errors in Merge() and Tkapp_Call() routines. | |
| - Several changes were made to cStringIO to make it compatible with | |
| the file-like object interface and with StringIO. If operations are | |
| performed on a closed object, an exception is raised. The truncate | |
| method now accepts a position argument and readline accepts a size | |
| argument. | |
| - There were many changes made to the linuxaudiodev module and its | |
| test suite; as a result, a short, unexpected audio sample should now | |
| play when the regression test is run. | |
| Note that this module is named poorly, because it should work | |
| correctly on any platform that supports the Open Sound System | |
| (OSS). | |
| The module now raises exceptions when errors occur instead of | |
| crashing. It also defines the AFMT_A_LAW format (logarithmic A-law | |
| audio) and defines a getptr() method that calls the | |
| SNDCTL_DSP_GETxPTR ioctl defined in the OSS Programmer's Guide. | |
| - The library_version attribute, introduced in an earlier beta, was | |
| removed because it can not be supported with early versions of the C | |
| readline library, which provides no way to determine the version at | |
| compile-time. | |
| - The binascii module is now enabled on Win64. | |
| - tokenize.py no longer suffers "recursion depth" errors when parsing | |
| programs with very long string literals. | |
| Internals | |
| - Fixed several buffer overflow vulnerabilities in calculate_path(), | |
| which is called when the interpreter starts up to determine where | |
| the standard library is installed. These vulnerabilities affect all | |
| previous versions of Python and can be exploited by setting very | |
| long values for PYTHONHOME or argv[0]. The risk is greatest for a | |
| setuid Python script, although use of the wrapper in | |
| Misc/setuid-prog.c will eliminate the vulnerability. | |
| - Fixed garbage collection bugs in instance creation that were | |
| triggered when errors occurred during initialization. The solution, | |
| applied in cPickle and in PyInstance_New(), is to call | |
| PyObject_GC_Init() after the initialization of the object's | |
| container attributes is complete. | |
| - pyexpat adds definitions of PyModule_AddStringConstant and | |
| PyModule_AddObject if the Python version is less than 2.0, which | |
| provides compatibility with PyXML on Python 1.5.2. | |
| - If the platform has a bogus definition for LONG_BIT (the number of | |
| bits in a long), an error will be reported at compile time. | |
| - Fix bugs in _PyTuple_Resize() which caused hard-to-interpret garbage | |
| collection crashes and possibly other, unreported crashes. | |
| - Fixed a memory leak in _PyUnicode_Fini(). | |
| Build issues | |
| - configure now accepts a --with-suffix option that specifies the | |
| executable suffix. This is useful for builds on Cygwin and Mac OS | |
| X, for example. | |
| - The mmap.PAGESIZE constant is now initialized using sysconf when | |
| possible, which eliminates a dependency on -lucb for Reliant UNIX. | |
| - The md5 file should now compile on all platforms. | |
| - The select module now compiles on platforms that do not define | |
| POLLRDNORM and related constants. | |
| - Darwin (Mac OS X): Initial support for static builds on this | |
| platform. | |
| - BeOS: A number of changes were made to the build and installation | |
| process. ar-fake now operates on a directory of object files. | |
| dl_export.h is gone, and its macros now appear on the mwcc command | |
| line during build on PPC BeOS. | |
| - Platform directory in lib/python2.0 is "plat-beos5" (or | |
| "plat-beos4", if building on BeOS 4.5), rather than "plat-beos". | |
| - Cygwin: Support for shared libraries, Tkinter, and sockets. | |
| - SunOS 4.1.4_JL: Fix test for directory existence in configure. | |
| Tools and other miscellany | |
| - Removed debugging prints from main used with freeze. | |
| - IDLE auto-indent no longer crashes when it encounters Unicode | |
| characters. | |
| What's new in 2.0 beta 2 (since beta 1)? | |
| ======================================== | |
| Core language, builtins, and interpreter | |
| - Add support for unbounded ints in %d,i,u,x,X,o formats; for example | |
| "%d" % 2L**64 == "18446744073709551616". | |
| - Add -h and -V command line options to print the usage message and | |
| Python version number and exit immediately. | |
| - eval() and exec accept Unicode objects as code parameters. | |
| - getattr() and setattr() now also accept Unicode objects for the | |
| attribute name, which are converted to strings using the default | |
| encoding before lookup. | |
| - Multiplication on string and Unicode now does proper bounds | |
| checking; e.g. 'a' * 65536 * 65536 will raise ValueError, "repeated | |
| string is too long." | |
| - Better error message when continue is found in try statement in a | |
| loop. | |
| Standard library and extensions | |
| - socket module: the OpenSSL code now adds support for RAND_status() | |
| and EGD (Entropy Gathering Device). | |
| - array: reverse() method of array now works. buffer_info() now does | |
| argument checking; it still takes no arguments. | |
| - asyncore/asynchat: Included most recent version from Sam Rushing. | |
| - cgi: Accept '&' or ';' as separator characters when parsing form data. | |
| - CGIHTTPServer: Now works on Windows (and perhaps even Mac). | |
| - ConfigParser: When reading the file, options spelled in upper case | |
| letters are now correctly converted to lowercase. | |
| - copy: Copy Unicode objects atomically. | |
| - cPickle: Fail gracefully when copy_reg can't be imported. | |
| - cStringIO: Implemented readlines() method. | |
| - dbm: Add get() and setdefault() methods to dbm object. Add constant | |
| `library' to module that names the library used. Added doc strings | |
| and method names to error messages. Uses configure to determine | |
| which ndbm.h file to include; Berkeley DB's nbdm and GDBM's ndbm is | |
| now available options. | |
| - distutils: Update to version 0.9.3. | |
| - dl: Add several dl.RTLD_ constants. | |
| - fpectl: Now supported on FreeBSD. | |
| - gc: Add DEBUG_SAVEALL option. When enabled all garbage objects | |
| found by the collector will be saved in gc.garbage. This is useful | |
| for debugging a program that creates reference cycles. | |
| - httplib: Three changes: Restore support for set_debuglevel feature | |
| of HTTP class. Do not close socket on zero-length response. Do not | |
| crash when server sends invalid content-length header. | |
| - mailbox: Mailbox class conforms better to qmail specifications. | |
| - marshal: When reading a short, sign-extend on platforms where shorts | |
| are bigger than 16 bits. When reading a long, repair the unportable | |
| sign extension that was being done for 64-bit machines. (It assumed | |
| that signed right shift sign-extends.) | |
| - operator: Add contains(), invert(), __invert__() as aliases for | |
| __contains__(), inv(), and __inv__() respectively. | |
| - os: Add support for popen2() and popen3() on all platforms where | |
| fork() exists. (popen4() is still in the works.) | |
| - os: (Windows only:) Add startfile() function that acts like double- | |
| clicking on a file in Explorer (or passing the file name to the | |
| DOS "start" command). | |
| - os.path: (Windows, DOS:) Treat trailing colon correctly in | |
| os.path.join. os.path.join("a:", "b") yields "a:b". | |
| - pickle: Now raises ValueError when an invalid pickle that contains | |
| a non-string repr where a string repr was expected. This behavior | |
| matches cPickle. | |
| - posixfile: Remove broken __del__() method. | |
| - py_compile: support CR+LF line terminators in source file. | |
| - readline: Does not immediately exit when ^C is hit when readline and | |
| threads are configured. Adds definition of rl_library_version. (The | |
| latter addition requires GNU readline 2.2 or later.) | |
| - rfc822: Domain literals returned by AddrlistClass method | |
| getdomainliteral() are now properly wrapped in brackets. | |
| - site: sys.setdefaultencoding() should only be called in case the | |
| standard default encoding ("ascii") is changed. This saves quite a | |
| few cycles during startup since the first call to | |
| setdefaultencoding() will initialize the codec registry and the | |
| encodings package. | |
| - socket: Support for size hint in readlines() method of object returned | |
| by makefile(). | |
| - sre: Added experimental expand() method to match objects. Does not | |
| use buffer interface on Unicode strings. Does not hang if group id | |
| is followed by whitespace. | |
| - StringIO: Size hint in readlines() is now supported as documented. | |
| - struct: Check ranges for bytes and shorts. | |
| - urllib: Improved handling of win32 proxy settings. Fixed quote and | |
| quote_plus functions so that the always encode a comma. | |
| - Tkinter: Image objects are now guaranteed to have unique ids. Set | |
| event.delta to zero if Tk version doesn't support mousewheel. | |
| Removed some debugging prints. | |
| - UserList: now implements __contains__(). | |
| - webbrowser: On Windows, use os.startfile() instead of os.popen(), | |
| which works around a bug in Norton AntiVirus 2000 that leads directly | |
| to a Blue Screen freeze. | |
| - xml: New version detection code allows PyXML to override standard | |
| XML package if PyXML version is greater than 0.6.1. | |
| - xml.dom: DOM level 1 support for basic XML. Includes xml.dom.minidom | |
| (conventional DOM), and xml.dom.pulldom, which allows building the DOM | |
| tree only for nodes which are sufficiently interesting to a specific | |
| application. Does not provide the HTML-specific extensions. Still | |
| undocumented. | |
| - xml.sax: SAX 2 support for Python, including all the handler | |
| interfaces needed to process XML 1.0 compliant XML. Some | |
| documentation is already available. | |
| - pyexpat: Renamed to xml.parsers.expat since this is part of the new, | |
| packagized XML support. | |
| C API | |
| - Add three new convenience functions for module initialization -- | |
| PyModule_AddObject(), PyModule_AddIntConstant(), and | |
| PyModule_AddStringConstant(). | |
| - Cleaned up definition of NULL in C source code; all definitions were | |
| removed and add #error to Python.h if NULL isn't defined after | |
| #include of stdio.h. | |
| - Py_PROTO() macros that were removed in 2.0b1 have been restored for | |
| backwards compatibility (at the source level) with old extensions. | |
| - A wrapper API was added for signal() and sigaction(). Instead of | |
| either function, always use PyOS_getsig() to get a signal handler | |
| and PyOS_setsig() to set one. A new convenience typedef | |
| PyOS_sighandler_t is defined for the type of signal handlers. | |
| - Add PyString_AsStringAndSize() function that provides access to the | |
| internal data buffer and size of a string object -- or the default | |
| encoded version of a Unicode object. | |
| - PyString_Size() and PyString_AsString() accept Unicode objects. | |
| - The standard header <limits.h> is now included by Python.h (if it | |
| exists). INT_MAX and LONG_MAX will always be defined, even if | |
| <limits.h> is not available. | |
| - PyFloat_FromString takes a second argument, pend, that was | |
| effectively useless. It is now officially useless but preserved for | |
| backwards compatibility. If the pend argument is not NULL, *pend is | |
| set to NULL. | |
| - PyObject_GetAttr() and PyObject_SetAttr() now accept Unicode objects | |
| for the attribute name. See note on getattr() above. | |
| - A few bug fixes to argument processing for Unicode. | |
| PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() now accepts "es#" and "es". | |
| PyArg_Parse() special cases "s#" for Unicode objects; it returns a | |
| pointer to the default encoded string data instead of to the raw | |
| UTF-16. | |
| - Py_BuildValue accepts B format (for bgen-generated code). | |
| Internals | |
| - On Unix, fix code for finding Python installation directory so that | |
| it works when argv[0] is a relative path. | |
| - Added a true unicode_internal_encode() function and fixed the | |
| unicode_internal_decode function() to support Unicode objects directly | |
| rather than by generating a copy of the object. | |
| - Several of the internal Unicode tables are much smaller now, and | |
| the source code should be much friendlier to weaker compilers. | |
| - In the garbage collector: Fixed bug in collection of tuples. Fixed | |
| bug that caused some instances to be removed from the container set | |
| while they were still live. Fixed parsing in gc.set_debug() for | |
| platforms where sizeof(long) > sizeof(int). | |
| - Fixed refcount problem in instance deallocation that only occurred | |
| when Py_REF_DEBUG was defined and Py_TRACE_REFS was not. | |
| - On Windows, getpythonregpath is now protected against null data in | |
| registry key. | |
| - On Unix, create .pyc/.pyo files with O_EXCL flag to avoid a race | |
| condition. | |
| Build and platform-specific issues | |
| - Better support of GNU Pth via --with-pth configure option. | |
| - Python/C API now properly exposed to dynamically-loaded extension | |
| modules on Reliant UNIX. | |
| - Changes for the benefit of SunOS 4.1.4 (really!). mmapmodule.c: | |
| Don't define MS_SYNC to be zero when it is undefined. Added missing | |
| prototypes in posixmodule.c. | |
| - Improved support for HP-UX build. Threads should now be correctly | |
| configured (on HP-UX 10.20 and 11.00). | |
| - Fix largefile support on older NetBSD systems and OpenBSD by adding | |
| define for TELL64. | |
| Tools and other miscellany | |
| - ftpmirror: Call to main() is wrapped in if __name__ == "__main__". | |
| - freeze: The modulefinder now works with 2.0 opcodes. | |
| - IDLE: | |
| Move hackery of sys.argv until after the Tk instance has been | |
| created, which allows the application-specific Tkinter | |
| initialization to be executed if present; also pass an explicit | |
| className parameter to the Tk() constructor. | |
| What's new in 2.0 beta 1? | |
| ========================= | |
| Source Incompatibilities | |
| ------------------------ | |
| None. Note that 1.6 introduced several incompatibilities with 1.5.2, | |
| such as single-argument append(), connect() and bind(), and changes to | |
| str(long) and repr(float). | |
| Binary Incompatibilities | |
| ------------------------ | |
| - Third party extensions built for Python 1.5.x or 1.6 cannot be used | |
| with Python 2.0; these extensions will have to be rebuilt for Python | |
| 2.0. | |
| - On Windows, attempting to import a third party extension built for | |
| Python 1.5.x or 1.6 results in an immediate crash; there's not much we | |
| can do about this. Check your PYTHONPATH environment variable! | |
| - Python bytecode files (*.pyc and *.pyo) are not compatible between | |
| releases. | |
| Overview of Changes Since 1.6 | |
| ----------------------------- | |
| There are many new modules (including brand new XML support through | |
| the xml package, and i18n support through the gettext module); a list | |
| of all new modules is included below. Lots of bugs have been fixed. | |
| The process for making major new changes to the language has changed | |
| since Python 1.6. Enhancements must now be documented by a Python | |
| Enhancement Proposal (PEP) before they can be accepted. | |
| There are several important syntax enhancements, described in more | |
| detail below: | |
| - Augmented assignment, e.g. x += 1 | |
| - List comprehensions, e.g. [x**2 for x in range(10)] | |
| - Extended import statement, e.g. import Module as Name | |
| - Extended print statement, e.g. print >> file, "Hello" | |
| Other important changes: | |
| - Optional collection of cyclical garbage | |
| Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP) | |
| --------------------------------- | |
| PEP stands for Python Enhancement Proposal. A PEP is a design | |
| document providing information to the Python community, or describing | |
| a new feature for Python. The PEP should provide a concise technical | |
| specification of the feature and a rationale for the feature. | |
| We intend PEPs to be the primary mechanisms for proposing new | |
| features, for collecting community input on an issue, and for | |
| documenting the design decisions that have gone into Python. The PEP | |
| author is responsible for building consensus within the community and | |
| documenting dissenting opinions. | |
| The PEPs are available at http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/. | |
| Augmented Assignment | |
| -------------------- | |
| This must have been the most-requested feature of the past years! | |
| Eleven new assignment operators were added: | |
| += -= *= /= %= **= <<= >>= &= ^= |= | |
| For example, | |
| A += B | |
| is similar to | |
| A = A + B | |
| except that A is evaluated only once (relevant when A is something | |
| like dict[index].attr). | |
| However, if A is a mutable object, A may be modified in place. Thus, | |
| if A is a number or a string, A += B has the same effect as A = A+B | |
| (except A is only evaluated once); but if a is a list, A += B has the | |
| same effect as A.extend(B)! | |
| Classes and built-in object types can override the new operators in | |
| order to implement the in-place behavior; the not-in-place behavior is | |
| used automatically as a fallback when an object doesn't implement the | |
| in-place behavior. For classes, the method name is derived from the | |
| method name for the corresponding not-in-place operator by inserting | |
| an 'i' in front of the name, e.g. __iadd__ implements in-place | |
| __add__. | |
| Augmented assignment was implemented by Thomas Wouters. | |
| List Comprehensions | |
| ------------------- | |
| This is a flexible new notation for lists whose elements are computed | |
| from another list (or lists). The simplest form is: | |
| [<expression> for <variable> in <sequence>] | |
| For example, [i**2 for i in range(4)] yields the list [0, 1, 4, 9]. | |
| This is more efficient than a for loop with a list.append() call. | |
| You can also add a condition: | |
| [<expression> for <variable> in <sequence> if <condition>] | |
| For example, [w for w in words if w == w.lower()] would yield the list | |
| of words that contain no uppercase characters. This is more efficient | |
| than a for loop with an if statement and a list.append() call. | |
| You can also have nested for loops and more than one 'if' clause. For | |
| example, here's a function that flattens a sequence of sequences:: | |
| def flatten(seq): | |
| return [x for subseq in seq for x in subseq] | |
| flatten([[0], [1,2,3], [4,5], [6,7,8,9], []]) | |
| This prints | |
| [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] | |
| List comprehensions originated as a patch set from Greg Ewing; Skip | |
| Montanaro and Thomas Wouters also contributed. Described by PEP 202. | |
| Extended Import Statement | |
| ------------------------- | |
| Many people have asked for a way to import a module under a different | |
| name. This can be accomplished like this: | |
| import foo | |
| bar = foo | |
| del foo | |
| but this common idiom gets old quickly. A simple extension of the | |
| import statement now allows this to be written as follows: | |
| import foo as bar | |
| There's also a variant for 'from ... import': | |
| from foo import bar as spam | |
| This also works with packages; e.g. you can write this: | |
| import test.regrtest as regrtest | |
| Note that 'as' is not a new keyword -- it is recognized only in this | |
| context (this is only possible because the syntax for the import | |
| statement doesn't involve expressions). | |
| Implemented by Thomas Wouters. Described by PEP 221. | |
| Extended Print Statement | |
| ------------------------ | |
| Easily the most controversial new feature, this extension to the print | |
| statement adds an option to make the output go to a different file | |
| than the default sys.stdout. | |
| For example, to write an error message to sys.stderr, you can now | |
| write: | |
| print >> sys.stderr, "Error: bad dog!" | |
| As a special feature, if the expression used to indicate the file | |
| evaluates to None, the current value of sys.stdout is used. Thus: | |
| print >> None, "Hello world" | |
| is equivalent to | |
| print "Hello world" | |
| Design and implementation by Barry Warsaw. Described by PEP 214. | |
| Optional Collection of Cyclical Garbage | |
| --------------------------------------- | |
| Python is now equipped with a garbage collector that can hunt down | |
| cyclical references between Python objects. It's no replacement for | |
| reference counting; in fact, it depends on the reference counts being | |
| correct, and decides that a set of objects belong to a cycle if all | |
| their reference counts can be accounted for from their references to | |
| each other. This devious scheme was first proposed by Eric Tiedemann, | |
| and brought to implementation by Neil Schemenauer. | |
| There's a module "gc" that lets you control some parameters of the | |
| garbage collection. There's also an option to the configure script | |
| that lets you enable or disable the garbage collection. In 2.0b1, | |
| it's on by default, so that we (hopefully) can collect decent user | |
| experience with this new feature. There are some questions about its | |
| performance. If it proves to be too much of a problem, we'll turn it | |
| off by default in the final 2.0 release. | |
| Smaller Changes | |
| --------------- | |
| A new function zip() was added. zip(seq1, seq2, ...) is equivalent to | |
| map(None, seq1, seq2, ...) when the sequences have the same length; | |
| i.e. zip([1,2,3], [10,20,30]) returns [(1,10), (2,20), (3,30)]. When | |
| the lists are not all the same length, the shortest list wins: | |
| zip([1,2,3], [10,20]) returns [(1,10), (2,20)]. See PEP 201. | |
| sys.version_info is a tuple (major, minor, micro, level, serial). | |
| Dictionaries have an odd new method, setdefault(key, default). | |
| dict.setdefault(key, default) returns dict[key] if it exists; if not, | |
| it sets dict[key] to default and returns that value. Thus: | |
| dict.setdefault(key, []).append(item) | |
| does the same work as this common idiom: | |
| if not dict.has_key(key): | |
| dict[key] = [] | |
| dict[key].append(item) | |
| There are two new variants of SyntaxError that are raised for | |
| indentation-related errors: IndentationError and TabError. | |
| Changed \x to consume exactly two hex digits; see PEP 223. Added \U | |
| escape that consumes exactly eight hex digits. | |
| The limits on the size of expressions and file in Python source code | |
| have been raised from 2**16 to 2**32. Previous versions of Python | |
| were limited because the maximum argument size the Python VM accepted | |
| was 2**16. This limited the size of object constructor expressions, | |
| e.g. [1,2,3] or {'a':1, 'b':2}, and the size of source files. This | |
| limit was raised thanks to a patch by Charles Waldman that effectively | |
| fixes the problem. It is now much more likely that you will be | |
| limited by available memory than by an arbitrary limit in Python. | |
| The interpreter's maximum recursion depth can be modified by Python | |
| programs using sys.getrecursionlimit and sys.setrecursionlimit. This | |
| limit is the maximum number of recursive calls that can be made by | |
| Python code. The limit exists to prevent infinite recursion from | |
| overflowing the C stack and causing a core dump. The default value is | |
| 1000. The maximum safe value for a particular platform can be found | |
| by running Tools/scripts/find_recursionlimit.py. | |
| New Modules and Packages | |
| ------------------------ | |
| atexit - for registering functions to be called when Python exits. | |
| imputil - Greg Stein's alternative API for writing custom import | |
| hooks. | |
| pyexpat - an interface to the Expat XML parser, contributed by Paul | |
| Prescod. | |
| xml - a new package with XML support code organized (so far) in three | |
| subpackages: xml.dom, xml.sax, and xml.parsers. Describing these | |
| would fill a volume. There's a special feature whereby a | |
| user-installed package named _xmlplus overrides the standard | |
| xmlpackage; this is intended to give the XML SIG a hook to distribute | |
| backwards-compatible updates to the standard xml package. | |
| webbrowser - a platform-independent API to launch a web browser. | |
| Changed Modules | |
| --------------- | |
| array -- new methods for array objects: count, extend, index, pop, and | |
| remove | |
| binascii -- new functions b2a_hex and a2b_hex that convert between | |
| binary data and its hex representation | |
| calendar -- Many new functions that support features including control | |
| over which day of the week is the first day, returning strings instead | |
| of printing them. Also new symbolic constants for days of week, | |
| e.g. MONDAY, ..., SUNDAY. | |
| cgi -- FieldStorage objects have a getvalue method that works like a | |
| dictionary's get method and returns the value attribute of the object. | |
| ConfigParser -- The parser object has new methods has_option, | |
| remove_section, remove_option, set, and write. They allow the module | |
| to be used for writing config files as well as reading them. | |
| ftplib -- ntransfercmd(), transfercmd(), and retrbinary() all now | |
| optionally support the RFC 959 REST command. | |
| gzip -- readline and readlines now accept optional size arguments | |
| httplib -- New interfaces and support for HTTP/1.1 by Greg Stein. See | |
| the module doc strings for details. | |
| locale -- implement getdefaultlocale for Win32 and Macintosh | |
| marshal -- no longer dumps core when marshaling deeply nested or | |
| recursive data structures | |
| os -- new functions isatty, seteuid, setegid, setreuid, setregid | |
| os/popen2 -- popen2/popen3/popen4 support under Windows. popen2/popen3 | |
| support under Unix. | |
| os/pty -- support for openpty and forkpty | |
| os.path -- fix semantics of os.path.commonprefix | |
| smtplib -- support for sending very long messages | |
| socket -- new function getfqdn() | |
| readline -- new functions to read, write and truncate history files. | |
| The readline section of the library reference manual contains an | |
| example. | |
| select -- add interface to poll system call | |
| shutil -- new copyfileobj function | |
| SimpleHTTPServer, CGIHTTPServer -- Fix problems with buffering in the | |
| HTTP server. | |
| Tkinter -- optimization of function flatten | |
| urllib -- scans environment variables for proxy configuration, | |
| e.g. http_proxy. | |
| whichdb -- recognizes dumbdbm format | |
| Obsolete Modules | |
| ---------------- | |
| None. However note that 1.6 made a whole slew of modules obsolete: | |
| stdwin, soundex, cml, cmpcache, dircache, dump, find, grep, packmail, | |
| poly, zmod, strop, util, whatsound. | |
| Changed, New, Obsolete Tools | |
| ---------------------------- | |
| None. | |
| C-level Changes | |
| --------------- | |
| Several cleanup jobs were carried out throughout the source code. | |
| All C code was converted to ANSI C; we got rid of all uses of the | |
| Py_PROTO() macro, which makes the header files a lot more readable. | |
| Most of the portability hacks were moved to a new header file, | |
| pyport.h; several other new header files were added and some old | |
| header files were removed, in an attempt to create a more rational set | |
| of header files. (Few of these ever need to be included explicitly; | |
| they are all included by Python.h.) | |
| Trent Mick ensured portability to 64-bit platforms, under both Linux | |
| and Win64, especially for the new Intel Itanium processor. Mick also | |
| added large file support for Linux64 and Win64. | |
| The C APIs to return an object's size have been update to consistently | |
| use the form PyXXX_Size, e.g. PySequence_Size and PyDict_Size. In | |
| previous versions, the abstract interfaces used PyXXX_Length and the | |
| concrete interfaces used PyXXX_Size. The old names, | |
| e.g. PyObject_Length, are still available for backwards compatibility | |
| at the API level, but are deprecated. | |
| The PyOS_CheckStack function has been implemented on Windows by | |
| Fredrik Lundh. It prevents Python from failing with a stack overflow | |
| on Windows. | |
| The GC changes resulted in creation of two new slots on object, | |
| tp_traverse and tp_clear. The augmented assignment changes result in | |
| the creation of a new slot for each in-place operator. | |
| The GC API creates new requirements for container types implemented in | |
| C extension modules. See Include/objimpl.h for details. | |
| PyErr_Format has been updated to automatically calculate the size of | |
| the buffer needed to hold the formatted result string. This change | |
| prevents crashes caused by programmer error. | |
| New C API calls: PyObject_AsFileDescriptor, PyErr_WriteUnraisable. | |
| PyRun_AnyFileEx, PyRun_SimpleFileEx, PyRun_FileEx -- New functions | |
| that are the same as their non-Ex counterparts except they take an | |
| extra flag argument that tells them to close the file when done. | |
| XXX There were other API changes that should be fleshed out here. | |
| Windows Changes | |
| --------------- | |
| New popen2/popen3/peopen4 in os module (see Changed Modules above). | |
| os.popen is much more usable on Windows 95 and 98. See Microsoft | |
| Knowledge Base article Q150956. The Win9x workaround described there | |
| is implemented by the new w9xpopen.exe helper in the root of your | |
| Python installation. Note that Python uses this internally; it is not | |
| a standalone program. | |
| Administrator privileges are no longer required to install Python | |
| on Windows NT or Windows 2000. If you have administrator privileges, | |
| Python's registry info will be written under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. | |
| Otherwise the installer backs off to writing Python's registry info | |
| under HKEY_CURRENT_USER. The latter is sufficient for all "normal" | |
| uses of Python, but will prevent some advanced uses from working | |
| (for example, running a Python script as an NT service, or possibly | |
| from CGI). | |
| [This was new in 1.6] The installer no longer runs a separate Tcl/Tk | |
| installer; instead, it installs the needed Tcl/Tk files directly in the | |
| Python directory. If you already have a Tcl/Tk installation, this | |
| wastes some disk space (about 4 Megs) but avoids problems with | |
| conflicting Tcl/Tk installations, and makes it much easier for Python | |
| to ensure that Tcl/Tk can find all its files. | |
| [This was new in 1.6] The Windows installer now installs by default in | |
| \Python20\ on the default volume, instead of \Program Files\Python-2.0\. | |
| Updates to the changes between 1.5.2 and 1.6 | |
| -------------------------------------------- | |
| The 1.6 NEWS file can't be changed after the release is done, so here | |
| is some late-breaking news: | |
| New APIs in locale.py: normalize(), getdefaultlocale(), resetlocale(), | |
| and changes to getlocale() and setlocale(). | |
| The new module is now enabled per default. | |
| It is not true that the encodings codecs cannot be used for normal | |
| strings: the string.encode() (which is also present on 8-bit strings | |
| !) allows using them for 8-bit strings too, e.g. to convert files from | |
| cp1252 (Windows) to latin-1 or vice-versa. | |
| Japanese codecs are available from Tamito KAJIYAMA: | |
| http://pseudo.grad.sccs.chukyo-u.ac.jp/~kajiyama/python/ | |
| ====================================================================== | |
| ======================================= | |
| ==> Release 1.6 (September 5, 2000) <== | |
| ======================================= | |
| What's new in release 1.6? | |
| ========================== | |
| Below is a list of all relevant changes since release 1.5.2. | |
| Source Incompatibilities | |
| ------------------------ | |
| Several small incompatible library changes may trip you up: | |
| - The append() method for lists can no longer be invoked with more | |
| than one argument. This used to append a single tuple made out of | |
| all arguments, but was undocumented. To append a tuple, use | |
| e.g. l.append((a, b, c)). | |
| - The connect(), connect_ex() and bind() methods for sockets require | |
| exactly one argument. Previously, you could call s.connect(host, | |
| port), but this was undocumented. You must now write | |
| s.connect((host, port)). | |
| - The str() and repr() functions are now different more often. For | |
| long integers, str() no longer appends a 'L'. Thus, str(1L) == '1', | |
| which used to be '1L'; repr(1L) is unchanged and still returns '1L'. | |
| For floats, repr() now gives 17 digits of precision, to ensure no | |
| precision is lost (on all current hardware). | |
| - The -X option is gone. Built-in exceptions are now always | |
| classes. Many more library modules also have been converted to | |
| class-based exceptions. | |
| Binary Incompatibilities | |
| ------------------------ | |
| - Third party extensions built for Python 1.5.x cannot be used with | |
| Python 1.6; these extensions will have to be rebuilt for Python 1.6. | |
| - On Windows, attempting to import a third party extension built for | |
| Python 1.5.x results in an immediate crash; there's not much we can do | |
| about this. Check your PYTHONPATH environment variable! | |
| Overview of Changes since 1.5.2 | |
| ------------------------------- | |
| For this overview, I have borrowed from the document "What's New in | |
| Python 2.0" by Andrew Kuchling and Moshe Zadka: | |
| http://www.amk.ca/python/2.0/ . | |
| There are lots of new modules and lots of bugs have been fixed. A | |
| list of all new modules is included below. | |
| Probably the most pervasive change is the addition of Unicode support. | |
| We've added a new fundamental datatype, the Unicode string, a new | |
| built-in function unicode(), a numerous C APIs to deal with Unicode | |
| and encodings. See the file Misc/unicode.txt for details, or | |
| http://starship.python.net/crew/lemburg/unicode-proposal.txt. | |
| Two other big changes, related to the Unicode support, are the | |
| addition of string methods and (yet another) new regular expression | |
| engine. | |
| - String methods mean that you can now say s.lower() etc. instead of | |
| importing the string module and saying string.lower(s) etc. One | |
| peculiarity is that the equivalent of string.join(sequence, | |
| delimiter) is delimiter.join(sequence). Use " ".join(sequence) for | |
| the effect of string.join(sequence); to make this more readable, try | |
| space=" " first. Note that the maxsplit argument defaults in | |
| split() and replace() have changed from 0 to -1. | |
| - The new regular expression engine, SRE by Fredrik Lundh, is fully | |
| backwards compatible with the old engine, and is in fact invoked | |
| using the same interface (the "re" module). You can explicitly | |
| invoke the old engine by import pre, or the SRE engine by importing | |
| sre. SRE is faster than pre, and supports Unicode (which was the | |
| main reason to put effort in yet another new regular expression | |
| engine -- this is at least the fourth!). | |
| Other Changes | |
| ------------- | |
| Other changes that won't break code but are nice to know about: | |
| Deleting objects is now safe even for deeply nested data structures. | |
| Long/int unifications: long integers can be used in seek() calls, as | |
| slice indexes. | |
| String formatting (s % args) has a new formatting option, '%r', which | |
| acts like '%s' but inserts repr(arg) instead of str(arg). (Not yet in | |
| alpha 1.) | |
| Greg Ward's "distutils" package is included: this will make | |
| installing, building and distributing third party packages much | |
| simpler. | |
| There's now special syntax that you can use instead of the apply() | |
| function. f(*args, **kwds) is equivalent to apply(f, args, kwds). | |
| You can also use variations f(a1, a2, *args, **kwds) and you can leave | |
| one or the other out: f(*args), f(**kwds). | |
| The built-ins int() and long() take an optional second argument to | |
| indicate the conversion base -- of course only if the first argument | |
| is a string. This makes string.atoi() and string.atol() obsolete. | |
| (string.atof() was already obsolete). | |
| When a local variable is known to the compiler but undefined when | |
| used, a new exception UnboundLocalError is raised. This is a class | |
| derived from NameError so code catching NameError should still work. | |
| The purpose is to provide better diagnostics in the following example: | |
| x = 1 | |
| def f(): | |
| print x | |
| x = x+1 | |
| This used to raise a NameError on the print statement, which confused | |
| even experienced Python programmers (especially if there are several | |
| hundreds of lines of code between the reference and the assignment to | |
| x :-). | |
| You can now override the 'in' operator by defining a __contains__ | |
| method. Note that it has its arguments backwards: x in a causes | |
| a.__contains__(x) to be called. That's why the name isn't __in__. | |
| The exception AttributeError will have a more friendly error message, | |
| e.g.: <code>'Spam' instance has no attribute 'eggs'</code>. This may | |
| <b>break code</b> that expects the message to be exactly the attribute | |
| name. | |
| New Modules in 1.6 | |
| ------------------ | |
| UserString - base class for deriving from the string type. | |
| distutils - tools for distributing Python modules. | |
| robotparser - parse a robots.txt file, for writing web spiders. | |
| (Moved from Tools/webchecker/.) | |
| linuxaudiodev - audio for Linux. | |
| mmap - treat a file as a memory buffer. (Windows and Unix.) | |
| sre - regular expressions (fast, supports unicode). Currently, this | |
| code is very rough. Eventually, the re module will be reimplemented | |
| using sre (without changes to the re API). | |
| filecmp - supersedes the old cmp.py and dircmp.py modules. | |
| tabnanny - check Python sources for tab-width dependance. (Moved from | |
| Tools/scripts/.) | |
| urllib2 - new and improved but incompatible version of urllib (still | |
| experimental). | |
| zipfile - read and write zip archives. | |
| codecs - support for Unicode encoders/decoders. | |
| unicodedata - provides access to the Unicode 3.0 database. | |
| _winreg - Windows registry access. | |
| encodings - package which provides a large set of standard codecs -- | |
| currently only for the new Unicode support. It has a drop-in extension | |
| mechanism which allows you to add new codecs by simply copying them | |
| into the encodings package directory. Asian codec support will | |
| probably be made available as separate distribution package built upon | |
| this technique and the new distutils package. | |
| Changed Modules | |
| --------------- | |
| readline, ConfigParser, cgi, calendar, posix, readline, xmllib, aifc, | |
| chunk, wave, random, shelve, nntplib - minor enhancements. | |
| socket, httplib, urllib - optional OpenSSL support (Unix only). | |
| _tkinter - support for 8.0 up to 8.3. Support for versions older than | |
| 8.0 has been dropped. | |
| string - most of this module is deprecated now that strings have | |
| methods. This no longer uses the built-in strop module, but takes | |
| advantage of the new string methods to provide transparent support for | |
| both Unicode and ordinary strings. | |
| Changes on Windows | |
| ------------------ | |
| The installer no longer runs a separate Tcl/Tk installer; instead, it | |
| installs the needed Tcl/Tk files directly in the Python directory. If | |
| you already have a Tcl/Tk installation, this wastes some disk space | |
| (about 4 Megs) but avoids problems with conflincting Tcl/Tk | |
| installations, and makes it much easier for Python to ensure that | |
| Tcl/Tk can find all its files. Note: the alpha installers don't | |
| include the documentation. | |
| The Windows installer now installs by default in \Python16\ on the | |
| default volume, instead of \Program Files\Python-1.6\. | |
| Changed Tools | |
| ------------- | |
| IDLE - complete overhaul. See the <a href="../idle/">IDLE home | |
| page</a> for more information. (Python 1.6 alpha 1 will come with | |
| IDLE 0.6.) | |
| Tools/i18n/pygettext.py - Python equivalent of xgettext(1). A message | |
| text extraction tool used for internationalizing applications written | |
| in Python. | |
| Obsolete Modules | |
| ---------------- | |
| stdwin and everything that uses it. (Get Python 1.5.2 if you need | |
| it. :-) | |
| soundex. (Skip Montanaro has a version in Python but it won't be | |
| included in the Python release.) | |
| cmp, cmpcache, dircmp. (Replaced by filecmp.) | |
| dump. (Use pickle.) | |
| find. (Easily coded using os.walk().) | |
| grep. (Not very useful as a library module.) | |
| packmail. (No longer has any use.) | |
| poly, zmod. (These were poor examples at best.) | |
| strop. (No longer needed by the string module.) | |
| util. (This functionality was long ago built in elsewhere). | |
| whatsound. (Use sndhdr.) | |
| Detailed Changes from 1.6b1 to 1.6 | |
| ---------------------------------- | |
| - Slight changes to the CNRI license. A copyright notice has been | |
| added; the requirement to indicate the nature of modifications now | |
| applies when making a derivative work available "to others" instead of | |
| just "to the public"; the version and date are updated. The new | |
| license has a new handle. | |
| - Added the Tools/compiler package. This is a project led by Jeremy | |
| Hylton to write the Python bytecode generator in Python. | |
| - The function math.rint() is removed. | |
| - In Python.h, "#define _GNU_SOURCE 1" was added. | |
| - Version 0.9.1 of Greg Ward's distutils is included (instead of | |
| version 0.9). | |
| - A new version of SRE is included. It is more stable, and more | |
| compatible with the old RE module. Non-matching ranges are indicated | |
| by -1, not None. (The documentation said None, but the PRE | |
| implementation used -1; changing to None would break existing code.) | |
| - The winreg module has been renamed to _winreg. (There are plans for | |
| a higher-level API called winreg, but this has not yet materialized in | |
| a form that is acceptable to the experts.) | |
| - The _locale module is enabled by default. | |
| - Fixed the configuration line for the _curses module. | |
| - A few crashes have been fixed, notably <file>.writelines() with a | |
| list containing non-string objects would crash, and there were | |
| situations where a lost SyntaxError could dump core. | |
| - The <list>.extend() method now accepts an arbitrary sequence | |
| argument. | |
| - If __str__() or __repr__() returns a Unicode object, this is | |
| converted to an 8-bit string. | |
| - Unicode string comparisons is no longer aware of UTF-16 | |
| encoding peculiarities; it's a straight 16-bit compare. | |
| - The Windows installer now installs the LICENSE file and no longer | |
| registers the Python DLL version in the registry (this is no longer | |
| needed). It now uses Tcl/Tk 8.3.2. | |
| - A few portability problems have been fixed, in particular a | |
| compilation error involving socklen_t. | |
| - The PC configuration is slightly friendlier to non-Microsoft | |
| compilers. | |
| ====================================================================== | |
| ====================================== | |
| ==> Release 1.5.2 (April 13, 1999) <== | |
| ====================================== | |
| From 1.5.2c1 to 1.5.2 (final) | |
| ============================= | |
| Tue Apr 13 15:44:49 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * PCbuild/python15.wse: Bump version to 1.5.2 (final) | |
| * PCbuild/python15.dsp: Added shamodule.c | |
| * PC/config.c: Added sha module! | |
| * README, Include/patchlevel.h: Prepare for final release. | |
| * Misc/ACKS: | |
| More (Cameron Laird is honorary; the others are 1.5.2c1 testers). | |
| * Python/thread_solaris.h: | |
| While I can't really test this thoroughly, Pat Knight and the Solaris | |
| man pages suggest that the proper thing to do is to add THR_NEW_LWP to | |
| the flags on thr_create(), and that there really isn't a downside, so | |
| I'll do that. | |
| * Misc/ACKS: | |
| Bunch of new names who helped iron out the last wrinkles of 1.5.2. | |
| * PC/python_nt.rc: | |
| Bump the myusterious M$ version number from 1,5,2,1 to 1,5,2,3. | |
| (I can't even display this on NT, maybe Win/98 can?) | |
| * Lib/pstats.py: | |
| Fix mysterious references to jprofile that were in the source since | |
| its creation. I'm assuming these were once valid references to "Jim | |
| Roskind's profile"... | |
| * Lib/Attic/threading_api.py: | |
| Removed; since long subsumed in Doc/lib/libthreading.tex | |
| * Modules/socketmodule.c: | |
| Put back __osf__ support for gethostbyname_r(); the real bug was that | |
| it was being used even without threads. This of course might be an | |
| all-platform problem so now we only use the _r variant when we are | |
| using threads. | |
| Mon Apr 12 22:51:20 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Modules/cPickle.c: | |
| Fix accidentally reversed NULL test in load_mark(). Suggested by | |
| Tamito Kajiyama. (This caused a bug only on platforms where malloc(0) | |
| returns NULL.) | |
| * README: | |
| Add note about popen2 problem on Linux noticed by Pablo Bleyer. | |
| * README: Add note about -D_REENTRANT for HP-UX 10.20. | |
| * Modules/Makefile.pre.in: 'clean' target should remove hassignal. | |
| * PC/Attic/vc40.mak, PC/readme.txt: | |
| Remove all VC++ info (except VC 1.5) from readme.txt; | |
| remove the VC++ 4.0 project file; remove the unused _tkinter extern defs. | |
| * README: Clarify PC build instructions (point to PCbuild). | |
| * Modules/zlibmodule.c: Cast added by Jack Jansen (for Mac port). | |
| * Lib/plat-sunos5/CDIO.py, Lib/plat-linux2/CDROM.py: | |
| Forgot to add this file. CDROM device parameters. | |
| * Lib/gzip.py: Two different changes. | |
| 1. Jack Jansen reports that on the Mac, the time may be negative, and | |
| solves this by adding a write32u() function that writes an unsigned | |
| long. | |
| 2. On 64-bit platforms the CRC comparison fails; I've fixed this by | |
| casting both values to be compared to "unsigned long" i.e. modulo | |
| 0x100000000L. | |
| Sat Apr 10 18:42:02 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * PC/Attic/_tkinter.def: No longer needed. | |
| * Misc/ACKS: Correct missed character in Andrew Dalke's name. | |
| * README: Add DEC Ultrix notes (from Donn Cave's email). | |
| * configure: The usual | |
| * configure.in: | |
| Quote a bunch of shell variables used in test, related to long-long. | |
| * Objects/fileobject.c, Modules/shamodule.c, Modules/regexpr.c: | |
| casts for picky compilers. | |
| * Modules/socketmodule.c: | |
| 3-arg gethostbyname_r doesn't really work on OSF/1. | |
| * PC/vc15_w31/_.c, PC/vc15_lib/_.c, Tools/pynche/__init__.py: | |
| Avoid totally empty files. | |
| Fri Apr 9 14:56:35 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Tools/scripts/fixps.py: Use re instead of regex. | |
| Don't rewrite the file in place. | |
| (Reported by Andy Dustman.) | |
| * Lib/netrc.py, Lib/shlex.py: Get rid of #! line | |
| Thu Apr 8 23:13:37 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * PCbuild/python15.wse: Use the Tcl 8.0.5 installer. | |
| Add a variable %_TCL_% that makes it easier to switch to a different version. | |
| ====================================================================== | |
| From 1.5.2b2 to 1.5.2c1 | |
| ======================= | |
| Thu Apr 8 23:13:37 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * PCbuild/python15.wse: | |
| Release 1.5.2c1. Add IDLE and Uninstall to program group. | |
| Don't distribute zlib.dll. Tweak some comments. | |
| * PCbuild/zlib.dsp: Now using static zlib 1.1.3 | |
| * Lib/dos-8x3/userdict.py, Lib/dos-8x3/userlist.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_zli.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_use.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_pop.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_pic.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_ntp.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_gzi.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_fcn.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_cpi.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_bsd.py, Lib/dos-8x3/posixfil.py, Lib/dos-8x3/mimetype.py, Lib/dos-8x3/nturl2pa.py, Lib/dos-8x3/compilea.py, Lib/dos-8x3/exceptio.py, Lib/dos-8x3/basehttp.py: | |
| The usual | |
| * Include/patchlevel.h: Release 1.5.2c1 | |
| * README: Release 1.5.2c1. | |
| * Misc/NEWS: News for the 1.5.2c1 release. | |
| * Lib/test/test_strftime.py: | |
| On Windows, we suddenly find, strftime() may return "" for an | |
| unsupported format string. (I guess this is because the logic for | |
| deciding whether to reallocate the buffer or not has been improved.) | |
| This caused the test code to crash on result[0]. Fix this by assuming | |
| an empty result also means the format is not supported. | |
| * Demo/tkinter/matt/window-creation-w-location.py: | |
| This demo imported some private code from Matt. Make it cripple along. | |
| * Lib/lib-tk/Tkinter.py: | |
| Delete an accidentally checked-in feature that actually broke more | |
| than was worth it: when deleting a canvas item, it would try to | |
| automatically delete the bindings for that item. Since there's | |
| nothing that says you can't reuse the tag and still have the bindings, | |
| this is not correct. Also, it broke at least one demo | |
| (Demo/tkinter/matt/rubber-band-box-demo-1.py). | |
| * Python/thread_wince.h: Win/CE thread support by Mark Hammond. | |
| Wed Apr 7 20:23:17 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Modules/zlibmodule.c: | |
| Patch by Andrew Kuchling to unflush() (flush() for deflating). | |
| Without this, if inflate() returned Z_BUF_ERROR asking for more output | |
| space, we would report the error; now, we increase the buffer size and | |
| try again, just as for Z_OK. | |
| * Lib/test/test_gzip.py: Use binary mode for all gzip files we open. | |
| * Tools/idle/ChangeLog: New change log. | |
| * Tools/idle/README.txt, Tools/idle/NEWS.txt: New version. | |
| * Python/pythonrun.c: | |
| Alas, get rid of the Win specific hack to ask the user to press Return | |
| before exiting when an error happened. This didn't work right when | |
| Python is invoked from a daemon. | |
| * Tools/idle/idlever.py: Version bump awaiting impending new release. | |
| (Not much has changed :-( ) | |
| * Lib/lib-tk/Tkinter.py: | |
| lower, tkraise/lift hide Misc.lower, Misc.tkraise/lift, | |
| so the preferred name for them is tag_lower, tag_raise | |
| (similar to tag_bind, and similar to the Text widget); | |
| unfortunately can't delete the old ones yet (maybe in 1.6) | |
| * Python/thread.c, Python/strtod.c, Python/mystrtoul.c, Python/import.c, Python/ceval.c: | |
| Changes by Mark Hammond for Windows CE. Mostly of the form | |
| #ifdef DONT_HAVE_header_H ... #endif around #include <header.h>. | |
| * Python/bltinmodule.c: | |
| Remove unused variable from complex_from_string() code. | |
| * Include/patchlevel.h: | |
| Add the possibility of a gamma release (release candidate). | |
| Add '+' to string version number to indicate we're beyond b2 now. | |
| * Modules/posixmodule.c: Add extern decl for fsync() for SunOS 4.x. | |
| * Lib/smtplib.py: Changes by Per Cederquist and The Dragon. | |
| Per writes: | |
| """ | |
| The application where Signum Support uses smtplib needs to be able to | |
| report good error messages to the user when sending email fails. To | |
| help in diagnosing problems it is useful to be able to report the | |
| entire message sent by the server, not only the SMTP error code of the | |
| offending command. | |
| A lot of the functions in sendmail.py unfortunately discards the | |
| message, leaving only the code. The enclosed patch fixes that | |
| problem. | |
| The enclosed patch also introduces a base class for exceptions that | |
| include an SMTP error code and error message, and make the code and | |
| message available on separate attributes, so that surrounding code can | |
| deal with them in whatever way it sees fit. I've also added some | |
| documentation to the exception classes. | |
| The constructor will now raise an exception if it cannot connect to | |
| the SMTP server. | |
| The data() method will raise an SMTPDataError if it doesn't receive | |
| the expected 354 code in the middle of the exchange. | |
| According to section 5.2.10 of RFC 1123 a smtp client must accept "any | |
| text, including no text at all" after the error code. If the response | |
| of a HELO command contains no text self.helo_resp will be set to the | |
| empty string (""). The patch fixes the test in the sendmail() method | |
| so that helo_resp is tested against None; if it has the empty string | |
| as value the sendmail() method would invoke the helo() method again. | |
| The code no longer accepts a -1 reply from the ehlo() method in | |
| sendmail(). | |
| [Text about removing SMTPRecipientsRefused deleted --GvR] | |
| """ | |
| and also: | |
| """ | |
| smtplib.py appends an extra blank line to the outgoing mail if the | |
| `msg' argument to the sendmail method already contains a trailing | |
| newline. This patch should fix the problem. | |
| """ | |
| The Dragon writes: | |
| """ | |
| Mostly I just re-added the SMTPRecipientsRefused exception | |
| (the exeption object now has the appropriate info in it ) [Per had | |
| removed this in his patch --GvR] and tweaked the behavior of the | |
| sendmail method whence it throws the newly added SMTPHeloException (it | |
| was closing the connection, which it shouldn't. whatever catches the | |
| exception should do that. ) | |
| I pondered the change of the return values to tuples all around, | |
| and after some thinking I decided that regularizing the return values was | |
| too much of the Right Thing (tm) to not do. | |
| My one concern is that code expecting an integer & getting a tuple | |
| may fail silently. | |
| (i.e. if it's doing : | |
| x.somemethod() >= 400: | |
| expecting an integer, the expression will always be true if it gets a | |
| tuple instead. ) | |
| However, most smtplib code I've seen only really uses the | |
| sendmail() method, so this wouldn't bother it. Usually code I've seen | |
| that calls the other methods usually only calls helo() and ehlo() for | |
| doing ESMTP, a feature which was not in the smtplib included with 1.5.1, | |
| and thus I would think not much code uses it yet. | |
| """ | |
| Tue Apr 6 19:38:18 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/test/test_ntpath.py: | |
| Fix the tests now that splitdrive() no longer treats UNC paths special. | |
| (Some tests converted to splitunc() tests.) | |
| * Lib/ntpath.py: | |
| Withdraw the UNC support from splitdrive(). Instead, a new function | |
| splitunc() parses UNC paths. The contributor of the UNC parsing in | |
| splitdrive() doesn't like it, but I haven't heard a good reason to | |
| keep it, and it causes some problems. (I think there's a | |
| philosophical problem -- to me, the split*() functions are purely | |
| syntactical, and the fact that \\foo is not a valid path doesn't mean | |
| that it shouldn't be considered an absolute path.) | |
| Also (quite separately, but strangely related to the philosophical | |
| issue above) fix abspath() so that if win32api exists, it doesn't fail | |
| when the path doesn't actually exist -- if GetFullPathName() fails, | |
| fall back on the old strategy (join with getcwd() if necessary, and | |
| then use normpath()). | |
| * configure.in, configure, config.h.in, acconfig.h: | |
| For BeOS PowerPC. Chris Herborth. | |
| Mon Apr 5 21:54:14 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Modules/timemodule.c: | |
| Jonathan Giddy notes, and Chris Lawrence agrees, that some comments on | |
| #else/#endif are wrong, and that #if HAVE_TM_ZONE should be #ifdef. | |
| * Misc/ACKS: | |
| Bunch of new contributors, including 9 who contributed to the Docs, | |
| reported by Fred. | |
| Mon Apr 5 18:37:59 1999 Fred Drake <fdrake@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/gzip.py: | |
| Oops, missed mode parameter to open(). | |
| * Lib/gzip.py: | |
| Made the default mode 'rb' instead of 'r', for better cross-platform | |
| support. (Based on comment on the documentation by Bernhard Reiter | |
| <bernhard@csd.uwm.edu>). | |
| Fri Apr 2 22:18:25 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Tools/scripts/dutree.py: | |
| For reasons I dare not explain, this script should always execute | |
| main() when imported (in other words, it is not usable as a module). | |
| Thu Apr 1 15:32:30 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/test/test_cpickle.py: Jonathan Giddy write: | |
| In test_cpickle.py, the module os got imported, but the line to remove | |
| the temp file has gone missing. | |
| Tue Mar 30 20:17:31 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/BaseHTTPServer.py: Per Cederqvist writes: | |
| If you send something like "PUT / HTTP/1.0" to something derived from | |
| BaseHTTPServer that doesn't define do_PUT, you will get a response | |
| that begins like this: | |
| HTTP/1.0 501 Unsupported method ('do_PUT') | |
| Server: SimpleHTTP/0.3 Python/1.5 | |
| Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 18:53:53 GMT | |
| The server should complain about 'PUT' instead of 'do_PUT'. This | |
| patch should fix the problem. | |
| Mon Mar 29 20:33:21 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/smtplib.py: Patch by Per Cederqvist, who writes: | |
| """ | |
| - It needlessly used the makefile() method for each response that is | |
| read from the SMTP server. | |
| - If the remote SMTP server closes the connection unexpectedly the | |
| code raised an IndexError. It now raises an SMTPServerDisconnected | |
| exception instead. | |
| - The code now checks that all lines in a multiline response actually | |
| contains an error code. | |
| """ | |
| The Dragon approves. | |
| Mon Mar 29 20:25:40 1999 Fred Drake <fdrake@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/compileall.py: | |
| When run as a script, report failures in the exit code as well. | |
| Patch largely based on changes by Andrew Dalke, as discussed in the | |
| distutils-sig. | |
| Mon Mar 29 20:23:41 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/urllib.py: | |
| Hack so that if a 302 or 301 redirect contains a relative URL, the | |
| right thing "just happens" (basejoin() with old URL). | |
| * Modules/cPickle.c: | |
| Protection against picling to/from closed (real) file. | |
| The problem was reported by Moshe Zadka. | |
| * Lib/test/test_cpickle.py: | |
| Test protection against picling to/from closed (real) file. | |
| * Modules/timemodule.c: Chris Lawrence writes: | |
| """ | |
| The GNU folks, in their infinite wisdom, have decided not to implement | |
| altzone in libc6; this would not be horrible, except that timezone | |
| (which is implemented) includes the current DST setting (i.e. timezone | |
| for Central is 18000 in summer and 21600 in winter). So Python's | |
| timezone and altzone variables aren't set correctly during DST. | |
| Here's a patch relative to 1.5.2b2 that (a) makes timezone and altzone | |
| show the "right" thing on Linux (by using the tm_gmtoff stuff | |
| available in BSD, which is how the GLIBC manual claims things should | |
| be done) and (b) should cope with the southern hemisphere. In pursuit | |
| of (b), I also took the liberty of renaming the "summer" and "winter" | |
| variables to "july" and "jan". This patch should also make certain | |
| time calculations on Linux actually work right (like the tz-aware | |
| functions in the rfc822 module). | |
| (It's hard to find DST that's currently being used in the southern | |
| hemisphere; I tested using Africa/Windhoek.) | |
| """ | |
| * Lib/test/output/test_gzip: | |
| Jonathan Giddy discovered this file was missing. | |
| * Modules/shamodule.c: | |
| Avoid warnings from AIX compiler. Reported by Vladimir (AIX is my | |
| middlename) Marangozov, patch coded by Greg Stein. | |
| * Tools/idle/ScriptBinding.py, Tools/idle/PyShell.py: | |
| At Tim Peters' recommendation, add a dummy flush() method to PseudoFile. | |
| Sun Mar 28 17:55:32 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Tools/scripts/ndiff.py: Tim Peters writes: | |
| I should have waited overnight <wink/sigh>. Nothing wrong with the one I | |
| sent, but I couldn't resist going on to add new -r1 / -r2 cmdline options | |
| for recreating the original files from ndiff's output. That's attached, if | |
| you're game! Us Windows guys don't usually have a sed sitting around | |
| <wink>. | |
| Sat Mar 27 13:34:01 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Tools/scripts/ndiff.py: Tim Peters writes: | |
| Attached is a cleaned-up version of ndiff (added useful module | |
| docstring, now echo'ed in case of cmd line mistake); added -q option | |
| to suppress initial file identification lines; + other minor cleanups, | |
| & a slightly faster match engine. | |
| Fri Mar 26 22:36:00 1999 Fred Drake <fdrake@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Tools/scripts/dutree.py: | |
| During display, if EPIPE is raised, it's probably because a pager was | |
| killed. Discard the error in that case, but propagate it otherwise. | |
| Fri Mar 26 16:20:45 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/test/output/test_userlist, Lib/test/test_userlist.py: | |
| Test suite for UserList. | |
| * Lib/UserList.py: Use isinstance() where appropriate. | |
| Reformatted with 4-space indent. | |
| Fri Mar 26 16:11:40 1999 Barry Warsaw <bwarsaw@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Tools/pynche/PyncheWidget.py: | |
| Helpwin.__init__(): The text widget should get focus. | |
| * Tools/pynche/pyColorChooser.py: | |
| Removed unnecessary import `from PyncheWidget import PyncheWidget' | |
| Fri Mar 26 15:32:05 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/test/output/test_userdict, Lib/test/test_userdict.py: | |
| Test suite for UserDict | |
| * Lib/UserDict.py: Improved a bunch of things. | |
| The constructor now takes an optional dictionary. | |
| Use isinstance() where appropriate. | |
| Thu Mar 25 22:38:49 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/test/output/test_pickle, Lib/test/output/test_cpickle, Lib/test/test_pickle.py, Lib/test/test_cpickle.py: | |
| Basic regr tests for pickle/cPickle | |
| * Lib/pickle.py: | |
| Don't use "exec" in find_class(). It's slow, unnecessary, and (as AMK | |
| points out) it doesn't work in JPython Applets. | |
| Thu Mar 25 21:50:27 1999 Andrew Kuchling <akuchlin@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/test/test_gzip.py: | |
| Added a simple test suite for gzip. It simply opens a temp file, | |
| writes a chunk of compressed data, closes it, writes another chunk, and | |
| reads the contents back to verify that they are the same. | |
| * Lib/gzip.py: | |
| Based on a suggestion from bruce@hams.com, make a trivial change to | |
| allow using the 'a' flag as a mode for opening a GzipFile. gzip | |
| files, surprisingly enough, can be concatenated and then decompressed; | |
| the effect is to concatenate the two chunks of data. | |
| If we support it on writing, it should also be supported on reading. | |
| This *wasn't* trivial, and required rearranging the code in the | |
| reading path, particularly the _read() method. | |
| Raise IOError instead of RuntimeError in two cases, 'Not a gzipped file' | |
| and 'Unknown compression method' | |
| Thu Mar 25 21:25:01 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/test/test_b1.py: | |
| Add tests for float() and complex() with string args (Nick/Stephanie | |
| Lockwood). | |
| Thu Mar 25 21:21:08 1999 Andrew Kuchling <akuchlin@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Modules/zlibmodule.c: | |
| Add an .unused_data attribute to decompressor objects. If .unused_data | |
| is not an empty string, this means that you have arrived at the | |
| end of the stream of compressed data, and the contents of .unused_data are | |
| whatever follows the compressed stream. | |
| Thu Mar 25 21:16:07 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Python/bltinmodule.c: | |
| Patch by Nick and Stephanie Lockwood to implement complex() with a string | |
| argument. This closes TODO item 2.19. | |
| Wed Mar 24 19:09:00 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Tools/webchecker/wcnew.py: Added Samuel Bayer's new webchecker. | |
| Unfortunately his code breaks wcgui.py in a way that's not easy | |
| to fix. I expect that this is a temporary situation -- | |
| eventually Sam's changes will be merged back in. | |
| (The changes add a -t option to specify exceptions to the -x | |
| option, and explicit checking for #foo style fragment ids.) | |
| * Objects/dictobject.c: | |
| Vladimir Marangozov contributed updated comments. | |
| * Objects/bufferobject.c: Folded long lines. | |
| * Lib/test/output/test_sha, Lib/test/test_sha.py: | |
| Added Jeremy's test code for the sha module. | |
| * Modules/shamodule.c, Modules/Setup.in: | |
| Added Greg Stein and Andrew Kuchling's sha module. | |
| Fix comments about zlib version and URL. | |
| * Lib/test/test_bsddb.py: Remove the temp file when we're done. | |
| * Include/pythread.h: Conform to standard boilerplate. | |
| * configure.in, configure, BeOS/linkmodule, BeOS/ar-fake: | |
| Chris Herborth: the new compiler in R4.1 needs some new options to work... | |
| * Modules/socketmodule.c: | |
| Implement two suggestions by Jonathan Giddy: (1) in AIX, clear the | |
| data struct before calling gethostby{name,addr}_r(); (2) ignore the | |
| 3/5/6 args determinations made by the configure script and switch on | |
| platform identifiers instead: | |
| AIX, OSF have 3 args | |
| Sun, SGI have 5 args | |
| Linux has 6 args | |
| On all other platforms, undef HAVE_GETHOSTBYNAME_R altogether. | |
| * Modules/socketmodule.c: | |
| Vladimir Marangozov implements the AIX 3-arg gethostbyname_r code. | |
| * Lib/mailbox.py: | |
| Add readlines() to _Subfile class. Not clear who would need it, but | |
| Chris Lawrence sent me a broken version; this one is a tad simpler and | |
| more conforming to the standard. | |
| Tue Mar 23 23:05:34 1999 Jeremy Hylton <jhylton@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/gzip.py: use struct instead of bit-manipulate in Python | |
| Tue Mar 23 19:00:55 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Modules/Makefile.pre.in: | |
| Add $(EXE) to various occurrences of python so it will work on Cygwin | |
| with egcs (after setting EXE=.exe). Patch by Norman Vine. | |
| * configure, configure.in: | |
| Ack! It never defined HAVE_GETHOSTBYNAME_R so that code was never tested! | |
| Mon Mar 22 22:25:39 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Include/thread.h: | |
| Adding thread.h -- unused but for b/w compatibility. | |
| As requested by Bill Janssen. | |
| * configure.in, configure: | |
| Add code to test for all sorts of gethostbyname_r variants, | |
| donated by David Arnold. | |
| * config.h.in, acconfig.h: | |
| Add symbols for gethostbyname_r variants (sigh). | |
| * Modules/socketmodule.c: Clean up pass for the previous patches. | |
| - Use HAVE_GETHOSTBYNAME_R_6_ARG instead of testing for Linux and | |
| glibc2. | |
| - If gethostbyname takes 3 args, undefine HAVE_GETHOSTBYNAME_R -- | |
| don't know what code should be used. | |
| - New symbol USE_GETHOSTBYNAME_LOCK defined iff the lock should be used. | |
| - Modify the gethostbyaddr() code to also hold on to the lock until | |
| after it is safe to release, overlapping with the Python lock. | |
| (Note: I think that it could in theory be possible that Python code | |
| executed while gethostbyname_lock is held could attempt to reacquire | |
| the lock -- e.g. in a signal handler or destructor. I will simply say | |
| "don't do that then.") | |
| * Modules/socketmodule.c: Jonathan Giddy writes: | |
| Here's a patch to fix the race condition, which wasn't fixed by Rob's | |
| patch. It holds the gethostbyname lock until the results are copied out, | |
| which means that this lock and the Python global lock are held at the same | |
| time. This shouldn't be a problem as long as the gethostbyname lock is | |
| always acquired when the global lock is not held. | |
| Mon Mar 22 19:25:30 1999 Andrew Kuchling <akuchlin@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Modules/zlibmodule.c: | |
| Fixed the flush() method of compression objects; the test for | |
| the end of loop was incorrect, and failed when the flushmode != Z_FINISH. | |
| Logic cleaned up and commented. | |
| * Lib/test/test_zlib.py: | |
| Added simple test for the flush() method of compression objects, trying the | |
| different flush values Z_NO_FLUSH, Z_SYNC_FLUSH, Z_FULL_FLUSH. | |
| Mon Mar 22 15:28:08 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/shlex.py: | |
| Bug reported by Tobias Thelen: missing "self." in assignment target. | |
| Fri Mar 19 21:50:11 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Modules/arraymodule.c: | |
| Use an unsigned cast to avoid a warning in VC++. | |
| * Lib/dospath.py, Lib/ntpath.py: | |
| New code for split() by Tim Peters, behaves more like posixpath.split(). | |
| * Objects/floatobject.c: | |
| Fix a problem with Vladimir's PyFloat_Fini code: clear the free list; if | |
| a block cannot be freed, add its free items back to the free list. | |
| This is necessary to avoid leaking when Python is reinitialized later. | |
| * Objects/intobject.c: | |
| Fix a problem with Vladimir's PyInt_Fini code: clear the free list; if | |
| a block cannot be freed, add its free items back to the free list, and | |
| add its valid ints back to the small_ints array if they are in range. | |
| This is necessary to avoid leaking when Python is reinitialized later. | |
| * Lib/types.py: | |
| Added BufferType, the type returned by the new builtin buffer(). Greg Stein. | |
| * Python/bltinmodule.c: | |
| New builtin buffer() creates a derived read-only buffer from any | |
| object that supports the buffer interface (e.g. strings, arrays). | |
| * Objects/bufferobject.c: | |
| Added check for negative offset for PyBuffer_FromObject and check for | |
| negative size for PyBuffer_FromMemory. Greg Stein. | |
| Thu Mar 18 15:10:44 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/urlparse.py: Sjoerd Mullender writes: | |
| If a filename on Windows starts with \\, it is converted to a URL | |
| which starts with ////. If this URL is passed to urlparse.urlparse | |
| you get a path that starts with // (and an empty netloc). If you pass | |
| the result back to urlparse.urlunparse, you get a URL that starts with | |
| //, which is parsed differently by urlparse.urlparse. The fix is to | |
| add the (empty) netloc with accompanying slashes if the path in | |
| urlunparse starts with //. Do this for all schemes that use a netloc. | |
| * Lib/nturl2path.py: Sjoerd Mullender writes: | |
| Pathnames of files on other hosts in the same domain | |
| (\\host\path\to\file) are not translated correctly to URLs and back. | |
| The URL should be something like file:////host/path/to/file. | |
| Note that a combination of drive letter and remote host is not | |
| possible. | |
| Wed Mar 17 22:30:10 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/urlparse.py: | |
| Delete non-standard-conforming code in urljoin() that would use the | |
| netloc from the base url as the default netloc for the resulting url | |
| even if the schemes differ. | |
| Once upon a time, when the web was wild, this was a valuable hack | |
| because some people had a URL referencing an ftp server colocated with | |
| an http server without having the host in the ftp URL (so they could | |
| replicate it or change the hostname easily). | |
| More recently, after the file: scheme got added back to the list of | |
| schemes that accept a netloc, it turns out that this caused weirdness | |
| when joining an http: URL with a file: URL -- the resulting file: URL | |
| would always inherit the host from the http: URL because the file: | |
| scheme supports a netloc but in practice never has one. | |
| There are two reasons to get rid of the old, once-valuable hack, | |
| instead of removing the file: scheme from the uses_netloc list. One, | |
| the RFC says that file: uses the netloc syntax, and does not endorse | |
| the old hack. Two, neither netscape 4.5 nor IE 4.0 support the old | |
| hack. | |
| * Include/ceval.h, Include/abstract.h: | |
| Add DLL level b/w compat for PySequence_In and PyEval_CallObject | |
| Tue Mar 16 21:54:50 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/lib-tk/Tkinter.py: Bug reported by Jim Robinson: | |
| An attempt to execute grid_slaves with arguments (0,0) results in | |
| *all* of the slaves being returned, not just the slave associated with | |
| row 0, column 0. This is because the test for arguments in the method | |
| does not test to see if row (and column) does not equal None, but | |
| rather just whether is evaluates to non-false. A value of 0 fails | |
| this test. | |
| Tue Mar 16 14:17:48 1999 Fred Drake <fdrake@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Modules/cmathmodule.c: | |
| Docstring fix: acosh() returns the hyperbolic arccosine, not the | |
| hyperbolic cosine. Problem report via David Ascher by one of his | |
| students. | |
| Mon Mar 15 21:40:59 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * configure.in: | |
| Should test for gethost*by*name_r, not for gethostname_r (which | |
| doesn't exist and doesn't make sense). | |
| * Modules/socketmodule.c: | |
| Patch by Rob Riggs for Linux -- glibc2 has a different argument | |
| converntion for gethostbyname_r() etc. than Solaris! | |
| * Python/thread_pthread.h: Rob Riggs wrote: | |
| """ | |
| Spec says that on success pthread_create returns 0. It does not say | |
| that an error code will be < 0. Linux glibc2 pthread_create() returns | |
| ENOMEM (12) when one exceed process limits. (It looks like it should | |
| return EAGAIN, but that's another story.) | |
| For reference, see: | |
| http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xsh/pthread_create.html | |
| """ | |
| [I have a feeling that similar bugs were fixed before; perhaps someone | |
| could check that all error checks no check for != 0?] | |
| * Tools/bgen/bgen/bgenObjectDefinition.py: | |
| New mixin class that defines cmp and hash that use | |
| the ob_itself pointer. This allows (when using the mixin) | |
| different Python objects pointing to the same C object and | |
| behaving well as dictionary keys. | |
| Or so sez Jack Jansen... | |
| * Lib/urllib.py: Yet another patch by Sjoerd Mullender: | |
| Don't convert URLs to URLs using pathname2url. | |
| Fri Mar 12 22:15:43 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/cmd.py: Patch by Michael Scharf. He writes: | |
| The module cmd requires for each do_xxx command a help_xxx | |
| function. I think this is a little old fashioned. | |
| Here is a patch: use the docstring as help if no help_xxx | |
| function can be found. | |
| [I'm tempted to rip out all the help_* functions from pdb, but I'll | |
| resist it. Any takers? --Guido] | |
| * Tools/freeze/freeze.py: Bug submitted by Wayne Knowles, who writes: | |
| Under Windows, python freeze.py -o hello hello.py | |
| creates all the correct files in the hello subdirectory, but the | |
| Makefile has the directory prefix in it for frozen_extensions.c | |
| nmake fails because it tries to locate hello/frozen_extensions.c | |
| (His fix adds a call to os.path.basename() in the appropriate place.) | |
| * Objects/floatobject.c, Objects/intobject.c: | |
| Vladimir has restructured his code somewhat so that the blocks are now | |
| represented by an explicit structure. (There are still too many casts | |
| in the code, but that may be unavoidable.) | |
| Also added code so that with -vv it is very chatty about what it does. | |
| * Demo/zlib/zlibdemo.py, Demo/zlib/minigzip.py: | |
| Change #! line to modern usage; also chmod +x | |
| * Demo/pdist/rrcs, Demo/pdist/rcvs, Demo/pdist/rcsbump: | |
| Change #! line to modern usage | |
| * Lib/nturl2path.py, Lib/urllib.py: From: Sjoerd Mullender | |
| The filename to URL conversion didn't properly quote special | |
| characters. | |
| The URL to filename didn't properly unquote special chatacters. | |
| * Objects/floatobject.c: | |
| OK, try again. Vladimir gave me a fix for the alignment bus error, | |
| so here's his patch again. This time it works (at least on Solaris, | |
| Linux and Irix). | |
| Thu Mar 11 23:21:23 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Tools/idle/PathBrowser.py: | |
| Don't crash when sys.path contains an empty string. | |
| * Tools/idle/PathBrowser.py: | |
| - Don't crash in the case where a superclass is a string instead of a | |
| pyclbr.Class object; this can happen when the superclass is | |
| unrecognizable (to pyclbr), e.g. when module renaming is used. | |
| - Show a watch cursor when calling pyclbr (since it may take a while | |
| recursively parsing imported modules!). | |
| Thu Mar 11 16:04:04 1999 Fred Drake <fdrake@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/mimetypes.py: | |
| Added .rdf and .xsl as application/xml types. (.rdf is for the | |
| Resource Description Framework, a metadata encoding, and .xsl is for | |
| the Extensible Stylesheet Language.) | |
| Thu Mar 11 13:26:23 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/test/output/test_popen2, Lib/test/test_popen2.py: | |
| Test for popen2 module, by Chris Tismer. | |
| * Objects/floatobject.c: | |
| Alas, Vladimir's patch caused a bus error (probably double | |
| alignment?), and I didn't test it. Withdrawing it for now. | |
| Wed Mar 10 22:55:47 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Objects/floatobject.c: | |
| Patch by Vladimir Marangoz to allow freeing of the allocated blocks of | |
| floats on finalization. | |
| * Objects/intobject.c: | |
| Patch by Vladimir Marangoz to allow freeing of the allocated blocks of | |
| integers on finalization. | |
| * Tools/idle/EditorWindow.py, Tools/idle/Bindings.py: | |
| Add PathBrowser to File module | |
| * Tools/idle/PathBrowser.py: | |
| "Path browser" - 4 scrolled lists displaying: | |
| directories on sys.path | |
| modules in selected directory | |
| classes in selected module | |
| methods of selected class | |
| Sinlge clicking in a directory, module or class item updates the next | |
| column with info about the selected item. Double clicking in a | |
| module, class or method item opens the file (and selects the clicked | |
| item if it is a class or method). | |
| I guess eventually I should be using a tree widget for this, but the | |
| ones I've seen don't work well enough, so for now I use the old | |
| Smalltalk or NeXT style multi-column hierarchical browser. | |
| * Tools/idle/MultiScrolledLists.py: | |
| New utility: multiple scrolled lists in parallel | |
| * Tools/idle/ScrolledList.py: - White background. | |
| - Display "(None)" (or text of your choosing) when empty. | |
| - Don't set the focus. | |
| Tue Mar 9 19:31:21 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/urllib.py: | |
| open_http also had the 'data is None' test backwards. don't call with the | |
| extra argument if data is None. | |
| * Demo/embed/demo.c: | |
| Call Py_SetProgramName() instead of redefining getprogramname(), | |
| reflecting changes in the runtime around 1.5 or earlier. | |
| * Python/ceval.c: | |
| Always test for an error return (usually NULL or -1) without setting | |
| an exception. | |
| * Modules/timemodule.c: Patch by Chris Herborth for BeOS code. | |
| He writes: | |
| I had an off-by-1000 error in floatsleep(), | |
| and the problem with time.clock() is that it's not implemented properly | |
| on QNX... ANSI says it's supposed to return _CPU_ time used by the | |
| process, but on QNX it returns the amount of real time used... so I was | |
| confused. | |
| * Tools/bgen/bgen/macsupport.py: Small change by Jack Jansen. | |
| Test for self.returntype behaving like OSErr rather than being it. | |
| Thu Feb 25 16:14:58 1999 Jeremy Hylton <jhylton@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/urllib.py: | |
| http_error had the 'data is None' test backwards. don't call with the | |
| extra argument if data is None. | |
| * Lib/urllib.py: change indentation from 8 spaces to 4 spaces | |
| * Lib/urllib.py: pleasing the tabnanny | |
| Thu Feb 25 14:26:02 1999 Fred Drake <fdrake@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/colorsys.py: | |
| Oops, one more "x, y, z" to convert... | |
| * Lib/colorsys.py: | |
| Adjusted comment at the top to be less confusing, following Fredrik | |
| Lundh's example. | |
| Converted comment to docstring. | |
| Wed Feb 24 18:49:15 1999 Fred Drake <fdrake@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/toaiff.py: | |
| Use sndhdr instead of the obsolete whatsound module. | |
| Wed Feb 24 18:42:38 1999 Jeremy Hylton <jhylton@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/urllib.py: | |
| When performing a POST request, i.e. when the second argument to | |
| urlopen is used to specify form data, make sure the second argument is | |
| threaded through all of the http_error_NNN calls. This allows error | |
| handlers like the redirect and authorization handlers to properly | |
| re-start the connection. | |
| Wed Feb 24 16:25:17 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/mhlib.py: Patch by Lars Wirzenius: | |
| o the initial comment is wrong: creating messages is already | |
| implemented | |
| o Message.getbodytext: if the mail or it's part contains an | |
| empty content-transfer-encoding header, the code used to | |
| break; the change below treats an empty encoding value the same | |
| as the other types that do not need decoding | |
| o SubMessage.getbodytext was missing the decode argument; the | |
| change below adds it; I also made it unconditionally return | |
| the raw text if decoding was not desired, because my own | |
| routines needed that (and it was easier than rewriting my | |
| own routines ;-) | |
| Wed Feb 24 00:35:43 1999 Barry Warsaw <bwarsaw@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Python/bltinmodule.c (initerrors): | |
| Make sure that the exception tuples ("base-classes" when | |
| string-based exceptions are used) reflect the real class hierarchy, | |
| i.e. that SystemExit derives from Exception not StandardError. | |
| * Lib/exceptions.py: | |
| Document the correct class hierarchy for SystemExit. It is not an | |
| error and so it derives from Exception and not SystemError. The | |
| docstring was incorrect but the implementation was fine. | |
| Tue Feb 23 23:07:51 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/shutil.py: | |
| Add import sys, needed by reference to sys.exc_info() in rmtree(). | |
| Discovered by Mitch Chapman. | |
| * config.h.in: | |
| Now that we don't have AC_CHECK_LIB(m, pow), the HAVE_LIBM symbol | |
| disappears. It wasn't used anywhere anyway... | |
| * Modules/arraymodule.c: | |
| Carefully check for overflow when allocating the memory for fromfile | |
| -- someone tried to pass in sys.maxint and got bitten by the bogus | |
| calculations. | |
| * configure.in: | |
| Get rid of AC_CHECK_LIB(m, pow) since this is taken care of later with | |
| LIBM (from --with-libm=...); this actually broke the customizability | |
| offered by the latter option. Thanks go to Clay Spence for reporting | |
| this. | |
| * Lib/test/test_dl.py: | |
| 1. Print the error message (carefully) when a dl.open() fails in verbose mode. | |
| 2. When no test case worked, raise ImportError instead of failing. | |
| * Python/bltinmodule.c: | |
| Patch by Tim Peters to improve the range checks for range() and | |
| xrange(), especially for platforms where int and long are different | |
| sizes (so sys.maxint isn't actually the theoretical limit for the | |
| length of a list, but the largest C int is -- sys.maxint is the | |
| largest Python int, which is actually a C long). | |
| * Makefile.in: | |
| 1. Augment the DG/UX rule so it doesn't break the BeOS build. | |
| 2. Add $(EXE) to various occurrences of python so it will work on | |
| Cygwin with egcs (after setting EXE=.exe). These patches by | |
| Norman Vine. | |
| * Lib/posixfile.py: | |
| According to Jeffrey Honig, bsd/os 2.0 - 4.0 should be added to the | |
| list (of bsd variants that have a different lock structure). | |
| * Lib/test/test_fcntl.py: | |
| According to Jeffrey Honig, bsd/os 4.0 should be added to the list. | |
| * Modules/timemodule.c: | |
| Patch by Tadayoshi Funaba (with some changes) to be smarter about | |
| guessing what happened when strftime() returns 0. Is it buffer | |
| overflow or was the result simply 0 bytes long? (This happens for an | |
| empty format string, or when the format string is a single %Z and the | |
| timezone is unknown.) if the buffer is at least 256 times as long as | |
| the format, assume the latter. | |
| Mon Feb 22 19:01:42 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/urllib.py: | |
| As Des Barry points out, we need to call pathname2url(file) in two | |
| calls to addinfourl() in open_file(). | |
| * Modules/Setup.in: Document *static* -- in two places! | |
| * Modules/timemodule.c: | |
| We don't support leap seconds, so the seconds field of a time 9-tuple | |
| should be in the range [0-59]. Noted by Tadayoshi Funaba. | |
| * Modules/stropmodule.c: | |
| In atoi(), don't use isxdigit() to test whether the last character | |
| converted was a "digit" -- use isalnum(). This test is there only to | |
| guard against "+" or "-" being interpreted as a valid int literal. | |
| Reported by Takahiro Nakayama. | |
| * Lib/os.py: | |
| As Finn Bock points out, _P_WAIT etc. don't have a leading underscore | |
| so they don't need to be treated specially here. | |
| Mon Feb 22 15:38:58 1999 Fred Drake <fdrake@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Misc/NEWS: | |
| Typo: "apparentlt" --> "apparently" | |
| Mon Feb 22 15:38:46 1999 Guido van Rossum <guido@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/urlparse.py: Steve Clift pointed out that 'file' allows a netloc. | |
| * Modules/posixmodule.c: | |
| The docstring for ttyname(..) claims a second "mode" argument. The | |
| actual code does not allow such an argument. (Finn Bock.) | |
| * Lib/lib-old/poly.py: | |
| Dang. Even though this is obsolete code, somebody found a bug, and I | |
| fix it. Oh well. | |
| Thu Feb 18 20:51:50 1999 Fred Drake <fdrake@eric.cnri.reston.va.us> | |
| * Lib/pyclbr.py: | |
| Bow to font-lock at the end of the docstring, since it throws stuff | |
| off. | |
| Make sure the path parameter to readmodule() is a list before adding it | |
| with sys.path, or the addition could fail. | |
| ====================================================================== | |
| From 1.5.2b1 to 1.5.2b2 | |
| ======================= | |
| General | |
| ------- | |
| - Many memory leaks fixed. | |
| - Many small bugs fixed. | |
| - Command line option -OO (or -O -O) suppresses inclusion of doc | |
| strings in resulting bytecode. | |
| Windows-specific changes | |
| ------------------------ | |
| - New built-in module winsound provides an interface to the Win32 | |
| PlaySound() call. | |
| - Re-enable the audioop module in the config.c file. | |
| - On Windows, support spawnv() and associated P_* symbols. | |
| - Fixed the conversion of times() return values on Windows. | |
| - Removed freeze from the installer -- it doesn't work without the | |
| source tree. (See FAQ 8.11.) | |
| - On Windows 95/98, the Tkinter module now is smart enough to find | |
| Tcl/Tk even when the PATH environment variable hasn't been set -- when | |
| the import of _tkinter fails, it searches in a standard locations, | |
| patches os.environ["PATH"], and tries again. When it still fails, a | |
| clearer error message is produced. This should avoid most | |
| installation problems with Tkinter use (e.g. in IDLE). | |
| - The -i option doesn't make any calls to set[v]buf() for stdin -- | |
| this apparently screwed up _kbhit() and the _tkinter main loop. | |
| - The ntpath module (and hence, os.path on Windows) now parses out UNC | |
| paths (e.g. \\host\mountpoint\dir\file) as "drive letters", so that | |
| splitdrive() will \\host\mountpoint as the drive and \dir\file as the | |
| path. ** EXPERIMENTAL ** | |
| - Added a hack to the exit code so that if (1) the exit status is | |
| nonzero and (2) we think we have our own DOS box (i.e. we're not | |
| started from a command line shell), we print a message and wait for | |
| the user to hit a key before the DOS box is closed. | |
| - Updated the installer to WISE 5.0g. Added a dialog warning about | |
| the imminent Tcl installation. Added a dialog to specify the program | |
| group name in the start menu. Upgraded the Tcl installer to Tcl | |
| 8.0.4. | |
| Changes to intrinsics | |
| --------------------- | |
| - The repr() or str() of a module object now shows the __file__ | |
| attribute (i.e., the file which it was loaded), or the string | |
| "(built-in)" if there is no __file__ attribute. | |
| - The range() function now avoids overflow during its calculations (if | |
| at all possible). | |
| - New info string sys.hexversion, which is an integer encoding the | |
| version in hexadecimal. In other words, hex(sys.hexversion) == | |
| 0x010502b2 for Python 1.5.2b2. | |
| New or improved ports | |
| --------------------- | |
| - Support for Nextstep descendants (future Mac systems). | |
| - Improved BeOS support. | |
| - Support dynamic loading of shared libraries on NetBSD platforms that | |
| use ELF (i.e., MIPS and Alpha systems). | |
| Configuration/build changes | |
| --------------------------- | |
| - The Lib/test directory is no longer included in the default module | |
| search path (sys.path) -- "test" has been a package ever since 1.5. | |
| - Now using autoconf 2.13. | |
| New library modules | |
| ------------------- | |
| - New library modules asyncore and asynchat: these form Sam Rushing's | |
| famous asynchronous socket library. Sam has gracefully allowed me to | |
| incorporate these in the standard Python library. | |
| - New module statvfs contains indexing constants for [f]statvfs() | |
| return tuple. | |
| Changes to the library | |
| ---------------------- | |
| - The wave module (platform-independent support for Windows sound | |
| files) has been fixed to actually make it work. | |
| - The sunau module (platform-independent support for Sun/NeXT sound | |
| files) has been fixed to work across platforms. Also, a weird | |
| encoding bug in the header of the audio test data file has been | |
| corrected. | |
| - Fix a bug in the urllib module that occasionally tripped up | |
| webchecker and other ftp retrieves. | |
| - ConfigParser's get() method now accepts an optional keyword argument | |
| (vars) that is substituted on top of the defaults that were setup in | |
| __init__. You can now also have recusive references in your | |
| configuration file. | |
| - Some improvements to the Queue module, including a put_nowait() | |
| module and an optional "block" second argument, to get() and put(), | |
| defaulting to 1. | |
| - The updated xmllib module is once again compatible with the version | |
| present in Python 1.5.1 (this was accidentally broken in 1.5.2b1). | |
| - The bdb module (base class for the debugger) now supports | |
| canonicalizing pathnames used in breakpoints. The derived class must | |
| override the new canonical() method for this to work. Also changed | |
| clear_break() to the backwards compatible old signature, and added | |
| clear_bpbynumber() for the new functionality. | |
| - In sgmllib (and hence htmllib), recognize attributes even if they | |
| don't have space in front of them. I.e. '<a | |
| name="foo"href="bar.html">' will now have two attributes recognized. | |
| - In the debugger (pdb), change clear syntax to support three | |
| alternatives: clear; clear file:line; clear bpno bpno ... | |
| - The os.path module now pretends to be a submodule within the os | |
| "package", so you can do things like "from os.path import exists". | |
| - The standard exceptions now have doc strings. | |
| - In the smtplib module, exceptions are now classes. Also avoid | |
| inserting a non-standard space after "TO" in rcpt() command. | |
| - The rfc822 module's getaddrlist() method now uses all occurrences of | |
| the specified header instead of just the first. Some other bugfixes | |
| too (to handle more weird addresses found in a very large test set, | |
| and to avoid crashes on certain invalid dates), and a small test | |
| module has been added. | |
| - Fixed bug in urlparse in the common-case code for HTTP URLs; it | |
| would lose the query, fragment, and/or parameter information. | |
| - The sndhdr module no longer supports whatraw() -- it depended on a | |
| rare extenral program. | |
| - The UserList module/class now supports the extend() method, like | |
| real list objects. | |
| - The uu module now deals better with trailing garbage generated by | |
| some broke uuencoders. | |
| - The telnet module now has a my_interact() method which uses threads | |
| instead of select. The interact() method uses this by default on | |
| Windows (where the single-threaded version doesn't work). | |
| - Add a class to mailbox.py for dealing with qmail directory | |
| mailboxes. The test code was extended to notice these being used as | |
| well. | |
| Changes to extension modules | |
| ---------------------------- | |
| - Support for the [f]statvfs() system call, where it exists. | |
| - Fixed some bugs in cPickle where bad input could cause it to dump | |
| core. | |
| - Fixed cStringIO to make the writelines() function actually work. | |
| - Added strop.expandtabs() so string.expandtabs() is now much faster. | |
| - Added fsync() and fdatasync(), if they appear to exist. | |
| - Support for "long files" (64-bit seek pointers). | |
| - Fixed a bug in the zlib module's flush() function. | |
| - Added access() system call. It returns 1 if access granted, 0 if | |
| not. | |
| - The curses module implements an optional nlines argument to | |
| w.scroll(). (It then calls wscrl(win, nlines) instead of scoll(win).) | |
| Changes to tools | |
| ---------------- | |
| - Some changes to IDLE; see Tools/idle/NEWS.txt. | |
| - Latest version of Misc/python-mode.el included. | |
| Changes to Tkinter | |
| ------------------ | |
| - Avoid tracebacks when an image is deleted after its root has been | |
| destroyed. | |
| Changes to the Python/C API | |
| --------------------------- | |
| - When parentheses are used in a PyArg_Parse[Tuple]() call, any | |
| sequence is now accepted, instead of requiring a tuple. This is in | |
| line with the general trend towards accepting arbitrary sequences. | |
| - Added PyModule_GetFilename(). | |
| - In PyNumber_Power(), remove unneeded and even harmful test for float | |
| to the negative power (which is already and better done in | |
| floatobject.c). | |
| - New version identification symbols; read patchlevel.h for info. The | |
| version numbers are now exported by Python.h. | |
| - Rolled back the API version change -- it's back to 1007! | |
| - The frozenmain.c function calls PyInitFrozenExtensions(). | |
| - Added 'N' format character to Py_BuildValue -- like 'O' but doesn't | |
| INCREF. | |
| ====================================================================== | |
| From 1.5.2a2 to 1.5.2b1 | |
| ======================= | |
| Changes to intrinsics | |
| --------------------- | |
| - New extension NotImplementedError, derived from RuntimeError. Not | |
| used, but recommended use is for "abstract" methods to raise this. | |
| - The parser will now spit out a warning or error when -t or -tt is | |
| used for parser input coming from a string, too. | |
| - The code generator now inserts extra SET_LINENO opcodes when | |
| compiling multi-line argument lists. | |
| - When comparing bound methods, use identity test on the objects, not | |
| equality test. | |
| New or improved ports | |
| --------------------- | |
| - Chris Herborth has redone his BeOS port; it now works on PowerPC | |
| (R3/R4) and x86 (R4 only). Threads work too in this port. | |
| Renaming | |
| -------- | |
| - Thanks to Chris Herborth, the thread primitives now have proper Py* | |
| names in the source code (they already had those for the linker, | |
| through some smart macros; but the source still had the old, un-Py | |
| names). | |
| Configuration/build changes | |
| --------------------------- | |
| - Improved support for FreeBSD/3. | |
| - Check for pthread_detach instead of pthread_create in libc. | |
| - The makesetup script now searches EXECINCLUDEPY before INCLUDEPY. | |
| - Misc/Makefile.pre.in now also looks at Setup.thread and Setup.local. | |
| Otherwise modules such as thread didn't get incorporated in extensions. | |
| New library modules | |
| ------------------- | |
| - shlex.py by Eric Raymond provides a lexical analyzer class for | |
| simple shell-like syntaxes. | |
| - netrc.py by Eric Raymond provides a parser for .netrc files. (The | |
| undocumented Netrc class in ftplib.py is now obsolete.) | |
| - codeop.py is a new module that contains the compile_command() | |
| function that was previously in code.py. This is so that JPython can | |
| provide its own version of this function, while still sharing the | |
| higher-level classes in code.py. | |
| - turtle.py is a new module for simple turtle graphics. I'm still | |
| working on it; let me know if you use this to teach Python to children | |
| or other novices without prior programming experience. | |
| Obsoleted library modules | |
| ------------------------- | |
| - poly.py and zmod.py have been moved to Lib/lib-old to emphasize | |
| their status of obsoleteness. They don't do a particularly good job | |
| and don't seem particularly relevant to the Python core. | |
| New tools | |
| --------- | |
| - I've added IDLE: my Integrated DeveLopment Environment for Python. | |
| Requires Tcl/Tk (and Tkinter). Works on Windows and Unix (and should | |
| work on Macintosh, but I haven't been able to test it there; it does | |
| depend on new features in 1.5.2 and perhaps even new features in | |
| 1.5.2b1, especially the new code module). This is very much a work in | |
| progress. I'd like to hear how people like it compared to PTUI (or | |
| any other IDE they are familiar with). | |
| - New tools by Barry Warsaw: | |
| = audiopy: controls the Solaris Audio device | |
| = pynche: The PYthonically Natural Color and Hue Editor | |
| = world: Print mappings between country names and DNS country codes | |
| New demos | |
| --------- | |
| - Demo/scripts/beer.py prints the lyrics to an arithmetic drinking | |
| song. | |
| - Demo/tkinter/guido/optionmenu.py shows how to do an option menu in | |
| Tkinter. (By Fredrik Lundh -- not by me!) | |
| Changes to the library | |
| ---------------------- | |
| - compileall.py now avoids recompiling .py files that haven't changed; | |
| it adds a -f option to force recompilation. | |
| - New version of xmllib.py by Sjoerd Mullender (0.2 with latest | |
| patches). | |
| - nntplib.py: statparse() no longer lowercases the message-id. | |
| - types.py: use type(__stdin__) for FileType. | |
| - urllib.py: fix translations for filenames with "funny" characters. | |
| Patch by Sjoerd Mullender. Note that if you subclass one of the | |
| URLopener classes, and you have copied code from the old urllib.py, | |
| your subclass may stop working. A long-term solution is to provide | |
| more methods so that you don't have to copy code. | |
| - cgi.py: In read_multi, allow a subclass to override the class we | |
| instantiate when we create a recursive instance, by setting the class | |
| variable 'FieldStorageClass' to the desired class. By default, this | |
| is set to None, in which case we use self.__class__ (as before). | |
| Also, a patch by Jim Fulton to pass additional arguments to recursive | |
| calls to the FieldStorage constructor from its read_multi method. | |
| - UserList.py: In __getslice__, use self.__class__ instead of | |
| UserList. | |
| - In SimpleHTTPServer.py, the server specified in test() should be | |
| BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer, in case the request handler should want to | |
| reference the two attributes added by BaseHTTPServer.server_bind. (By | |
| Jeff Rush, for Bobo). Also open the file in binary mode, so serving | |
| images from a Windows box might actually work. | |
| - In CGIHTTPServer.py, the list of acceptable formats is -split- | |
| on spaces but -joined- on commas, resulting in double commas | |
| in the joined text. (By Jeff Rush.) | |
| - SocketServer.py, patch by Jeff Bauer: a minor change to declare two | |
| new threaded versions of Unix Server classes, using the ThreadingMixIn | |
| class: ThreadingUnixStreamServer, ThreadingUnixDatagramServer. | |
| - bdb.py: fix bomb on deleting a temporary breakpoint: there's no | |
| method do_delete(); do_clear() was meant. By Greg Ward. | |
| - getopt.py: accept a non-list sequence for the long options (request | |
| by Jack Jansen). Because it might be a common mistake to pass a | |
| single string, this situation is treated separately. Also added | |
| docstrings (copied from the library manual) and removed the (now | |
| redundant) module comments. | |
| - tempfile.py: improvements to avoid security leaks. | |
| - code.py: moved compile_command() to new module codeop.py. | |
| - pickle.py: support pickle format 1.3 (binary float added). By Jim | |
| Fulton. Also get rid of the undocumented obsolete Pickler dump_special | |
| method. | |
| - uu.py: Move 'import sys' to top of module, as noted by Tim Peters. | |
| - imaplib.py: fix problem with some versions of IMAP4 servers that | |
| choose to mix the case in their CAPABILITIES response. | |
| - cmp.py: use (f1, f2) as cache key instead of f1 + ' ' + f2. Noted | |
| by Fredrik Lundh. | |
| Changes to extension modules | |
| ---------------------------- | |
| - More doc strings for several modules were contributed by Chris | |
| Petrilli: math, cmath, fcntl. | |
| - Fixed a bug in zlibmodule.c that could cause core dumps on | |
| decompression of rarely occurring input. | |
| - cPickle.c: new version from Jim Fulton, with Open Source copyright | |
| notice. Also, initialize self->safe_constructors early on to prevent | |
| crash in early dealloc. | |
| - cStringIO.c: new version from Jim Fulton, with Open Source copyright | |
| notice. Also fixed a core dump in cStringIO.c when doing seeks. | |
| - mpzmodule.c: fix signed character usage in mpz.mpz(stringobjecty). | |
| - readline.c: Bernard Herzog pointed out that rl_parse_and_bind | |
| modifies its argument string (bad function!), so we make a temporary | |
| copy. | |
| - sunaudiodev.c: Barry Warsaw added more smarts to get the device and | |
| control pseudo-device, per audio(7I). | |
| Changes to tools | |
| ---------------- | |
| - New, improved version of Barry Warsaw's Misc/python-mode.el (editing | |
| support for Emacs). | |
| - tabnanny.py: added a -q ('quiet') option to tabnanny, which causes | |
| only the names of offending files to be printed. | |
| - freeze: when printing missing modules, also print the module they | |
| were imported from. | |
| - untabify.py: patch by Detlef Lannert to implement -t option | |
| (set tab size). | |
| Changes to Tkinter | |
| ------------------ | |
| - grid_bbox(): support new Tk API: grid bbox ?column row? ?column2 | |
| row2? | |
| - _tkinter.c: RajGopal Srinivasan noted that the latest code (1.5.2a2) | |
| doesn't work when running in a non-threaded environment. He added | |
| some #ifdefs that fix this. | |
| Changes to the Python/C API | |
| --------------------------- | |
| - Bumped API version number to 1008 -- enough things have changed! | |
| - There's a new macro, PyThreadState_GET(), which does the same work | |
| as PyThreadState_Get() without the overhead of a function call (it | |
| also avoids the error check). The two top calling locations of | |
| PyThreadState_Get() have been changed to use this macro. | |
| - All symbols intended for export from a DLL or shared library are now | |
| marked as such (with the DL_IMPORT() macro) in the header file that | |
| declares them. This was needed for the BeOS port, and should also | |
| make some other ports easier. The PC port no longer needs the file | |
| with exported symbols (PC/python_nt.def). There's also a DL_EXPORT | |
| macro which is only used for init methods in extension modules, and | |
| for Py_Main(). | |
| Invisible changes to internals | |
| ------------------------------ | |
| - Fixed a bug in new_buffersize() in fileobject.c which could | |
| return a buffer size that was way too large. | |
| - Use PySys_WriteStderr instead of fprintf in most places. | |
| - dictobject.c: remove dead code discovered by Vladimir Marangozov. | |
| - tupleobject.c: make tuples less hungry -- an extra item was | |
| allocated but never used. Tip by Vladimir Marangozov. | |
| - mymath.h: Metrowerks PRO4 finally fixes the hypot snafu. (Jack | |
| Jansen) | |
| - import.c: Jim Fulton fixes a reference count bug in | |
| PyEval_GetGlobals. | |
| - glmodule.c: check in the changed version after running the stubber | |
| again -- this solves the conflict with curses over the 'clear' entry | |
| point much nicer. (Jack Jansen had checked in the changes to cstubs | |
| eons ago, but I never regenrated glmodule.c :-( ) | |
| - frameobject.c: fix reference count bug in PyFrame_New. Vladimir | |
| Marangozov. | |
| - stropmodule.c: add a missing DECREF in an error exit. Submitted by | |
| Jonathan Giddy. | |
| ====================================================================== | |
| From 1.5.2a1 to 1.5.2a2 | |
| ======================= | |
| General | |
| ------- | |
| - It is now a syntax error to have a function argument without a | |
| default following one with a default. | |
| - __file__ is now set to the .py file if it was parsed (it used to | |
| always be the .pyc/.pyo file). | |
| - Don't exit with a fatal error during initialization when there's a | |
| problem with the exceptions.py module. | |
| - New environment variable PYTHONOPTIMIZE can be used to set -O. | |
| - New version of python-mode.el for Emacs. | |
| Miscellaneous fixed bugs | |
| ------------------------ | |
| - No longer print the (confusing) error message about stack underflow | |
| while compiling. | |
| - Some threading and locking bugs fixed. | |
| - When errno is zero, report "Error", not "Success". | |
| Documentation | |
| ------------- | |
| - Documentation will be released separately. | |
| - Doc strings added to array and md5 modules by Chris Petrilli. | |
| Ports and build procedure | |
| ------------------------- | |
| - Stop installing when a move or copy fails. | |
| - New version of the OS/2 port code by Jeff Rush. | |
| - The makesetup script handles absolute filenames better. | |
| - The 'new' module is now enabled by default in the Setup file. | |
| - I *think* I've solved the problem with the Linux build blowing up | |
| sometimes due to a conflict between sigcheck/intrcheck and | |
| signalmodule. | |
| Built-in functions | |
| ------------------ | |
| - The second argument to apply() can now be any sequence, not just a | |
| tuple. | |
| Built-in types | |
| -------------- | |
| - Lists have a new method: L1.extend(L2) is equivalent to the common | |
| idiom L1[len(L1):] = L2. | |
| - Better error messages when a sequence is indexed with a non-integer. | |
| - Bettter error message when calling a non-callable object (include | |
| the type in the message). | |
| Python services | |
| --------------- | |
| - New version of cPickle.c fixes some bugs. | |
| - pickle.py: improved instantiation error handling. | |
| - code.py: reworked quite a bit. New base class | |
| InteractiveInterpreter and derived class InteractiveConsole. Fixed | |
| several problems in compile_command(). | |
| - py_compile.py: print error message and continue on syntax errors. | |
| Also fixed an old bug with the fstat code (it was never used). | |
| - pyclbr.py: support submodules of packages. | |
| String Services | |
| --------------- | |
| - StringIO.py: raise the right exception (ValueError) for attempted | |
| I/O on closed StringIO objects. | |
| - re.py: fixed a bug in subn(), which caused .groups() to fail inside | |
| the replacement function called by sub(). | |
| - The struct module has a new format 'P': void * in native mode. | |
| Generic OS Services | |
| ------------------- | |
| - Module time: Y2K robustness. 2-digit year acceptance depends on | |
| value of time.accept2dyear, initialized from env var PYTHONY2K, | |
| default 0. Years 00-68 mean 2000-2068, while 69-99 mean 1969-1999 | |
| (POSIX or X/Open recommendation). | |
| - os.path: normpath(".//x") should return "x", not "/x". | |
| - getpass.py: fall back on default_getpass() when sys.stdin.fileno() | |
| doesn't work. | |
| - tempfile.py: regenerate the template after a fork() call. | |
| Optional OS Services | |
| -------------------- | |
| - In the signal module, disable restarting interrupted system calls | |
| when we have siginterrupt(). | |
| Debugger | |
| -------- | |
| - No longer set __args__; this feature is no longer supported and can | |
| affect the debugged code. | |
| - cmd.py, pdb.py and bdb.py have been overhauled by Richard Wolff, who | |
| added aliases and some other useful new features, e.g. much better | |
| breakpoint support: temporary breakpoint, disabled breakpoints, | |
| breakpoints with ignore counts, and conditions; breakpoints can be set | |
| on a file before it is loaded. | |
| Profiler | |
| -------- | |
| - Changes so that JPython can use it. Also fix the calibration code | |
| so it actually works again | |
| . | |
| Internet Protocols and Support | |
| ------------------------------ | |
| - imaplib.py: new version from Piers Lauder. | |
| - smtplib.py: change sendmail() method to accept a single string or a | |
| list or strings as the destination (commom newbie mistake). | |
| - poplib.py: LIST with a msg argument fixed. | |
| - urlparse.py: some optimizations for common case (http). | |
| - urllib.py: support content-length in info() for ftp protocol; | |
| support for a progress meter through a third argument to | |
| urlretrieve(); commented out gopher test (the test site is dead). | |
| Internet Data handling | |
| ---------------------- | |
| - sgmllib.py: support tags with - or . in their name. | |
| - mimetypes.py: guess_type() understands 'data' URLs. | |
| Restricted Execution | |
| -------------------- | |
| - The classes rexec.RModuleLoader and rexec.RModuleImporter no | |
| longer exist. | |
| Tkinter | |
| ------- | |
| - When reporting an exception, store its info in sys.last_*. Also, | |
| write all of it to stderr. | |
| - Added NS, EW, and NSEW constants, for grid's sticky option. | |
| - Fixed last-minute bug in 1.5.2a1 release: need to include "mytime.h". | |
| - Make bind variants without a sequence return a tuple of sequences | |
| (formerly it returned a string, which wasn't very convenient). | |
| - Add image commands to the Text widget (these are new in Tk 8.0). | |
| - Added new listbox and canvas methods: {xview,yview}_{scroll,moveto}.) | |
| - Improved the thread code (but you still can't call update() from | |
| another thread on Windows). | |
| - Fixed unnecessary references to _default_root in the new dialog | |
| modules. | |
| - Miscellaneous problems fixed. | |
| Windows General | |
| --------------- | |
| - Call LoadLibraryEx(..., ..., LOAD_WITH_ALTERED_SEARCH_PATH) to | |
| search for dependent dlls in the directory containing the .pyd. | |
| - In debugging mode, call DebugBreak() in Py_FatalError(). | |
| Windows Installer | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Install zlib.dll in the DLLs directory instead of in the win32 | |
| system directory, to avoid conflicts with other applications that have | |
| their own zlib.dll. | |
| Test Suite | |
| ---------- | |
| - test_long.py: new test for long integers, by Tim Peters. | |
| - regrtest.py: improved so it can be used for other test suites as | |
| well. | |
| - test_strftime.py: use re to compare test results, to support legal | |
| variants (e.g. on Linux). | |
| Tools and Demos | |
| --------------- | |
| - Four new scripts in Tools/scripts: crlf.py and lfcr.py (to | |
| remove/add Windows style '\r\n' line endings), untabify.py (to remove | |
| tabs), and rgrep.yp (reverse grep). | |
| - Improvements to Tools/freeze/. Each Python module is now written to | |
| its own C file. This prevents some compilers or assemblers from | |
| blowing up on large frozen programs, and saves recompilation time if | |
| only a few modules are changed. Other changes too, e.g. new command | |
| line options -x and -i. | |
| - Much improved (and smaller!) version of Tools/scripts/mailerdaemon.py. | |
| Python/C API | |
| ------------ | |
| - New mechanism to support extensions of the type object while | |
| remaining backward compatible with extensions compiled for previous | |
| versions of Python 1.5. A flags field indicates presence of certain | |
| fields. | |
| - Addition to the buffer API to differentiate access to bytes and | |
| 8-bit characters (in anticipation of Unicode characters). | |
| - New argument parsing format t# ("text") to indicate 8-bit | |
| characters; s# simply means 8-bit bytes, for backwards compatibility. | |
| - New object type, bufferobject.c is an example and can be used to | |
| create buffers from memory. | |
| - Some support for 64-bit longs, including some MS platforms. | |
| - Many calls to fprintf(stderr, ...) have been replaced with calls to | |
| PySys_WriteStderr(...). | |
| - The calling context for PyOS_Readline() has changed: it must now be | |
| called with the interpreter lock held! It releases the lock around | |
| the call to the function pointed to by PyOS_ReadlineFunctionPointer | |
| (default PyOS_StdioReadline()). | |
| - New APIs PyLong_FromVoidPtr() and PyLong_AsVoidPtr(). | |
| - Renamed header file "thread.h" to "pythread.h". | |
| - The code string of code objects may now be anything that supports the | |
| buffer API. | |
| ====================================================================== | |
| From 1.5.1 to 1.5.2a1 | |
| ===================== | |
| General | |
| ------- | |
| - When searching for the library, a landmark that is a compiled module | |
| (string.pyc or string.pyo) is also accepted. | |
| - When following symbolic links to the python executable, use a loop | |
| so that a symlink to a symlink can work. | |
| - Added a hack so that when you type 'quit' or 'exit' at the | |
| interpreter, you get a friendly explanation of how to press Ctrl-D (or | |
| Ctrl-Z) to exit. | |
| - New and improved Misc/python-mode.el (Python mode for Emacs). | |
| - Revert a new feature in Unix dynamic loading: for one or two | |
| revisions, modules were loaded using the RTLD_GLOBAL flag. It turned | |
| out to be a bad idea. | |
| Miscellaneous fixed bugs | |
| ------------------------ | |
| - All patches on the patch page have been integrated. (But much more | |
| has been done!) | |
| - Several memory leaks plugged (e.g. the one for classes with a | |
| __getattr__ method). | |
| - Removed the only use of calloc(). This triggered an obscure bug on | |
| multiprocessor Sparc Solaris 2.6. | |
| - Fix a peculiar bug that would allow "import sys.time" to succeed | |
| (believing the built-in time module to be a part of the sys package). | |
| - Fix a bug in the overflow checking when converting a Python long to | |
| a C long (failed to convert -2147483648L, and some other cases). | |
| Documentation | |
| ------------- | |
| - Doc strings have been added to many extension modules: __builtin__, | |
| errno, select, signal, socket, sys, thread, time. Also to methods of | |
| list objects (try [].append.__doc__). A doc string on a type will now | |
| automatically be propagated to an instance if the instance has methods | |
| that are accessed in the usual way. | |
| - The documentation has been expanded and the formatting improved. | |
| (Remember that the documentation is now unbundled and has its own | |
| release cycle though; see http://www.python.org/doc/.) | |
| - Added Misc/Porting -- a mini-FAQ on porting to a new platform. | |
| Ports and build procedure | |
| ------------------------- | |
| - The BeOS port is now integrated. Courtesy Chris Herborth. | |
| - Symbol files for FreeBSD 2.x and 3.x have been contributed | |
| (Lib/plat-freebsd[23]/*). | |
| - Support HPUX 10.20 DCE threads. | |
| - Finally fixed the configure script so that (on SGI) if -OPT:Olimit=0 | |
| works, it won't also use -Olimit 1500 (which gives a warning for every | |
| file). Also support the SGI_ABI environment variable better. | |
| - The makesetup script now understands absolute pathnames ending in .o | |
| in the module -- it assumes it's a file for which we have no source. | |
| - Other miscellaneous improvements to the configure script and | |
| Makefiles. | |
| - The test suite now uses a different sound sample. | |
| Built-in functions | |
| ------------------ | |
| - Better checks for invalid input to int(), long(), string.atoi(), | |
| string.atol(). (Formerly, a sign without digits would be accepted as | |
| a legal ways to spell zero.) | |
| - Changes to map() and filter() to use the length of a sequence only | |
| as a hint -- if an IndexError happens earlier, take that. (Formerly, | |
| this was considered an error.) | |
| - Experimental feature in getattr(): a third argument can specify a | |
| default (instead of raising AttributeError). | |
| - Implement round() slightly different, so that for negative ndigits | |
| no additional errors happen in the last step. | |
| - The open() function now adds the filename to the exception when it | |
| fails. | |
| Built-in exceptions | |
| ------------------- | |
| - New standard exceptions EnvironmentError and PosixError. | |
| EnvironmentError is the base class for IOError and PosixError; | |
| PosixError is the same as os.error. All this so that either exception | |
| class can be instantiated with a third argument indicating a filename. | |
| The built-in function open() and most os/posix functions that take a | |
| filename argument now use this. | |
| Built-in types | |
| -------------- | |
| - List objects now have an experimental pop() method; l.pop() returns | |
| and removes the last item; l.pop(i) returns and removes the item at | |
| i. Also, the sort() method is faster again. Sorting is now also | |
| safer: it is impossible for the sorting function to modify the list | |
| while the sort is going on (which could cause core dumps). | |
| - Changes to comparisons: numbers are now smaller than any other type. | |
| This is done to prevent the circularity where [] < 0L < 1 < [] is | |
| true. As a side effect, cmp(None, 0) is now positive instead of | |
| negative. This *shouldn't* affect any working code, but I've found | |
| that the change caused several "sleeping" bugs to become active, so | |
| beware! | |
| - Instance methods may now have other callable objects than just | |
| Python functions as their im_func. Use new.instancemethod() or write | |
| your own C code to create them; new.instancemethod() may be called | |
| with None for the instance to create an unbound method. | |
| - Assignment to __name__, __dict__ or __bases__ of a class object is | |
| now allowed (with stringent type checks); also allow assignment to | |
| __getattr__ etc. The cached values for __getattr__ etc. are | |
| recomputed after such assignments (but not for derived classes :-( ). | |
| - Allow assignment to some attributes of function objects: func_code, | |
| func_defaults and func_doc / __doc__. (With type checks except for | |
| __doc__ / func_doc .) | |
| Python services | |
| --------------- | |
| - New tests (in Lib/test): reperf.py (regular expression benchmark), | |
| sortperf.py (list sorting benchmark), test_MimeWriter.py (test case | |
| for the MimeWriter module). | |
| - Generalized test/regrtest.py so that it is useful for testing other | |
| packages. | |
| - The ihooks.py module now understands package imports. | |
| - In code.py, add a class that subsumes Fredrik Lundh's | |
| PythonInterpreter class. The interact() function now uses this. | |
| - In rlcompleter.py, in completer(), return None instead of raising an | |
| IndexError when there are no more completions left. | |
| - Fixed the marshal module to test for certain common kinds of invalid | |
| input. (It's still not foolproof!) | |
| - In the operator module, add an alias (now the preferred name) | |
| "contains" for "sequenceincludes". | |
| String Services | |
| --------------- | |
| - In the string and strop modules, in the replace() function, treat an | |
| empty pattern as an error (since it's not clear what was meant!). | |
| - Some speedups to re.py, especially the string substitution and split | |
| functions. Also added new function/method findall(), to find all | |
| occurrences of a given substring. | |
| - In cStringIO, add better argument type checking and support the | |
| readonly 'closed' attribute (like regular files). | |
| - In the struct module, unsigned 1-2 byte sized formats no longer | |
| result in long integer values. | |
| Miscellaneous services | |
| ---------------------- | |
| - In whrandom.py, added new method and function randrange(), same as | |
| choice(range(start, stop, step)) but faster. This addresses the | |
| problem that randint() was accidentally defined as taking an inclusive | |
| range. Also, randint(a, b) is now redefined as randrange(a, b+1), | |
| adding extra range and type checking to its arguments! | |
| - Add some semi-thread-safety to random.gauss() (it used to be able to | |
| crash when invoked from separate threads; now the worst it can do is | |
| give a duplicate result occasionally). | |
| - Some restructuring and generalization done to cmd.py. | |
| - Major upgrade to ConfigParser.py; converted to using 're', added new | |
| exceptions, support underscore in section header and option name. No | |
| longer add 'name' option to every section; instead, add '__name__'. | |
| - In getpass.py, don't use raw_input() to ask for the password -- we | |
| don't want it to show up in the readline history! Also don't catch | |
| interrupts (the try-finally already does all necessary cleanup). | |
| Generic OS Services | |
| ------------------- | |
| - New functions in os.py: makedirs(), removedirs(), renames(). New | |
| variable: linesep (the line separator as found in binary files, | |
| i.e. '\n' on Unix, '\r\n' on DOS/Windows, '\r' on Mac. Do *not* use | |
| this with files opened in (default) text mode; the line separator used | |
| will always be '\n'! | |
| - Changes to the 'os.path' submodule of os.py: added getsize(), | |
| getmtime(), getatime() -- these fetch the most popular items from the | |
| stat return tuple. | |
| - In the time module, add strptime(), if it exists. (This parses a | |
| time according to a format -- the inverse of strftime().) Also, | |
| remove the call to mktime() from strftime() -- it messed up the | |
| formatting of some non-local times. | |
| - In the socket module, added a new function gethostbyname_ex(). | |
| Also, don't use #ifdef to test for some symbols that are enums on some | |
| platforms (and should exist everywhere). | |
| Optional OS Services | |
| -------------------- | |
| - Some fixes to gzip.py. In particular, the readlines() method now | |
| returns the lines *with* trailing newline characters, like readlines() | |
| of regular file objects. Also, it didn't work together with cPickle; | |
| fixed that. | |
| - In whichdb.py, support byte-swapped dbhash (bsddb) files. | |
| - In anydbm.py, look at the type of an existing database to determine | |
| which module to use to open it. (The anydbm.error exception is now a | |
| tuple.) | |
| Unix Services | |
| ------------- | |
| - In the termios module, in tcsetattr(), initialize the structure vy | |
| calling tcgetattr(). | |
| - Added some of the "wait status inspection" macros as functions to | |
| the posix module (and thus to the os module): WEXITSTATUS(), | |
| WIFEXITED(), WIFSIGNALED(), WIFSTOPPED(), WSTOPSIG(), WTERMSIG(). | |
| - In the syslog module, make the default facility more intuitive | |
| (matching the docs). | |
| Debugger | |
| -------- | |
| - In pdb.py, support for setting breaks on files/modules that haven't | |
| been loaded yet. | |
| Internet Protocols and Support | |
| ------------------------------ | |
| - Changes in urllib.py; sped up unquote() and quote(). Fixed an | |
| obscure bug in quote_plus(). Added urlencode(dict) -- convenience | |
| function for sending a POST request with urlopen(). Use the getpass | |
| module to ask for a password. Rewrote the (test) main program so that | |
| when used as a script, it can retrieve one or more URLs to stdout. | |
| Use -t to run the self-test. Made the proxy code work again. | |
| - In cgi.py, treat "HEAD" the same as "GET", so that CGI scripts don't | |
| fail when someone asks for their HEAD. Also, for POST, set the | |
| default content-type to application/x-www-form-urlencoded. Also, in | |
| FieldStorage.__init__(), when method='GET', always get the query | |
| string from environ['QUERY_STRING'] or sys.argv[1] -- ignore an | |
| explicitly passed in fp. | |
| - The smtplib.py module now supports ESMTP and has improved standard | |
| compliance, for picky servers. | |
| - Improved imaplib.py. | |
| - Fixed UDP support in SocketServer.py (it never worked). | |
| - Fixed a small bug in CGIHTTPServer.py. | |
| Internet Data handling | |
| ---------------------- | |
| - In rfc822.py, add a new class AddressList. Also support a new | |
| overridable method, isheader(). Also add a get() method similar to | |
| dictionaries (and make getheader() an alias for it). Also, be smarter | |
| about seekable (test whether fp.tell() works) and test for presence of | |
| unread() method before trying seeks. | |
| - In sgmllib.py, restore the call to report_unbalanced() that was lost | |
| long ago. Also some other improvements: handle <? processing | |
| instructions >, allow . and - in entity names, and allow \r\n as line | |
| separator. | |
| - Some restructuring and generalization done to multifile.py; support | |
| a 'seekable' flag. | |
| Restricted Execution | |
| -------------------- | |
| - Improvements to rexec.py: package support; support a (minimal) | |
| sys.exc_info(). Also made the (test) main program a bit fancier (you | |
| can now use it to run arbitrary Python scripts in restricted mode). | |
| Tkinter | |
| ------- | |
| - On Unix, Tkinter can now safely be used from a multi-threaded | |
| application. (Formerly, no threads would make progress while | |
| Tkinter's mainloop() was active, because it didn't release the Python | |
| interpreter lock.) Unfortunately, on Windows, threads other than the | |
| main thread should not call update() or update_idletasks() because | |
| this will deadlock the application. | |
| - An interactive interpreter that uses readline and Tkinter no longer | |
| uses up all available CPU time. | |
| - Even if readline is not used, Tk windows created in an interactive | |
| interpreter now get continuously updated. (This even works in Windows | |
| as long as you don't hit a key.) | |
| - New demos in Demo/tkinter/guido/: brownian.py, redemo.py, switch.py. | |
| - No longer register Tcl_finalize() as a low-level exit handler. It | |
| may call back into Python, and that's a bad idea. | |
| - Allow binding of Tcl commands (given as a string). | |
| - Some minor speedups; replace explicitly coded getint() with int() in | |
| most places. | |
| - In FileDialog.py, remember the directory of the selected file, if | |
| given. | |
| - Change the names of all methods in the Wm class: they are now | |
| wm_title(), etc. The old names (title() etc.) are still defined as | |
| aliases. | |
| - Add a new method of interpreter objects, interpaddr(). This returns | |
| the address of the Tcl interpreter object, as an integer. Not very | |
| useful for the Python programmer, but this can be called by another C | |
| extension that needs to make calls into the Tcl/Tk C API and needs to | |
| get the address of the Tcl interpreter object. A simple cast of the | |
| return value to (Tcl_Interp *) will do the trick. | |
| Windows General | |
| --------------- | |
| - Don't insist on proper case for module source files if the filename | |
| is all uppercase (e.g. FOO.PY now matches foo; but FOO.py still | |
| doesn't). This should address problems with this feature on | |
| oldfashioned filesystems (Novell servers?). | |
| Windows Library | |
| --------------- | |
| - os.environ is now all uppercase, but accesses are case insensitive, | |
| and the putenv() calls made as a side effect of changing os.environ | |
| are case preserving. | |
| - Removed samefile(), sameopenfile(), samestat() from os.path (aka | |
| ntpath.py) -- these cannot be made to work reliably (at least I | |
| wouldn't know how). | |
| - Fixed os.pipe() so that it returns file descriptors acceptable to | |
| os.read() and os.write() (like it does on Unix), rather than Windows | |
| file handles. | |
| - Added a table of WSA error codes to socket.py. | |
| - In the select module, put the (huge) file descriptor arrays on the | |
| heap. | |
| - The getpass module now raises KeyboardInterrupt when it sees ^C. | |
| - In mailbox.py, fix tell/seek when using files opened in text mode. | |
| - In rfc822.py, fix tell/seek when using files opened in text mode. | |
| - In the msvcrt extension module, release the interpreter lock for | |
| calls that may block: _locking(), _getch(), _getche(). Also fix a | |
| bogus error return when open_osfhandle() doesn't have the right | |
| argument list. | |
| Windows Installer | |
| ----------------- | |
| - The registry key used is now "1.5" instead of "1.5.x" -- so future | |
| versions of 1.5 and Mark Hammond's win32all installer don't need to be | |
| resynchronized. | |
| Windows Tools | |
| ------------- | |
| - Several improvements to freeze specifically for Windows. | |
| Windows Build Procedure | |
| ----------------------- | |
| - The VC++ project files and the WISE installer have been moved to the | |
| PCbuild subdirectory, so they are distributed in the same subdirectory | |
| where they must be used. This avoids confusion. | |
| - New project files for Windows 3.1 port by Jim Ahlstrom. | |
| - Got rid of the obsolete subdirectory PC/setup_nt/. | |
| - The projects now use distinct filenames for the .exe, .dll, .lib and | |
| .pyd files built in debug mode (by appending "_d" to the base name, | |
| before the extension). This makes it easier to switch between the two | |
| and get the right versions. There's a pragma in config.h that directs | |
| the linker to include the appropriate .lib file (so python15.lib no | |
| longer needs to be explicit in your project). | |
| - The installer now installs more files (e.g. config.h). The idea is | |
| that you shouldn't need the source distribution if you want build your | |
| own extensions in C or C++. | |
| Tools and Demos | |
| --------------- | |
| - New script nm2def.py by Marc-Andre Lemburg, to construct | |
| PC/python_nt.def automatically (some hand editing still required). | |
| - New tool ndiff.py: Tim Peters' text diffing tool. | |
| - Various and sundry improvements to the freeze script. | |
| - The script texi2html.py (which was part of the Doc tree but is no | |
| longer used there) has been moved to the Tools/scripts subdirectory. | |
| - Some generalizations in the webchecker code. There's now a | |
| primnitive gui for websucker.py: wsgui.py. (In Tools/webchecker/.) | |
| - The ftpmirror.py script now handles symbolic links properly, and | |
| also files with multiple spaces in their names. | |
| - The 1.5.1 tabnanny.py suffers an assert error if fed a script whose | |
| last line is both indented and lacks a newline. This is now fixed. | |
| Python/C API | |
| ------------ | |
| - Added missing prototypes for PyEval_CallFunction() and | |
| PyEval_CallMethod(). | |
| - New macro PyList_SET_ITEM(). | |
| - New macros to access object members for PyFunction, PyCFunction | |
| objects. | |
| - New APIs PyImport_AppendInittab() and PyImport_ExtendInittab() to | |
| dynamically add one or many entries to the table of built-in modules. | |
| - New macro Py_InitModule3(name, methods, doc) which calls | |
| Py_InitModule4() with appropriate arguments. (The -4 variant requires | |
| you to pass an obscure version number constant which is always the same.) | |
| - New APIs PySys_WriteStdout() and PySys_WriteStderr() to write to | |
| sys.stdout or sys.stderr using a printf-like interface. (Used in | |
| _tkinter.c, for example.) | |
| - New APIs for conversion between Python longs and C 'long long' if | |
| your compiler supports it. | |
| - PySequence_In() is now called PySequence_Contains(). | |
| (PySequence_In() is still supported for b/w compatibility; it is | |
| declared obsolete because its argument order is confusing.) | |
| - PyDict_GetItem() and PyDict_GetItemString() are changed so that they | |
| *never* raise an exception -- (even if the hash() fails, simply clear | |
| the error). This was necessary because there is lots of code out | |
| there that already assumes this. | |
| - Changes to PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_List() to use the | |
| length of a sequence only as a hint -- if an IndexError happens | |
| earlier, take that. (Formerly, this was considered an error.) | |
| - Reformatted abstract.c to give it a more familiar "look" and fixed | |
| many error checking bugs. | |
| - Add NULL pointer checks to all calls of a C function through a type | |
| object and extensions (e.g. nb_add). | |
| - The code that initializes sys.path now calls Py_GetPythonHome() | |
| instead of getenv("PYTHONHOME"). This, together with the new API | |
| Py_SetPythonHome(), makes it easier for embedding applications to | |
| change the notion of Python's "home" directory (where the libraries | |
| etc. are sought). | |
| - Fixed a very old bug in the parsing of "O?" format specifiers. | |
| ====================================================================== | |
| ======================================== | |
| ==> Release 1.5.1 (October 31, 1998) <== | |
| ======================================== | |
| From 1.5 to 1.5.1 | |
| ================= | |
| General | |
| ------- | |
| - The documentation is now unbundled. It has also been extensively | |
| modified (mostly to implement a new and more uniform formatting | |
| style). We figure that most people will prefer to download one of the | |
| preformatted documentation sets (HTML, PostScript or PDF) and that | |
| only a minority have a need for the LaTeX or FrameMaker sources. Of | |
| course, the unbundled documentation sources still released -- just not | |
| in the same archive file, and perhaps not on the same date. | |
| - All bugs noted on the errors page (and many unnoted) are fixed. All | |
| new bugs take their places. | |
| - No longer a core dump when attempting to print (or repr(), or str()) | |
| a list or dictionary that contains an instance of itself; instead, the | |
| recursive entry is printed as [...] or {...}. See Py_ReprEnter() and | |
| Py_ReprLeave() below. Comparisons of such objects still go beserk, | |
| since this requires a different kind of fix; fortunately, this is a | |
| less common scenario in practice. | |
| Syntax change | |
| ------------- | |
| - The raise statement can now be used without arguments, to re-raise | |
| a previously set exception. This should be used after catching an | |
| exception with an except clause only, either in the except clause or | |
| later in the same function. | |
| Import and module handling | |
| -------------------------- | |
| - The implementation of import has changed to use a mutex (when | |
| threading is supported). This means that when two threads | |
| simultaneously import the same module, the import statements are | |
| serialized. Recursive imports are not affected. | |
| - Rewrote the finalization code almost completely, to be much more | |
| careful with the order in which modules are destroyed. Destructors | |
| will now generally be able to reference built-in names such as None | |
| without trouble. | |
| - Case-insensitive platforms such as Mac and Windows require the case | |
| of a module's filename to match the case of the module name as | |
| specified in the import statement (see below). | |
| - The code for figuring out the default path now distinguishes between | |
| files, modules, executable files, and directories. When expecting a | |
| module, we also look for the .pyc or .pyo file. | |
| Parser/tokenizer changes | |
| ------------------------ | |
| - The tokenizer can now warn you when your source code mixes tabs and | |
| spaces for indentation in a manner that depends on how much a tab is | |
| worth in spaces. Use "python -t" or "python -v" to enable this | |
| option. Use "python -tt" to turn the warnings into errors. (See also | |
| tabnanny.py and tabpolice.py below.) | |
| - Return unsigned characters from tok_nextc(), so '\377' isn't | |
| mistaken for an EOF character. | |
| - Fixed two pernicious bugs in the tokenizer that only affected AIX. | |
| One was actually a general bug that was triggered by AIX's smaller I/O | |
| buffer size. The other was a bug in the AIX optimizer's loop | |
| unrolling code; swapping two statements made the problem go away. | |
| Tools, demos and miscellaneous files | |
| ------------------------------------ | |
| - There's a new version of Misc/python-mode.el (the Emacs mode for | |
| Python) which is much smarter about guessing the indentation style | |
| used in a particular file. Lots of other cool features too! | |
| - There are two new tools in Tools/scripts: tabnanny.py and | |
| tabpolice.py, implementing two different ways of checking whether a | |
| file uses indentation in a way that is sensitive to the interpretation | |
| of a tab. The preferred module is tabnanny.py (by Tim Peters). | |
| - Some new demo programs: | |
| Demo/tkinter/guido/paint.py -- Dave Mitchell | |
| Demo/sockets/unixserver.py -- Piet van Oostrum | |
| - Much better freeze support. The freeze script can now freeze | |
| hierarchical module names (with a corresponding change to import.c), | |
| and has a few extra options (e.g. to suppress freezing specific | |
| modules). It also does much more on Windows NT. | |
| - Version 1.0 of the faq wizard is included (only very small changes | |
| since version 0.9.0). | |
| - New feature for the ftpmirror script: when removing local files | |
| (i.e., only when -r is used), do a recursive delete. | |
| Configuring and building Python | |
| ------------------------------- | |
| - Get rid of the check for -linet -- recent Sequent Dynix systems don't | |
| need this any more and apparently it screws up their configuration. | |
| - Some changes because gcc on SGI doesn't support '-all'. | |
| - Changed the build rules to use $(LIBRARY) instead of | |
| -L.. -lpython$(VERSION) | |
| since the latter trips up the SunOS 4.1.x linker (sigh). | |
| - Fix the bug where the '# dgux is broken' comment in the Makefile | |
| tripped over Make on some platforms. | |
| - Changes for AIX: install the python.exp file; properly use | |
| $(srcdir); the makexp_aix script now removes C++ entries of the form | |
| Class::method. | |
| - Deleted some Makefile targets only used by the (long obsolete) | |
| gMakefile hacks. | |
| Extension modules | |
| ----------------- | |
| - Performance and threading improvements to the socket and bsddb | |
| modules, by Christopher Lindblad of Infoseek. | |
| - Added operator.__not__ and operator.not_. | |
| - In the thread module, when a thread exits due to an unhandled | |
| exception, don't store the exception information in sys.last_*; it | |
| prevents proper calling of destructors of local variables. | |
| - Fixed a number of small bugs in the cPickle module. | |
| - Changed find() and rfind() in the strop module so that | |
| find("x","",2) returns -1, matching the implementation in string.py. | |
| - In the time module, be more careful with the result of ctime(), and | |
| test for HAVE_MKTIME before usinmg mktime(). | |
| - Doc strings contributed by Mitch Chapman to the termios, pwd, gdbm | |
| modules. | |
| - Added the LOG_SYSLOG constant to the syslog module, if defined. | |
| Standard library modules | |
| ------------------------ | |
| - All standard library modules have been converted to an indentation | |
| style using either only tabs or only spaces -- never a mixture -- if | |
| they weren't already consistent according to tabnanny. This means | |
| that the new -t option (see above) won't complain about standard | |
| library modules. | |
| - New standard library modules: | |
| threading -- GvR and the thread-sig | |
| Java style thread objects -- USE THIS!!! | |
| getpass -- Piers Lauder | |
| simple utilities to prompt for a password and to | |
| retrieve the current username | |
| imaplib -- Piers Lauder | |
| interface for the IMAP4 protocol | |
| poplib -- David Ascher, Piers Lauder | |
| interface for the POP3 protocol | |
| smtplib -- Dragon De Monsyne | |
| interface for the SMTP protocol | |
| - Some obsolete modules moved to a separate directory (Lib/lib-old) | |
| which is *not* in the default module search path: | |
| Para | |
| addpack | |
| codehack | |
| fmt | |
| lockfile | |
| newdir | |
| ni | |
| rand | |
| tb | |
| - New version of the PCRE code (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions -- | |
| the re module and the supporting pcre extension) by Andrew Kuchling. | |
| Incompatible new feature in re.sub(): the handling of escapes in the | |
| replacement string has changed. | |
| - Interface change in the copy module: a __deepcopy__ method is now | |
| called with the memo dictionary as an argument. | |
| - Feature change in the tokenize module: differentiate between NEWLINE | |
| token (an official newline) and NL token (a newline that the grammar | |
| ignores). | |
| - Several bugfixes to the urllib module. It is now truly thread-safe, | |
| and several bugs and a portability problem have been fixed. New | |
| features, all due to Sjoerd Mullender: When creating a temporary file, | |
| it gives it an appropriate suffix. Support the "data:" URL scheme. | |
| The open() method uses the tempcache. | |
| - New version of the xmllib module (this time with a test suite!) by | |
| Sjoerd Mullender. | |
| - Added debugging code to the telnetlib module, to be able to trace | |
| the actual traffic. | |
| - In the rfc822 module, added support for deleting a header (still no | |
| support for adding headers, though). Also fixed a bug where an | |
| illegal address would cause a crash in getrouteaddr(), fixed a | |
| sign reversal in mktime_tz(), and use the local timezone by default | |
| (the latter two due to Bill van Melle). | |
| - The normpath() function in the dospath and ntpath modules no longer | |
| does case normalization -- for that, use the separate function | |
| normcase() (which always existed); normcase() has been sped up and | |
| fixed (it was the cause of a crash in Mark Hammond's installer in | |
| certain locales). | |
| - New command supported by the ftplib module: rmd(); also fixed some | |
| minor bugs. | |
| - The profile module now uses a different timer function by default -- | |
| time.clock() is generally better than os.times(). This makes it work | |
| better on Windows NT, too. | |
| - The tempfile module now recovers when os.getcwd() raises an | |
| exception. | |
| - Fixed some bugs in the random module; gauss() was subtly wrong, and | |
| vonmisesvariate() should return a full circle. Courtesy Mike Miller, | |
| Lambert Meertens (gauss()), and Magnus Kessler (vonmisesvariate()). | |
| - Better default seed in the whrandom module, courtesy Andrew Kuchling. | |
| - Fix slow close() in shelve module. | |
| - The Unix mailbox class in the mailbox module is now more robust when | |
| a line begins with the string "From " but is definitely not the start | |
| of a new message. The pattern used can be changed by overriding a | |
| method or class variable. | |
| - Added a rmtree() function to the copy module. | |
| - Fixed several typos in the pickle module. Also fixed problems when | |
| unpickling in restricted execution environments. | |
| - Added docstrings and fixed a typo in the py_compile and compileall | |
| modules. At Mark Hammond's repeated request, py_compile now append a | |
| newline to the source if it needs one. Both modules support an extra | |
| parameter to specify the purported source filename (to be used in | |
| error messages). | |
| - Some performance tweaks by Jeremy Hylton to the gzip module. | |
| - Fixed a bug in the merge order of dictionaries in the ConfigParser | |
| module. Courtesy Barry Warsaw. | |
| - In the multifile module, support the optional second parameter to | |
| seek() when possible. | |
| - Several fixes to the gopherlib module by Lars Marius Garshol. Also, | |
| urlparse now correctly handles Gopher URLs with query strings. | |
| - Fixed a tiny bug in format_exception() in the traceback module. | |
| Also rewrite tb_lineno() to be compatible with JPython (and not | |
| disturb the current exception!); by Jim Hugunin. | |
| - The httplib module is more robust when servers send a short response | |
| -- courtesy Tim O'Malley. | |
| Tkinter and friends | |
| ------------------- | |
| - Various typos and bugs fixed. | |
| - New module Tkdnd implements a drag-and-drop protocol (within one | |
| application only). | |
| - The event_*() widget methods have been restructured slightly -- they | |
| no longer use the default root. | |
| - The interfaces for the bind*() and unbind() widget methods have been | |
| redesigned; the bind*() methods now return the name of the Tcl command | |
| created for the callback, and this can be passed as an optional | |
| argument to unbind() in order to delete the command (normally, such | |
| commands are automatically unbound when the widget is destroyed, but | |
| for some applications this isn't enough). | |
| - Variable objects now have trace methods to interface to Tcl's | |
| variable tracing facilities. | |
| - Image objects now have an optional keyword argument, 'master', to | |
| specify a widget (tree) to which they belong. The image_names() and | |
| image_types() calls are now also widget methods. | |
| - There's a new global call, Tkinter.NoDefaultRoot(), which disables | |
| all use of the default root by the Tkinter library. This is useful to | |
| debug applications that are in the process of being converted from | |
| relying on the default root to explicit specification of the root | |
| widget. | |
| - The 'exit' command is deleted from the Tcl interpreter, since it | |
| provided a loophole by which one could (accidentally) exit the Python | |
| interpreter without invoking any cleanup code. | |
| - Tcl_Finalize() is now registered as a Python low-level exit handle, | |
| so Tcl will be finalized when Python exits. | |
| The Python/C API | |
| ---------------- | |
| - New function PyThreadState_GetDict() returns a per-thread dictionary | |
| intended for storing thread-local global variables. | |
| - New functions Py_ReprEnter() and Py_ReprLeave() use the per-thread | |
| dictionary to allow recursive container types to detect recursion in | |
| their repr(), str() and print implementations. | |
| - New function PyObject_Not(x) calculates (not x) according to Python's | |
| standard rules (basically, it negates the outcome PyObject_IsTrue(x). | |
| - New function _PyModule_Clear(), which clears a module's dictionary | |
| carefully without removing the __builtins__ entry. This is implied | |
| when a module object is deallocated (this used to clear the dictionary | |
| completely). | |
| - New function PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(), which extends | |
| PyImport_ExecCodeModule() by adding an extra parameter to pass it the | |
| true file. | |
| - New functions Py_GetPythonHome() and Py_SetPythonHome(), intended to | |
| allow embedded applications to force a different value for PYTHONHOME. | |
| - New global flag Py_FrozenFlag is set when this is a "frozen" Python | |
| binary; it suppresses warnings about not being able to find the | |
| standard library directories. | |
| - New global flag Py_TabcheckFlag is incremented by the -t option and | |
| causes the tokenizer to issue warnings or errors about inconsistent | |
| mixing of tabs and spaces for indentation. | |
| Miscellaneous minor changes and bug fixes | |
| ----------------------------------------- | |
| - Improved the error message when an attribute of an attribute-less | |
| object is requested -- include the name of the attribute and the type | |
| of the object in the message. | |
| - Sped up int(), long(), float() a bit. | |
| - Fixed a bug in list.sort() that would occasionally dump core. | |
| - Fixed a bug in PyNumber_Power() that caused numeric arrays to fail | |
| when taken tothe real power. | |
| - Fixed a number of bugs in the file reading code, at least one of | |
| which could cause a core dump on NT, and one of which would | |
| occasionally cause file.read() to return less than the full contents | |
| of the file. | |
| - Performance hack by Vladimir Marangozov for stack frame creation. | |
| - Make sure setvbuf() isn't used unless HAVE_SETVBUF is defined. | |
| Windows 95/NT | |
| ------------- | |
| - The .lib files are now part of the distribution; they are collected | |
| in the subdirectory "libs" of the installation directory. | |
| - The extension modules (.pyd files) are now collected in a separate | |
| subdirectory of the installation directory named "DLLs". | |
| - The case of a module's filename must now match the case of the | |
| module name as specified in the import statement. This is an | |
| experimental feature -- if it turns out to break in too many | |
| situations, it will be removed (or disabled by default) in the future. | |
| It can be disabled on a per-case basis by setting the environment | |
| variable PYTHONCASEOK (to any value). | |
| ====================================================================== | |
| ===================================== | |
| ==> Release 1.5 (January 3, 1998) <== | |
| ===================================== | |
| From 1.5b2 to 1.5 | |
| ================= | |
| - Newly documentated module: BaseHTTPServer.py, thanks to Greg Stein. | |
| - Added doc strings to string.py, stropmodule.c, structmodule.c, | |
| thanks to Charles Waldman. | |
| - Many nits fixed in the manuals, thanks to Fred Drake and many others | |
| (especially Rob Hooft and Andrew Kuchling). The HTML version now uses | |
| HTML markup instead of inline GIF images for tables; only two images | |
| are left (for obsure bits of math). The index of the HTML version has | |
| also been much improved. Finally, it is once again possible to | |
| generate an Emacs info file from the library manual (but I don't | |
| commit to supporting this in future versions). | |
| - New module: telnetlib.py (a simple telnet client library). | |
| - New tool: Tools/versioncheck/, by Jack Jansen. | |
| - Ported zlibmodule.c and bsddbmodule.c to NT; The project file for MS | |
| DevStudio 5.0 now includes new subprojects to build the zlib and bsddb | |
| extension modules. | |
| - Many small changes again to Tkinter.py -- mostly bugfixes and adding | |
| missing routines. Thanks to Greg McFarlane for reporting a bunch of | |
| problems and proofreading my fixes. | |
| - The re module and its documentation are up to date with the latest | |
| version released to the string-sig (Dec. 22). | |
| - Stop test_grp.py from failing when the /etc/group file is empty | |
| (yes, this happens!). | |
| - Fix bug in integer conversion (mystrtoul.c) that caused | |
| 4294967296==0 to be true! | |
| - The VC++ 4.2 project file should be complete again. | |
| - In tempfile.py, use a better template on NT, and add a new optional | |
| argument "suffix" with default "" to specify a specific extension for | |
| the temporary filename (needed sometimes on NT but perhaps also handy | |
| elsewhere). | |
| - Fixed some bugs in the FAQ wizard, and converted it to use re | |
| instead of regex. | |
| - Fixed a mysteriously undetected error in dlmodule.c (it was using a | |
| totally bogus routine name to raise an exception). | |
| - Fixed bug in import.c which wasn't using the new "dos-8x3" name yet. | |
| - Hopefully harmless changes to the build process to support shared | |
| libraries on DG/UX. This adds a target to create | |
| libpython$(VERSION).so; however this target is *only* for DG/UX. | |
| - Fixed a bug in the new format string error checking in getargs.c. | |
| - A simple fix for infinite recursion when printing __builtins__: | |
| reset '_' to None before printing and set it to the printed variable | |
| *after* printing (and only when printing is successful). | |
| - Fixed lib-tk/SimpleDialog.py to keep the dialog visible even if the | |
| parent window is not (Skip Montanaro). | |
| - Fixed the two most annoying problems with ftp URLs in | |
| urllib.urlopen(); an empty file now correctly raises an error, and it | |
| is no longer required to explicitly close the returned "file" object | |
| before opening another ftp URL to the same host and directory. | |
| ====================================================================== | |
| From 1.5b1 to 1.5b2 | |
| =================== | |
| - Fixed a bug in cPickle.c that caused it to crash right away because | |
| the version string had a different format. | |
| - Changes in pickle.py and cPickle.c: when unpickling an instance of a | |
| class that doesn't define the __getinitargs__() method, the __init__() | |
| constructor is no longer called. This makes a much larger group of | |
| classes picklable by default, but may occasionally change semantics. | |
| To force calling __init__() on unpickling, define a __getinitargs__() | |
| method. Other changes too, in particular cPickle now handles classes | |
| defined in packages correctly. The same change applies to copying | |
| instances with copy.py. The cPickle.c changes and some pickle.py | |
| changes are courtesy Jim Fulton. | |
| - Locale support in he "re" (Perl regular expressions) module. Use | |
| the flag re.L (or re.LOCALE) to enable locale-specific matching | |
| rules for \w and \b. The in-line syntax for this flag is (?L). | |
| - The built-in function isinstance(x, y) now also succeeds when y is | |
| a type object and type(x) is y. | |
| - repr() and str() of class and instance objects now reflect the | |
| package/module in which the class is defined. | |
| - Module "ni" has been removed. (If you really need it, it's been | |
| renamed to "ni1". Let me know if this causes any problems for you. | |
| Package authors are encouraged to write __init__.py files that | |
| support both ni and 1.5 package support, so the same version can be | |
| used with Python 1.4 as well as 1.5.) | |
| - The thread module is now automatically included when threads are | |
| configured. (You must remove it from your existing Setup file, | |
| since it is now in its own Setup.thread file.) | |
| - New command line option "-x" to skip the first line of the script; | |
| handy to make executable scripts on non-Unix platforms. | |
| - In importdl.c, add the RTLD_GLOBAL to the dlopen() flags. I | |
| haven't checked how this affects things, but it should make symbols | |
| in one shared library available to the next one. | |
| - The Windows installer now installs in the "Program Files" folder on | |
| the proper volume by default. | |
| - The Windows configuration adds a new main program, "pythonw", and | |
| registers a new extension, ".pyw" that invokes this. This is a | |
| pstandard Python interpreter that does not pop up a console window; | |
| handy for pure Tkinter applications. All output to the original | |
| stdout and stderr is lost; reading from the original stdin yields | |
| EOF. Also, both python.exe and pythonw.exe now have a pretty icon | |
| (a green snake in a box, courtesy Mark Hammond). | |
| - Lots of improvements to emacs-mode.el again. See Barry's web page: | |
| http://www.python.org/ftp/emacs/pmdetails.html. | |
| - Lots of improvements and additions to the library reference manual; | |
| many by Fred Drake. | |
| - Doc strings for the following modules: rfc822.py, posixpath.py, | |
| ntpath.py, httplib.py. Thanks to Mitch Chapman and Charles Waldman. | |
| - Some more regression testing. | |
| - An optional 4th (maxsplit) argument to strop.replace(). | |
| - Fixed handling of maxsplit in string.splitfields(). | |
| - Tweaked os.environ so it can be pickled and copied. | |
| - The portability problems caused by indented preprocessor commands | |
| and C++ style comments should be gone now. | |
| - In random.py, added Pareto and Weibull distributions. | |
| - The crypt module is now disabled in Modules/Setup.in by default; it | |
| is rarely needed and causes errors on some systems where users often | |
| don't know how to deal with those. | |
| - Some improvements to the _tkinter build line suggested by Case Roole. | |
| - A full suite of platform specific files for NetBSD 1.x, submitted by | |
| Anders Andersen. | |
| - New Solaris specific header STROPTS.py. | |
| - Moved a confusing occurrence of *shared* from the comments in | |
| Modules/Setup.in (people would enable this one instead of the real | |
| one, and get disappointing results). | |
| - Changed the default mode for directories to be group-writable when | |
| the installation process creates them. | |
| - Check for pthread support in "-l_r" for FreeBSD/NetBSD, and support | |
| shared libraries for both. | |
| - Support FreeBSD and NetBSD in posixfile.py. | |
| - Support for the "event" command, new in Tk 4.2. By Case Roole. | |
| - Add Tix_SafeInit() support to tkappinit.c. | |
| - Various bugs fixed in "re.py" and "pcre.c". | |
| - Fixed a bug (broken use of the syntax table) in the old "regexpr.c". | |
| - In frozenmain.c, stdin is made unbuffered too when PYTHONUNBUFFERED | |
| is set. | |
| - Provide default blocksize for retrbinary in ftplib.py (Skip | |
| Montanaro). | |
| - In NT, pick the username up from different places in user.py (Jeff | |
| Bauer). | |
| - Patch to urlparse.urljoin() for ".." and "..#1", Marc Lemburg. | |
| - Many small improvements to Jeff Rush' OS/2 support. | |
| - ospath.py is gone; it's been obsolete for so many years now... | |
| - The reference manual is now set up to prepare better HTML (still | |
| using webmaker, alas). | |
| - Add special handling to /Tools/freeze for Python modules that are | |
| imported implicitly by the Python runtime: 'site' and 'exceptions'. | |
| - Tools/faqwiz 0.8.3 -- add an option to suppress URL processing | |
| inside <PRE>, by "Scott". | |
| - Added ConfigParser.py, a generic parser for sectioned configuration | |
| files. | |
| - In _localemodule.c, LC_MESSAGES is not always defined; put it | |
| between #ifdefs. | |
| - Typo in resource.c: RUSAGE_CHILDERN -> RUSAGE_CHILDREN. | |
| - Demo/scripts/newslist.py: Fix the way the version number is gotten | |
| out of the RCS revision. | |
| - PyArg_Parse[Tuple] now explicitly check for bad characters at the | |
| end of the format string. | |
| - Revamped PC/example_nt to support VC++ 5.x. | |
| - <listobject>.sort() now uses a modified quicksort by Raymund Galvin, | |
| after studying the GNU libg++ quicksort. This should be much faster | |
| if there are lots of duplicates, and otherwise at least as good. | |
| - Added "uue" as an alias for "uuencode" to mimetools.py. (Hm, the | |
| uudecode bug where it complaints about trailing garbage is still there | |
| :-( ). | |
| - pickle.py requires integers in text mode to be in decimal notation | |
| (it used to accept octal and hex, even though it would only generate | |
| decimal numbers). | |
| - In string.atof(), don't fail when the "re" module is unavailable. | |
| Plug the ensuing security leak by supplying an empty __builtins__ | |
| directory to eval(). | |
| - A bunch of small fixes and improvements to Tkinter.py. | |
| - Fixed a buffer overrun in PC/getpathp.c. | |
| ====================================================================== | |
| From 1.5a4 to 1.5b1 | |
| =================== | |
| - The Windows NT/95 installer now includes full HTML of all manuals. | |
| It also has a checkbox that lets you decide whether to install the | |
| interpreter and library. The WISE installer script for the installer | |
| is included in the source tree as PC/python15.wse, and so are the | |
| icons used for Python files. The config.c file for the Windows build | |
| is now complete with the pcre module. | |
| - sys.ps1 and sys.ps2 can now arbitrary objects; their str() is | |
| evaluated for the prompt. | |
| - The reference manual is brought up to date (more or less -- it still | |
| needs work, e.g. in the area of package import). | |
| - The icons used by latex2html are now included in the Doc | |
| subdirectory (mostly so that tarring up the HTML files can be fully | |
| automated). A simple index.html is also added to Doc (it only works | |
| after you have successfully run latex2html). | |
| - For all you would-be proselytizers out there: a new version of | |
| Misc/BLURB describes Python more concisely, and Misc/comparisons | |
| compares Python to several other languages. Misc/BLURB.WINDOWS | |
| contains a blurb specifically aimed at Windows programmers (by Mark | |
| Hammond). | |
| - A new version of the Python mode for Emacs is included as | |
| Misc/python-mode.el. There are too many new features to list here. | |
| See http://www.python.org/ftp/emacs/pmdetails.html for more info. | |
| - New module fileinput makes iterating over the lines of a list of | |
| files easier. (This still needs some more thinking to make it more | |
| extensible.) | |
| - There's full OS/2 support, courtesy Jeff Rush. To build the OS/2 | |
| version, see PC/readme.txt and PC/os2vacpp. This is for IBM's Visual | |
| Age C++ compiler. I expect that Jeff will also provide a binary | |
| release for this platform. | |
| - On Linux, the configure script now uses '-Xlinker -export-dynamic' | |
| instead of '-rdynamic' to link the main program so that it exports its | |
| symbols to shared libraries it loads dynamically. I hope this doesn't | |
| break on older Linux versions; it is needed for mklinux and appears to | |
| work on Linux 2.0.30. | |
| - Some Tkinter resstructuring: the geometry methods that apply to a | |
| master are now properly usable on toplevel master widgets. There's a | |
| new (internal) widget class, BaseWidget. New, longer "official" names | |
| for the geometry manager methods have been added, | |
| e.g. "grid_columnconfigure()" instead of "columnconfigure()". The old | |
| shorter names still work, and where there's ambiguity, pack wins over | |
| place wins over grid. Also, the bind_class method now returns its | |
| value. | |
| - New, RFC-822 conformant parsing of email addresses and address lists | |
| in the rfc822 module, courtesy Ben Escoto. | |
| - New, revamped tkappinit.c with support for popular packages (PIL, | |
| TIX, BLT, TOGL). For the last three, you need to execute the Tcl | |
| command "load {} Tix" (or Blt, or Togl) to gain access to them. | |
| The Modules/Setup line for the _tkinter module has been rewritten | |
| using the cool line-breaking feature of most Bourne shells. | |
| - New socket method connect_ex() returns the error code from connect() | |
| instead of raising an exception on errors; this makes the logic | |
| required for asynchronous connects simpler and more efficient. | |
| - New "locale" module with (still experimental) interface to the | |
| standard C library locale interface, courtesy Martin von Loewis. This | |
| does not repeat my mistake in 1.5a4 of always calling | |
| setlocale(LC_ALL, ""). In fact, we've pretty much decided that | |
| Python's standard numerical formatting operations should always use | |
| the conventions for the C locale; the locale module contains utility | |
| functions to format numbers according to the user specified locale. | |
| (All this is accomplished by an explicit call to setlocale(LC_NUMERIC, | |
| "C") after locale-changing calls.) See the library manual. (Alas, the | |
| promised changes to the "re" module for locale support have not been | |
| materialized yet. If you care, volunteer!) | |
| - Memory leak plugged in Py_BuildValue when building a dictionary. | |
| - Shared modules can now live inside packages (hierarchical module | |
| namespaces). No changes to the shared module itself are needed. | |
| - Improved policy for __builtins__: this is a module in __main__ and a | |
| dictionary everywhere else. | |
| - Python no longer catches SIGHUP and SIGTERM by default. This was | |
| impossible to get right in the light of thread contexts. If you want | |
| your program to clean up when a signal happens, use the signal module | |
| to set up your own signal handler. | |
| - New Python/C API PyNumber_CoerceEx() does not return an exception | |
| when no coercion is possible. This is used to fix a problem where | |
| comparing incompatible numbers for equality would raise an exception | |
| rather than return false as in Python 1.4 -- it once again will return | |
| false. | |
| - The errno module is changed again -- the table of error messages | |
| (errorstr) is removed. Instead, you can use os.strerror(). This | |
| removes redundance and a potential locale dependency. | |
| - New module xmllib, to parse XML files. By Sjoerd Mullender. | |
| - New C API PyOS_AfterFork() is called after fork() in posixmodule.c. | |
| It resets the signal module's notion of what the current process ID | |
| and thread are, so that signal handlers will work after (and across) | |
| calls to os.fork(). | |
| - Fixed most occurrences of fatal errors due to missing thread state. | |
| - For vgrind (a flexible source pretty printer) fans, there's a simple | |
| Python definition in Misc/vgrindefs, courtesy Neale Pickett. | |
| - Fixed memory leak in exec statement. | |
| - The test.pystone module has a new function, pystones(loops=LOOPS), | |
| which returns a (benchtime, stones) tuple. The main() function now | |
| calls this and prints the report. | |
| - Package directories now *require* the presence of an __init__.py (or | |
| __init__.pyc) file before they are considered as packages. This is | |
| done to prevent accidental subdirectories with common names from | |
| overriding modules with the same name. | |
| - Fixed some strange exceptions in __del__ methods in library modules | |
| (e.g. urllib). This happens because the built-in names are already | |
| deleted by the time __del__ is called. The solution (a hack, but it | |
| works) is to set some instance variables to 0 instead of None. | |
| - The table of built-in module initializers is replaced by a pointer | |
| variable. This makes it possible to switch to a different table at | |
| run time, e.g. when a collection of modules is loaded from a shared | |
| library. (No example code of how to do this is given, but it is | |
| possible.) The table is still there of course, its name prefixed with | |
| an underscore and used to initialize the pointer. | |
| - The warning about a thread still having a frame now only happens in | |
| verbose mode. | |
| - Change the signal finalization so that it also resets the signal | |
| handlers. After this has been called, our signal handlers are no | |
| longer active! | |
| - New version of tokenize.py (by Ka-Ping Yee) recognizes raw string | |
| literals. There's now also a test fort this module. | |
| - The copy module now also uses __dict__.update(state) instead of | |
| going through individual attribute assignments, for class instances | |
| without a __setstate__ method. | |
| - New module reconvert translates old-style (regex module) regular | |
| expressions to new-style (re module, Perl-style) regular expressions. | |
| - Most modules that used to use the regex module now use the re | |
| module. The grep module has a new pgrep() function which uses | |
| Perl-style regular expressions. | |
| - The (very old, backwards compatibility) regexp.py module has been | |
| deleted. | |
| - Restricted execution (rexec): added the pcre module (support for the | |
| re module) to the list of trusted extension modules. | |
| - New version of Jim Fulton's CObject object type, adds | |
| PyCObject_FromVoidPtrAndDesc() and PyCObject_GetDesc() APIs. | |
| - Some patches to Lee Busby's fpectl mods that accidentally didn't | |
| make it into 1.5a4. | |
| - In the string module, add an optional 4th argument to count(), | |
| matching find() etc. | |
| - Patch for the nntplib module by Charles Waldman to add optional user | |
| and password arguments to NNTP.__init__(), for nntp servers that need | |
| them. | |
| - The str() function for class objects now returns | |
| "modulename.classname" instead of returning the same as repr(). | |
| - The parsing of \xXX escapes no longer relies on sscanf(). | |
| - The "sharedmodules" subdirectory of the installation is renamed to | |
| "lib-dynload". (You may have to edit your Modules/Setup file to fix | |
| this in an existing installation!) | |
| - Fixed Don Beaudry's mess-up with the OPT test in the configure | |
| script. Certain SGI platforms will still issue a warning for each | |
| compile; there's not much I can do about this since the compiler's | |
| exit status doesn't indicate that I was using an obsolete option. | |
| - Fixed Barry's mess-up with {}.get(), and added test cases for it. | |
| - Shared libraries didn't quite work under AIX because of the change | |
| in status of the GNU readline interface. Fix due to by Vladimir | |
| Marangozov. | |
| ====================================================================== | |
| From 1.5a3 to 1.5a4 | |
| =================== | |
| - faqwiz.py: version 0.8; Recognize https:// as URL; <html>...</html> | |
| feature; better install instructions; removed faqmain.py (which was an | |
| older version). | |
| - nntplib.py: Fixed some bugs reported by Lars Wirzenius (to Debian) | |
| about the treatment of lines starting with '.'. Added a minimal test | |
| function. | |
| - struct module: ignore most whitespace in format strings. | |
| - urllib.py: close the socket and temp file in URLopener.retrieve() so | |
| that multiple retrievals using the same connection work. | |
| - All standard exceptions are now classes by default; use -X to make | |
| them strings (for backward compatibility only). | |
| - There's a new standard exception hierarchy, defined in the standard | |
| library module exceptions.py (which you never need to import | |
| explicitly). See | |
| http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/python/essays/stdexceptions.html for | |
| more info. | |
| - Three new C API functions: | |
| - int PyErr_GivenExceptionMatches(obj1, obj2) | |
| Returns 1 if obj1 and obj2 are the same object, or if obj1 is an | |
| instance of type obj2, or of a class derived from obj2 | |
| - int PyErr_ExceptionMatches(obj) | |
| Higher level wrapper around PyErr_GivenExceptionMatches() which uses | |
| PyErr_Occurred() as obj1. This will be the more commonly called | |
| function. | |
| - void PyErr_NormalizeException(typeptr, valptr, tbptr) | |
| Normalizes exceptions, and places the normalized values in the | |
| arguments. If type is not a class, this does nothing. If type is a | |
| class, then it makes sure that value is an instance of the class by: | |
| 1. if instance is of the type, or a class derived from type, it does | |
| nothing. | |
| 2. otherwise it instantiates the class, using the value as an | |
| argument. If value is None, it uses an empty arg tuple, and if | |
| the value is a tuple, it uses just that. | |
| - Another new C API function: PyErr_NewException() creates a new | |
| exception class derived from Exception; when -X is given, it creates a | |
| new string exception. | |
| - core interpreter: remove the distinction between tuple and list | |
| unpacking; allow an arbitrary sequence on the right hand side of any | |
| unpack instruction. (UNPACK_LIST and UNPACK_TUPLE now do the same | |
| thing, which should really be called UNPACK_SEQUENCE.) | |
| - classes: Allow assignments to an instance's __dict__ or __class__, | |
| so you can change ivars (including shared ivars -- shock horror) and | |
| change classes dynamically. Also make the check on read-only | |
| attributes of classes less draconic -- only the specials names | |
| __dict__, __bases__, __name__ and __{get,set,del}attr__ can't be | |
| assigned. | |
| - Two new built-in functions: issubclass() and isinstance(). Both | |
| take classes as their second arguments. The former takes a class as | |
| the first argument and returns true iff first is second, or is a | |
| subclass of second. The latter takes any object as the first argument | |
| and returns true iff first is an instance of the second, or any | |
| subclass of second. | |
| - configure: Added configuration tests for presence of alarm(), | |
| pause(), and getpwent(). | |
| - Doc/Makefile: changed latex2html targets. | |
| - classes: Reverse the search order for the Don Beaudry hook so that | |
| the first class with an applicable hook wins. Makes more sense. | |
| - Changed the checks made in Py_Initialize() and Py_Finalize(). It is | |
| now legal to call these more than once. The first call to | |
| Py_Initialize() initializes, the first call to Py_Finalize() | |
| finalizes. There's also a new API, Py_IsInitialized() which checks | |
| whether we are already initialized (in case you want to leave things | |
| as they were). | |
| - Completely disable the declarations for malloc(), realloc() and | |
| free(). Any 90's C compiler has these in header files, and the tests | |
| to decide whether to suppress the declarations kept failing on some | |
| platforms. | |
| - *Before* (instead of after) signalmodule.o is added, remove both | |
| intrcheck.o and sigcheck.o. This should get rid of warnings in ar or | |
| ld on various systems. | |
| - Added reop to PC/config.c | |
| - configure: Decided to use -Aa -D_HPUX_SOURCE on HP-UX platforms. | |
| Removed outdated HP-UX comments from README. Added Cray T3E comments. | |
| - Various renames of statically defined functions that had name | |
| conflicts on some systems, e.g. strndup (GNU libc), join (Cray), | |
| roundup (sys/types.h). | |
| - urllib.py: Interpret three slashes in file: URL as local file (for | |
| Netscape on Windows/Mac). | |
| - copy.py: Make sure the objects returned by __getinitargs__() are | |
| kept alive (in the memo) to avoid a certain kind of nasty crash. (Not | |
| easily reproducible because it requires a later call to | |
| __getinitargs__() to return a tuple that happens to be allocated at | |
| the same address.) | |
| - Added definition of AR to toplevel Makefile. Renamed @buildno temp | |
| file to buildno1. | |
| - Moved Include/assert.h to Parser/assert.h, which seems to be the | |
| only place where it's needed. | |
| - Tweaked the dictionary lookup code again for some more speed | |
| (Vladimir Marangozov). | |
| - NT build: Changed the way python15.lib is included in the other | |
| projects. Per Mark Hammond's suggestion, add it to the extra libs in | |
| Settings instead of to the project's source files. | |
| - regrtest.py: Change default verbosity so that there are only three | |
| levels left: -q, default and -v. In default mode, the name of each | |
| test is now printed. -v is the same as the old -vv. -q is more quiet | |
| than the old default mode. | |
| - Removed the old FAQ from the distribution. You now have to get it | |
| from the web! | |
| - Removed the PC/make_nt.in file from the distribution; it is no | |
| longer needed. | |
| - Changed the build sequence so that shared modules are built last. | |
| This fixes things for AIX and doesn't hurt elsewhere. | |
| - Improved test for GNU MP v1 in mpzmodule.c | |
| - fileobject.c: ftell() on Linux discards all buffered data; changed | |
| read() code to use lseek() instead to get the same effect | |
| - configure.in, configure, importdl.c: NeXT sharedlib fixes | |
| - tupleobject.c: PyTuple_SetItem asserts refcnt==1 | |
| - resource.c: Different strategy regarding whether to declare | |
| getrusage() and getpagesize() -- #ifdef doesn't work, Linux has | |
| conflicting decls in its headers. Choice: only declare the return | |
| type, not the argument prototype, and not on Linux. | |
| - importdl.c, configure*: set sharedlib extensions properly for NeXT | |
| - configure*, Makefile.in, Modules/Makefile.pre.in: AIX shared libraries | |
| fixed; moved addition of PURIFY to LINKCC to configure | |
| - reopmodule.c, regexmodule.c, regexpr.c, zlibmodule.c: needed casts | |
| added to shup up various compilers. | |
| - _tkinter.c: removed buggy mac #ifndef | |
| - Doc: various Mac documentation changes, added docs for 'ic' module | |
| - PC/make_nt.in: deleted | |
| - test_time.py, test_strftime.py: tweaks to catch %Z (which may return | |
| "") | |
| - test_rotor.py: print b -> print `b` | |
| - Tkinter.py: (tagOrId) -> (tagOrId,) | |
| - Tkinter.py: the Tk class now also has a configure() method and | |
| friends (they have been moved to the Misc class to accomplish this). | |
| - dict.get(key[, default]) returns dict[key] if it exists, or default | |
| if it doesn't. The default defaults to None. This is quicker for | |
| some applications than using either has_key() or try:...except | |
| KeyError:.... | |
| - Tools/webchecker/: some small changes to webchecker.py; added | |
| websucker.py (a simple web site mirroring script). | |
| - Dictionary objects now have a get() method (also in UserDict.py). | |
| dict.get(key, default) returns dict[key] if it exists and default | |
| otherwise; default defaults to None. | |
| - Tools/scripts/logmerge.py: print the author, too. | |
| - Changes to import: support for "import a.b.c" is now built in. See | |
| http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/python/essays/packages.html | |
| for more info. Most important deviations from "ni.py": __init__.py is | |
| executed in the package's namespace instead of as a submodule; and | |
| there's no support for "__" or "__domain__". Note that "ni.py" is not | |
| changed to match this -- it is simply declared obsolete (while at the | |
| same time, it is documented...:-( ). | |
| Unfortunately, "ihooks.py" has not been upgraded (but see "knee.py" | |
| for an example implementation of hierarchical module import written in | |
| Python). | |
| - More changes to import: the site.py module is now imported by | |
| default when Python is initialized; use -S to disable it. The site.py | |
| module extends the path with several more directories: site-packages | |
| inside the lib/python1.5/ directory, site-python in the lib/ | |
| directory, and pathnames mentioned in *.pth files found in either of | |
| those directories. See | |
| http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/python/essays/packages.html | |
| for more info. | |
| - Changes to standard library subdirectory names: those subdirectories | |
| that are not packages have been renamed with a hypen in their name, | |
| e.g. lib-tk, lib-stdwin, plat-win, plat-linux2, plat-sunos5, dos-8x3. | |
| The test suite is now a package -- to run a test, you must now use | |
| "import test.test_foo". | |
| - A completely new re.py module is provided (thanks to Andrew | |
| Kuchling, Tim Peters and Jeffrey Ollie) which uses Philip Hazel's | |
| "pcre" re compiler and engine. For a while, the "old" re.py (which | |
| was new in 1.5a3!) will be kept around as re1.py. The "old" regex | |
| module and underlying parser and engine are still present -- while | |
| regex is now officially obsolete, it will probably take several major | |
| release cycles before it can be removed. | |
| - The posix module now has a strerror() function which translates an | |
| error code to a string. | |
| - The emacs.py module (which was long obsolete) has been removed. | |
| - The universal makefile Misc/Makefile.pre.in now features an | |
| "install" target. By default, installed shared libraries go into | |
| $exec_prefix/lib/python$VERSION/site-packages/. | |
| - The install-sh script is installed with the other configuration | |
| specific files (in the config/ subdirectory). | |
| - It turns out whatsound.py and sndhdr.py were identical modules. | |
| Since there's also an imghdr.py file, I propose to make sndhdr.py the | |
| official one. For compatibility, whatsound.py imports * from | |
| sndhdr.py. | |
| - Class objects have a new attribute, __module__, giving the name of | |
| the module in which they were declared. This is useful for pickle and | |
| for printing the full name of a class exception. | |
| - Many extension modules no longer issue a fatal error when their | |
| initialization fails; the importing code now checks whether an error | |
| occurred during module initialization, and correctly propagates the | |
| exception to the import statement. | |
| - Most extension modules now raise class-based exceptions (except when | |
| -X is used). | |
| - Subtle changes to PyEval_{Save,Restore}Thread(): always swap the | |
| thread state -- just don't manipulate the lock if it isn't there. | |
| - Fixed a bug in Python/getopt.c that made it do the wrong thing when | |
| an option was a single '-'. Thanks to Andrew Kuchling. | |
| - New module mimetypes.py will guess a MIME type from a filename's | |
| extension. | |
| - Windows: the DLL version is now settable via a resource rather than | |
| being hardcoded. This can be used for "branding" a binary Python | |
| distribution. | |
| - urllib.py is now threadsafe -- it now uses re instead of regex, and | |
| sys.exc_info() instead of sys.exc_{type,value}. | |
| - Many other library modules that used to use | |
| sys.exc_{type,value,traceback} are now more thread-safe by virtue of | |
| using sys.exc_info(). | |
| - The functions in popen2 have an optional buffer size parameter. | |
| Also, the command argument can now be either a string (passed to the | |
| shell) or a list of arguments (passed directly to execv). | |
| - Alas, the thread support for _tkinter released with 1.5a3 didn't | |
| work. It's been rewritten. The bad news is that it now requires a | |
| modified version of a file in the standard Tcl distribution, which you | |
| must compile with a -I option pointing to the standard Tcl source | |
| tree. For this reason, the thread support is disabled by default. | |
| - The errno extension module adds two tables: errorcode maps errno | |
| numbers to errno names (e.g. EINTR), and errorstr maps them to | |
| message strings. (The latter is redundant because the new call | |
| posix.strerror() now does the same, but alla...) (Marc-Andre Lemburg) | |
| - The readline extension module now provides some interfaces to | |
| internal readline routines that make it possible to write a completer | |
| in Python. An example completer, rlcompleter.py, is provided. | |
| When completing a simple identifier, it completes keywords, | |
| built-ins and globals in __main__; when completing | |
| NAME.NAME..., it evaluates (!) the expression up to the last | |
| dot and completes its attributes. | |
| It's very cool to do "import string" type "string.", hit the | |
| completion key (twice), and see the list of names defined by | |
| the string module! | |
| Tip: to use the tab key as the completion key, call | |
| readline.parse_and_bind("tab: complete") | |
| - The traceback.py module has a new function tb_lineno() by Marc-Andre | |
| Lemburg which extracts the line number from the linenumber table in | |
| the code object. Apparently the traceback object doesn't contain the | |
| right linenumber when -O is used. Rather than guessing whether -O is | |
| on or off, the module itself uses tb_lineno() unconditionally. | |
| - Fixed Demo/tkinter/matt/canvas-moving-or-creating.py: change bind() | |
| to tag_bind() so it works again. | |
| - The pystone script is now a standard library module. Example use: | |
| "import test.pystone; test.pystone.main()". | |
| - The import of the readline module in interactive mode is now also | |
| attempted when -i is specified. (Yes, I know, giving in to Marc-Andre | |
| Lemburg, who asked for this. :-) | |
| - rfc822.py: Entirely rewritten parseaddr() function by Sjoerd | |
| Mullender, to be closer to the standard. This fixes the getaddr() | |
| method. Unfortunately, getaddrlist() is as broken as ever, since it | |
| splits on commas without regard for RFC 822 quoting conventions. | |
| - pprint.py: correctly emit trailing "," in singleton tuples. | |
| - _tkinter.c: export names for its type objects, TkappType and | |
| TkttType. | |
| - pickle.py: use __module__ when defined; fix a particularly hard to | |
| reproduce bug that confuses the memo when temporary objects are | |
| returned by custom pickling interfaces; and a semantic change: when | |
| unpickling the instance variables of an instance, use | |
| inst.__dict__.update(value) instead of a for loop with setattr() over | |
| the value.keys(). This is more consistent (the pickling doesn't use | |
| getattr() either but pickles inst.__dict__) and avoids problems with | |
| instances that have a __setattr__ hook. But it *is* a semantic change | |
| (because the setattr hook is no longer used). So beware! | |
| - config.h is now installed (at last) in | |
| $exec_prefix/include/python1.5/. For most sites, this means that it | |
| is actually in $prefix/include/python1.5/, with all the other Python | |
| include files, since $prefix and $exec_prefix are the same by | |
| default. | |
| - The imp module now supports parts of the functionality to implement | |
| import of hierarchical module names. It now supports find_module() | |
| and load_module() for all types of modules. Docstrings have been | |
| added for those functions in the built-in imp module that are still | |
| relevant (some old interfaces are obsolete). For a sample | |
| implementation of hierarchical module import in Python, see the new | |
| library module knee.py. | |
| - The % operator on string objects now allows arbitrary nested parens | |
| in a %(...)X style format. (Brad Howes) | |
| - Reverse the order in which Setup and Setup.local are passed to the | |
| makesetup script. This allows variable definitions in Setup.local to | |
| override definitions in Setup. (But you'll still have to edit Setup | |
| if you want to disable modules that are enabled by default, or if such | |
| modules need non-standard options.) | |
| - Added PyImport_ImportModuleEx(name, globals, locals, fromlist); this | |
| is like PyImport_ImporModule(name) but receives the globals and locals | |
| dict and the fromlist arguments as well. (The name is a char*; the | |
| others are PyObject*s). | |
| - The 'p' format in the struct extension module alloded to above is | |
| new in 1.5a4. | |
| - The types.py module now uses try-except in a few places to make it | |
| more likely that it can be imported in restricted mode. Some type | |
| names are undefined in that case, e.g. CodeType (inaccessible), | |
| FileType (not always accessible), and TracebackType and FrameType | |
| (inaccessible). | |
| - In urllib.py: added separate administration of temporary files | |
| created y URLopener.retrieve() so cleanup() can properly remove them. | |
| The old code removed everything in tempcache which was a bad idea if | |
| the user had passed a non-temp file into it. Also, in basejoin(), | |
| interpret relative paths starting in "../". This is necessary if the | |
| server uses symbolic links. | |
| - The Windows build procedure and project files are now based on | |
| Microsoft Visual C++ 5.x. The build now takes place in the PCbuild | |
| directory. It is much more robust, and properly builds separate Debug | |
| and Release versions. (The installer will be added shortly.) | |
| - Added casts and changed some return types in regexpr.c to avoid | |
| compiler warnings or errors on some platforms. | |
| - The AIX build tools for shared libraries now supports VPATH. (Donn | |
| Cave) | |
| - By default, disable the "portable" multimedia modules audioop, | |
| imageop, and rgbimg, since they don't work on 64-bit platforms. | |
| - Fixed a nasty bug in cStringIO.c when code was actually using the | |
| close() method (the destructors would try to free certain fields a | |
| second time). | |
| - For those who think they need it, there's a "user.py" module. This | |
| is *not* imported by default, but can be imported to run user-specific | |
| setup commands, ~/.pythonrc.py. | |
| - Various speedups suggested by Fredrik Lundh, Marc-Andre Lemburg, | |
| Vladimir Marangozov, and others. | |
| - Added os.altsep; this is '/' on DOS/Windows, and None on systems | |
| with a sane filename syntax. | |
| - os.py: Write out the dynamic OS choice, to avoid exec statements. | |
| Adding support for a new OS is now a bit more work, but I bet that | |
| 'dos' or 'nt' will cover most situations... | |
| - The obsolete exception AccessError is now really gone. | |
| - Tools/faqwiz/: New installation instructions show how to maintain | |
| multiple FAQs. Removed bootstrap script from end of faqwiz.py module. | |
| Added instructions to bootstrap script, too. Version bumped to 0.8.1. | |
| Added <html>...</html> feature suggested by Skip Montanaro. Added | |
| leading text for Roulette, default to 'Hit Reload ...'. Fix typo in | |
| default SRCDIR. | |
| - Documentation for the relatively new modules "keyword" and "symbol" | |
| has been added (to the end of the section on the parser extension | |
| module). | |
| - In module bisect.py, but functions have two optional argument 'lo' | |
| and 'hi' which allow you to specify a subsequence of the array to | |
| operate on. | |
| - In ftplib.py, changed most methods to return their status (even when | |
| it is always "200 OK") rather than swallowing it. | |
| - main() now calls setlocale(LC_ALL, ""), if setlocale() and | |
| <locale.h> are defined. | |
| - Changes to configure.in, the configure script, and both | |
| Makefile.pre.in files, to support SGI's SGI_ABI platform selection | |
| environment variable. | |
| ====================================================================== | |
| From 1.4 to 1.5a3 | |
| ================= | |
| Security | |
| -------- | |
| - If you are using the setuid script C wrapper (Misc/setuid-prog.c), | |
| please use the new version. The old version has a huge security leak. | |
| Miscellaneous | |
| ------------- | |
| - Because of various (small) incompatible changes in the Python | |
| bytecode interpreter, the magic number for .pyc files has changed | |
| again. | |
| - The default module search path is now much saner. Both on Unix and | |
| Windows, it is essentially derived from the path to the executable | |
| (which can be overridden by setting the environment variable | |
| $PYTHONHOME). The value of $PYTHONPATH on Windows is now inserted in | |
| front of the default path, like in Unix (instead of overriding the | |
| default path). On Windows, the directory containing the executable is | |
| added to the end of the path. | |
| - A new version of python-mode.el for Emacs has been included. Also, | |
| a new file ccpy-style.el has been added to configure Emacs cc-mode for | |
| the preferred style in Python C sources. | |
| - On Unix, when using sys.argv[0] to insert the script directory in | |
| front of sys.path, expand a symbolic link. You can now install a | |
| program in a private directory and have a symbolic link to it in a | |
| public bin directory, and it will put the private directory in the | |
| module search path. Note that the symlink is expanded in sys.path[0] | |
| but not in sys.argv[0], so you can still tell the name by which you | |
| were invoked. | |
| - It is now recommended to use ``#!/usr/bin/env python'' instead of | |
| ``#!/usr/local/bin/python'' at the start of executable scripts, except | |
| for CGI scripts. It has been determined that the use of /usr/bin/env | |
| is more portable than that of /usr/local/bin/python -- scripts almost | |
| never have to be edited when the Python interpreter lives in a | |
| non-standard place. Note that this doesn't work for CGI scripts since | |
| the python executable often doesn't live in the HTTP server's default | |
| search path. | |
| - The silly -s command line option and the corresponding | |
| PYTHONSUPPRESS environment variable (and the Py_SuppressPrint global | |
| flag in the Python/C API) are gone. | |
| - Most problems on 64-bit platforms should now be fixed. Andrew | |
| Kuchling helped. Some uncommon extension modules are still not | |
| clean (image and audio ops?). | |
| - Fixed a bug where multiple anonymous tuple arguments would be mixed up | |
| when using the debugger or profiler (reported by Just van Rossum). | |
| The simplest example is ``def f((a,b),(c,d)): print a,b,c,d''; this | |
| would print the wrong value when run under the debugger or profiler. | |
| - The hacks that the dictionary implementation used to speed up | |
| repeated lookups of the same C string were removed; these were a | |
| source of subtle problems and don't seem to serve much of a purpose | |
| any longer. | |
| - All traces of support for the long dead access statement have been | |
| removed from the sources. | |
| - Plugged the two-byte memory leak in the tokenizer when reading an | |
| interactive EOF. | |
| - There's a -O option to the interpreter that removes SET_LINENO | |
| instructions and assert statements (see below); it uses and produces | |
| .pyo files instead of .pyc files. The speedup is only a few percent | |
| in most cases. The line numbers are still available in the .pyo file, | |
| as a separate table (which is also available in .pyc files). However, | |
| the removal of the SET_LINENO instructions means that the debugger | |
| (pdb) can't set breakpoints on lines in -O mode. The traceback module | |
| contains a function to extract a line number from the code object | |
| referenced in a traceback object. In the future it should be possible | |
| to write external bytecode optimizers that create better optimized | |
| .pyo files, and there should be more control over optimization; | |
| consider the -O option a "teaser". Without -O, the assert statement | |
| actually generates code that first checks __debug__; if this variable | |
| is false, the assertion is not checked. __debug__ is a built-in | |
| variable whose value is initialized to track the -O flag (it's true | |
| iff -O is not specified). With -O, no code is generated for assert | |
| statements, nor for code of the form ``if __debug__: <something>''. | |
| Sorry, no further constant folding happens. | |
| Performance | |
| ----------- | |
| - It's much faster (almost twice for pystone.py -- see | |
| Tools/scripts). See the entry on string interning below. | |
| - Some speedup by using separate free lists for method objects (both | |
| the C and the Python variety) and for floating point numbers. | |
| - Big speedup by allocating frame objects with a single malloc() call. | |
| The Python/C API for frames is changed (you shouldn't be using this | |
| anyway). | |
| - Significant speedup by inlining some common opcodes for common operand | |
| types (e.g. i+i, i-i, and list[i]). Fredrik Lundh. | |
| - Small speedup by reordering the method tables of some common | |
| objects (e.g. list.append is now first). | |
| - Big optimization to the read() method of file objects. A read() | |
| without arguments now attempts to use fstat to allocate a buffer of | |
| the right size; for pipes and sockets, it will fall back to doubling | |
| the buffer size. While that the improvement is real on all systems, | |
| it is most dramatic on Windows. | |
| Documentation | |
| ------------- | |
| - Many new pieces of library documentation were contributed, mostly by | |
| Andrew Kuchling. Even cmath is now documented! There's also a | |
| chapter of the library manual, "libundoc.tex", which provides a | |
| listing of all undocumented modules, plus their status (e.g. internal, | |
| obsolete, or in need of documentation). Also contributions by Sue | |
| Williams, Skip Montanaro, and some module authors who succumbed to | |
| pressure to document their own contributed modules :-). Note that | |
| printing the documentation now kills fewer trees -- the margins have | |
| been reduced. | |
| - I have started documenting the Python/C API. Unfortunately this project | |
| hasn't been completed yet. It will be complete before the final release of | |
| Python 1.5, though. At the moment, it's better to read the LaTeX source | |
| than to attempt to run it through LaTeX and print the resulting dvi file. | |
| - The posix module (and hence os.py) now has doc strings! Thanks to Neil | |
| Schemenauer. I received a few other contributions of doc strings. In most | |
| other places, doc strings are still wishful thinking... | |
| Language changes | |
| ---------------- | |
| - Private variables with leading double underscore are now a permanent | |
| feature of the language. (These were experimental in release 1.4. I have | |
| favorable experience using them; I can't label them "experimental" | |
| forever.) | |
| - There's new string literal syntax for "raw strings". Prefixing a string | |
| literal with the letter r (or R) disables all escape processing in the | |
| string; for example, r'\n' is a two-character string consisting of a | |
| backslash followed by the letter n. This combines with all forms of string | |
| quotes; it is actually useful for triple quoted doc strings which might | |
| contain references to \n or \t. An embedded quote prefixed with a | |
| backslash does not terminate the string, but the backslash is still | |
| included in the string; for example, r'\'' is a two-character string | |
| consisting of a backslash and a quote. (Raw strings are also | |
| affectionately known as Robin strings, after their inventor, Robin | |
| Friedrich.) | |
| - There's a simple assert statement, and a new exception | |
| AssertionError. For example, ``assert foo > 0'' is equivalent to ``if | |
| not foo > 0: raise AssertionError''. Sorry, the text of the asserted | |
| condition is not available; it would be too complicated to generate | |
| code for this (since the code is generated from a parse tree). | |
| However, the text is displayed as part of the traceback! | |
| - The raise statement has a new feature: when using "raise SomeClass, | |
| somevalue" where somevalue is not an instance of SomeClass, it | |
| instantiates SomeClass(somevalue). In 1.5a4, if somevalue is an | |
| instance of a *derived* class of SomeClass, the exception class raised | |
| is set to somevalue.__class__, and SomeClass is ignored after that. | |
| - Duplicate keyword arguments are now detected at compile time; | |
| f(a=1,a=2) is now a syntax error. | |
| Changes to built-in features | |
| ---------------------------- | |
| - There's a new exception FloatingPointError (used only by Lee Busby's | |
| patches to catch floating point exceptions, at the moment). | |
| - The obsolete exception ConflictError (presumably used by the long | |
| obsolete access statement) has been deleted. | |
| - There's a new function sys.exc_info() which returns the tuple | |
| (sys.exc_type, sys.exc_value, sys.exc_traceback) in a thread-safe way. | |
| - There's a new variable sys.executable, pointing to the executable file | |
| for the Python interpreter. | |
| - The sort() methods for lists no longer uses the C library qsort(); I | |
| wrote my own quicksort implementation, with lots of help (in the form | |
| of a kind of competition) from Tim Peters. This solves a bug in | |
| dictionary comparisons on some Solaris versions when Python is built | |
| with threads, and makes sorting lists even faster. | |
| - The semantics of comparing two dictionaries have changed, to make | |
| comparison of unequal dictionaries faster. A shorter dictionary is | |
| always considered smaller than a larger dictionary. For dictionaries | |
| of the same size, the smallest differing element determines the | |
| outcome (which yields the same results as before in this case, without | |
| explicit sorting). Thanks to Aaron Watters for suggesting something | |
| like this. | |
| - The semantics of try-except have changed subtly so that calling a | |
| function in an exception handler that itself raises and catches an | |
| exception no longer overwrites the sys.exc_* variables. This also | |
| alleviates the problem that objects referenced in a stack frame that | |
| caught an exception are kept alive until another exception is caught | |
| -- the sys.exc_* variables are restored to their previous value when | |
| returning from a function that caught an exception. | |
| - There's a new "buffer" interface. Certain objects (e.g. strings and | |
| arrays) now support the "buffer" protocol. Buffer objects are acceptable | |
| whenever formerly a string was required for a write operation; mutable | |
| buffer objects can be the target of a read operation using the call | |
| f.readinto(buffer). A cool feature is that regular expression matching now | |
| also work on array objects. Contribution by Jack Jansen. (Needs | |
| documentation.) | |
| - String interning: dictionary lookups are faster when the lookup | |
| string object is the same object as the key in the dictionary, not | |
| just a string with the same value. This is done by having a pool of | |
| "interned" strings. Most names generated by the interpreter are now | |
| automatically interned, and there's a new built-in function intern(s) | |
| that returns the interned version of a string. Interned strings are | |
| not a different object type, and interning is totally optional, but by | |
| interning most keys a speedup of about 15% was obtained for the | |
| pystone benchmark. | |
| - Dictionary objects have several new methods; clear() and copy() have | |
| the obvious semantics, while update(d) merges the contents of another | |
| dictionary d into this one, overriding existing keys. The dictionary | |
| implementation file is now called dictobject.c rather than the | |
| confusing mappingobject.c. | |
| - The intrinsic function dir() is much smarter; it looks in __dict__, | |
| __members__ and __methods__. | |
| - The intrinsic functions int(), long() and float() can now take a | |
| string argument and then do the same thing as string.atoi(), | |
| string.atol(), and string.atof(). No second 'base' argument is | |
| allowed, and complex() does not take a string (nobody cared enough). | |
| - When a module is deleted, its globals are now deleted in two phases. | |
| In the first phase, all variables whose name begins with exactly one | |
| underscore are replaced by None; in the second phase, all variables | |
| are deleted. This makes it possible to have global objects whose | |
| destructors depend on other globals. The deletion order within each | |
| phase is still random. | |
| - It is no longer an error for a function to be called without a | |
| global variable __builtins__ -- an empty directory will be provided | |
| by default. | |
| - Guido's corollary to the "Don Beaudry hook": it is now possible to | |
| do metaprogramming by using an instance as a base class. Not for the | |
| faint of heart; and undocumented as yet, but basically if a base class | |
| is an instance, its class will be instantiated to create the new | |
| class. Jim Fulton will love it -- it also works with instances of his | |
| "extension classes", since it is triggered by the presence of a | |
| __class__ attribute on the purported base class. See | |
| Demo/metaclasses/index.html for an explanation and see that directory | |
| for examples. | |
| - Another change is that the Don Beaudry hook is now invoked when | |
| *any* base class is special. (Up to 1.5a3, the *last* special base | |
| class is used; in 1.5a4, the more rational choice of the *first* | |
| special base class is used.) | |
| - New optional parameter to the readlines() method of file objects. | |
| This indicates the number of bytes to read (the actual number of bytes | |
| read will be somewhat larger due to buffering reading until the end of | |
| the line). Some optimizations have also been made to speed it up (but | |
| not as much as read()). | |
| - Complex numbers no longer have the ".conj" pseudo attribute; use | |
| z.conjugate() instead, or complex(z.real, -z.imag). Complex numbers | |
| now *do* support the __members__ and __methods__ special attributes. | |
| - The complex() function now looks for a __complex__() method on class | |
| instances before giving up. | |
| - Long integers now support arbitrary shift counts, so you can now | |
| write 1L<<1000000, memory permitting. (Python 1.4 reports "outrageous | |
| shift count for this.) | |
| - The hex() and oct() functions have been changed so that for regular | |
| integers, they never emit a minus sign. For example, on a 32-bit | |
| machine, oct(-1) now returns '037777777777' and hex(-1) returns | |
| '0xffffffff'. While this may seem inconsistent, it is much more | |
| useful. (For long integers, a minus sign is used as before, to fit | |
| the result in memory :-) | |
| - The hash() function computes better hashes for several data types, | |
| including strings, floating point numbers, and complex numbers. | |
| New extension modules | |
| --------------------- | |
| - New extension modules cStringIO.c and cPickle.c, written by Jim | |
| Fulton and other folks at Digital Creations. These are much more | |
| efficient than their Python counterparts StringIO.py and pickle.py, | |
| but don't support subclassing. cPickle.c clocks up to 1000 times | |
| faster than pickle.py; cStringIO.c's improvement is less dramatic but | |
| still significant. | |
| - New extension module zlibmodule.c, interfacing to the free zlib | |
| library (gzip compatible compression). There's also a module gzip.py | |
| which provides a higher level interface. Written by Andrew Kuchling | |
| and Jeremy Hylton. | |
| - New module readline; see the "miscellaneous" section above. | |
| - New Unix extension module resource.c, by Jeremy Hylton, provides | |
| access to getrlimit(), getrusage(), setrusage(), getpagesize(), and | |
| related symbolic constants. | |
| - New extension puremodule.c, by Barry Warsaw, which interfaces to the | |
| Purify(TM) C API. See also the file Misc/PURIFY.README. It is also | |
| possible to enable Purify by simply setting the PURIFY Makefile | |
| variable in the Modules/Setup file. | |
| Changes in extension modules | |
| ---------------------------- | |
| - The struct extension module has several new features to control byte | |
| order and word size. It supports reading and writing IEEE floats even | |
| on platforms where this is not the native format. It uses uppercase | |
| format codes for unsigned integers of various sizes (always using | |
| Python long ints for 'I' and 'L'), 's' with a size prefix for strings, | |
| and 'p' for "Pascal strings" (with a leading length byte, included in | |
| the size; blame Hannu Krosing; new in 1.5a4). A prefix '>' forces | |
| big-endian data and '<' forces little-endian data; these also select | |
| standard data sizes and disable automatic alignment (use pad bytes as | |
| needed). | |
| - The array module supports uppercase format codes for unsigned data | |
| formats (like the struct module). | |
| - The fcntl extension module now exports the needed symbolic | |
| constants. (Formerly these were in FCNTL.py which was not available | |
| or correct for all platforms.) | |
| - The extension modules dbm, gdbm and bsddb now check that the | |
| database is still open before making any new calls. | |
| - The dbhash module is no more. Use bsddb instead. (There's a third | |
| party interface for the BSD 2.x code somewhere on the web; support for | |
| bsddb will be deprecated.) | |
| - The gdbm module now supports a sync() method. | |
| - The socket module now has some new functions: getprotobyname(), and | |
| the set {ntoh,hton}{s,l}(). | |
| - Various modules now export their type object: socket.SocketType, | |
| array.ArrayType. | |
| - The socket module's accept() method now returns unknown addresses as | |
| a tuple rather than raising an exception. (This can happen in | |
| promiscuous mode.) Theres' also a new function getprotobyname(). | |
| - The pthread support for the thread module now works on most platforms. | |
| - STDWIN is now officially obsolete. Support for it will eventually | |
| be removed from the distribution. | |
| - The binascii extension module is now hopefully fully debugged. | |
| (XXX Oops -- Fredrik Lundh promised me a uuencode fix that I never | |
| received.) | |
| - audioop.c: added a ratecv() function; better handling of overflow in | |
| add(). | |
| - posixmodule.c: now exports the O_* flags (O_APPEND etc.). On | |
| Windows, also O_TEXT and O_BINARY. The 'error' variable (the | |
| exception is raises) is renamed -- its string value is now "os.error", | |
| so newbies don't believe they have to import posix (or nt) to catch | |
| it when they see os.error reported as posix.error. The execve() | |
| function now accepts any mapping object for the environment. | |
| - A new version of the al (audio library) module for SGI was | |
| contributed by Sjoerd Mullender. | |
| - The regex module has a new function get_syntax() which retrieves the | |
| syntax setting set by set_syntax(). The code was also sanitized, | |
| removing worries about unclean error handling. See also below for its | |
| successor, re.py. | |
| - The "new" module (which creates new objects of various types) once | |
| again has a fully functioning new.function() method. Dangerous as | |
| ever! Also, new.code() has several new arguments. | |
| - A problem has been fixed in the rotor module: on systems with signed | |
| characters, rotor-encoded data was not portable when the key contained | |
| 8-bit characters. Also, setkey() now requires its argument rather | |
| than having broken code to default it. | |
| - The sys.builtin_module_names variable is now a tuple. Another new | |
| variables in sys is sys.executable (the full path to the Python | |
| binary, if known). | |
| - The specs for time.strftime() have undergone some revisions. It | |
| appears that not all format characters are supported in the same way | |
| on all platforms. Rather than reimplement it, we note these | |
| differences in the documentation, and emphasize the shared set of | |
| features. There's also a thorough test set (that occasionally finds | |
| problems in the C library implementation, e.g. on some Linuxes), | |
| thanks to Skip Montanaro. | |
| - The nis module seems broken when used with NIS+; unfortunately | |
| nobody knows how to fix it. It should still work with old NIS. | |
| New library modules | |
| ------------------- | |
| - New (still experimental) Perl-style regular expression module, | |
| re.py, which uses a new interface for matching as well as a new | |
| syntax; the new interface avoids the thread-unsafety of the regex | |
| interface. This comes with a helper extension reopmodule.c and vastly | |
| rewritten regexpr.c. Most work on this was done by Jeffrey Ollie, Tim | |
| Peters, and Andrew Kuchling. See the documentation libre.tex. In | |
| 1.5, the old regex module is still fully supported; in the future, it | |
| will become obsolete. | |
| - New module gzip.py; see zlib above. | |
| - New module keyword.py exports knowledge about Python's built-in | |
| keywords. (New version by Ka-Ping Yee.) | |
| - New module pprint.py (with documentation) which supports | |
| pretty-printing of lists, tuples, & dictionaries recursively. By Fred | |
| Drake. | |
| - New module code.py. The function code.compile_command() can | |
| determine whether an interactively entered command is complete or not, | |
| distinguishing incomplete from invalid input. (XXX Unfortunately, | |
| this seems broken at this moment, and I don't have the time to fix | |
| it. It's probably better to add an explicit interface to the parser | |
| for this.) | |
| - There is now a library module xdrlib.py which can read and write the | |
| XDR data format as used by Sun RPC, for example. It uses the struct | |
| module. | |
| Changes in library modules | |
| -------------------------- | |
| - Module codehack.py is now completely obsolete. | |
| - The pickle.py module has been updated to make it compatible with the | |
| new binary format that cPickle.c produces. By default it produces the | |
| old all-ASCII format compatible with the old pickle.py, still much | |
| faster than pickle.py; it will read both formats automatically. A few | |
| other updates have been made. | |
| - A new helper module, copy_reg.py, is provided to register extensions | |
| to the pickling code. | |
| - Revamped module tokenize.py is much more accurate and has an | |
| interface that makes it a breeze to write code to colorize Python | |
| source code. Contributed by Ka-Ping Yee. | |
| - In ihooks.py, ModuleLoader.load_module() now closes the file under | |
| all circumstances. | |
| - The tempfile.py module has a new class, TemporaryFile, which creates | |
| an open temporary file that will be deleted automatically when | |
| closed. This works on Windows and MacOS as well as on Unix. (Jim | |
| Fulton.) | |
| - Changes to the cgi.py module: Most imports are now done at the | |
| top of the module, which provides a speedup when using ni (Jim | |
| Fulton). The problem with file upload to a Windows platform is solved | |
| by using the new tempfile.TemporaryFile class; temporary files are now | |
| always opened in binary mode (Jim Fulton). The cgi.escape() function | |
| now takes an optional flag argument that quotes '"' to '"'. It | |
| is now possible to invoke cgi.py from a command line script, to test | |
| cgi scripts more easily outside an http server. There's an optional | |
| limit to the size of uploads to POST (Skip Montanaro). Added a | |
| 'strict_parsing' option to all parsing functions (Jim Fulton). The | |
| function parse_qs() now uses urllib.unquote() on the name as well as | |
| the value of fields (Clarence Gardner). The FieldStorage class now | |
| has a __len__() method. | |
| - httplib.py: the socket object is no longer closed; all HTTP/1.* | |
| responses are now accepted; and it is now thread-safe (by not using | |
| the regex module). | |
| - BaseHTTPModule.py: treat all HTTP/1.* versions the same. | |
| - The popen2.py module is now rewritten using a class, which makes | |
| access to the standard error stream and the process id of the | |
| subprocess possible. | |
| - Added timezone support to the rfc822.py module, in the form of a | |
| getdate_tz() method and a parsedate_tz() function; also a mktime_tz(). | |
| Also added recognition of some non-standard date formats, by Lars | |
| Wirzenius, and RFC 850 dates (Chris Lawrence). | |
| - mhlib.py: various enhancements, including almost compatible parsing | |
| of message sequence specifiers without invoking a subprocess. Also | |
| added a createmessage() method by Lars Wirzenius. | |
| - The StringIO.StringIO class now supports readline(nbytes). (Lars | |
| Wirzenius.) (Of course, you should be using cStringIO for performance.) | |
| - UserDict.py supports the new dictionary methods as well. | |
| - Improvements for whrandom.py by Tim Peters: use 32-bit arithmetic to | |
| speed it up, and replace 0 seed values by 1 to avoid degeneration. | |
| A bug was fixed in the test for invalid arguments. | |
| - Module ftplib.py: added support for parsing a .netrc file (Fred | |
| Drake). Also added an ntransfercmd() method to the FTP class, which | |
| allows access to the expected size of a transfer when available, and a | |
| parse150() function to the module which parses the corresponding 150 | |
| response. | |
| - urllib.py: the ftp cache is now limited to 10 entries. Added | |
| quote_plus() and unquote_plus() functions which are like quote() and | |
| unquote() but also replace spaces with '+' or vice versa, for | |
| encoding/decoding CGI form arguments. Catch all errors from the ftp | |
| module. HTTP requests now add the Host: header line. The proxy | |
| variable names are now mapped to lower case, for Windows. The | |
| spliturl() function no longer erroneously throws away all data past | |
| the first newline. The basejoin() function now intereprets "../" | |
| correctly. I *believe* that the problems with "exception raised in | |
| __del__" under certain circumstances have been fixed (mostly by | |
| changes elsewher in the interpreter). | |
| - In urlparse.py, there is a cache for results in urlparse.urlparse(); | |
| its size limit is set to 20. Also, new URL schemes shttp, https, and | |
| snews are "supported". | |
| - shelve.py: use cPickle and cStringIO when available. Also added | |
| a sync() method, which calls the database's sync() method if there is | |
| one. | |
| - The mimetools.py module now uses the available Python modules for | |
| decoding quoted-printable, uuencode and base64 formats, rather than | |
| creating a subprocess. | |
| - The python debugger (pdb.py, and its base class bdb.py) now support | |
| conditional breakpoints. See the docs. | |
| - The modules base64.py, uu.py and quopri.py can now be used as simple | |
| command line utilities. | |
| - Various small fixes to the nntplib.py module that I can't bother to | |
| document in detail. | |
| - Sjoerd Mullender's mimify.py module now supports base64 encoding and | |
| includes functions to handle the funny encoding you sometimes see in mail | |
| headers. It is now documented. | |
| - mailbox.py: Added BabylMailbox. Improved the way the mailbox is | |
| gotten from the environment. | |
| - Many more modules now correctly open files in binary mode when this | |
| is necessary on non-Unix platforms. | |
| - The copying functions in the undocumented module shutil.py are | |
| smarter. | |
| - The Writer classes in the formatter.py module now have a flush() | |
| method. | |
| - The sgmllib.py module accepts hyphens and periods in the middle of | |
| attribute names. While this is against the SGML standard, there is | |
| some HTML out there that uses this... | |
| - The interface for the Python bytecode disassembler module, dis.py, | |
| has been enhanced quite a bit. There's now one main function, | |
| dis.dis(), which takes almost any kind of object (function, module, | |
| class, instance, method, code object) and disassembles it; without | |
| arguments it disassembles the last frame of the last traceback. The | |
| other functions have changed slightly, too. | |
| - The imghdr.py module recognizes new image types: BMP, PNG. | |
| - The string.py module has a new function replace(str, old, new, | |
| [maxsplit]) which does substring replacements. It is actually | |
| implemented in C in the strop module. The functions [r]find() an | |
| [r]index() have an optional 4th argument indicating the end of the | |
| substring to search, alsoo implemented by their strop counterparts. | |
| (Remember, never import strop -- import string uses strop when | |
| available with zero overhead.) | |
| - The string.join() function now accepts any sequence argument, not | |
| just lists and tuples. | |
| - The string.maketrans() requires its first two arguments to be | |
| present. The old version didn't require them, but there's not much | |
| point without them, and the documentation suggests that they are | |
| required, so we fixed the code to match the documentation. | |
| - The regsub.py module has a function clear_cache(), which clears its | |
| internal cache of compiled regular expressions. Also, the cache now | |
| takes the current syntax setting into account. (However, this module | |
| is now obsolete -- use the sub() or subn() functions or methods in the | |
| re module.) | |
| - The undocumented module Complex.py has been removed, now that Python | |
| has built-in complex numbers. A similar module remains as | |
| Demo/classes/Complex.py, as an example. | |
| Changes to the build process | |
| ---------------------------- | |
| - The way GNU readline is configured is totally different. The | |
| --with-readline configure option is gone. It is now an extension | |
| module, which may be loaded dynamically. You must enable it (and | |
| specify the correct libraries to link with) in the Modules/Setup file. | |
| Importing the module installs some hooks which enable command line | |
| editing. When the interpreter shell is invoked interactively, it | |
| attempts to import the readline module; when this fails, the default | |
| input mechanism is used. The hook variables are PyOS_InputHook and | |
| PyOS_ReadlineFunctionPointer. (Code contributed by Lee Busby, with | |
| ideas from William Magro.) | |
| - New build procedure: a single library, libpython1.5.a, is now built, | |
| which contains absolutely everything except for a one-line main() | |
| program (which calls Py_Main(argc, argv) to start the interpreter | |
| shell). This makes life much simpler for applications that need to | |
| embed Python. The serial number of the build is now included in the | |
| version string (sys.version). | |
| - As far as I can tell, neither gcc -Wall nor the Microsoft compiler | |
| emits a single warning any more when compiling Python. | |
| - A number of new Makefile variables have been added for special | |
| situations, e.g. LDLAST is appended to the link command. These are | |
| used by editing the Makefile or passing them on the make command | |
| line. | |
| - A set of patches from Lee Busby has been integrated that make it | |
| possible to catch floating point exceptions. Use the configure option | |
| --with-fpectl to enable the patches; the extension modules fpectl and | |
| fpetest provide control to enable/disable and test the feature, | |
| respectively. | |
| - The support for shared libraries under AIX is now simpler and more | |
| robust. Thanks to Vladimir Marangozov for revamping his own patches! | |
| - The Modules/makesetup script now reads a file Setup.local as well as | |
| a file Setup. Most changes to the Setup script can be done by editing | |
| Setup.local instead, which makes it easier to carry a particular setup | |
| over from one release to the next. | |
| - The Modules/makesetup script now copies any "include" lines it | |
| encounters verbatim into the output Makefile. It also recognizes .cxx | |
| and .cpp as C++ source files. | |
| - The configure script is smarter about C compiler options; e.g. with | |
| gcc it uses -O2 and -g when possible, and on some other platforms it | |
| uses -Olimit 1500 to avoid a warning from the optimizer about the main | |
| loop in ceval.c (which has more than 1000 basic blocks). | |
| - The configure script now detects whether malloc(0) returns a NULL | |
| pointer or a valid block (of length zero). This avoids the nonsense | |
| of always adding one byte to all malloc() arguments on most platforms. | |
| - The configure script has a new option, --with-dec-threads, to enable | |
| DEC threads on DEC Alpha platforms. Also, --with-threads is now an | |
| alias for --with-thread (this was the Most Common Typo in configure | |
| arguments). | |
| - Many changes in Doc/Makefile; amongst others, latex2html is now used | |
| to generate HTML from all latex documents. | |
| Change to the Python/C API | |
| -------------------------- | |
| - Because some interfaces have changed, the PYTHON_API macro has been | |
| bumped. Most extensions built for the old API version will still run, | |
| but I can't guarantee this. Python prints a warning message on | |
| version mismatches; it dumps core when the version mismatch causes a | |
| serious problem :-) | |
| - I've completed the Grand Renaming, with the help of Roger Masse and | |
| Barry Warsaw. This makes reading or debugging the code much easier. | |
| Many other unrelated code reorganizations have also been carried out. | |
| The allobjects.h header file is gone; instead, you would have to | |
| include Python.h followed by rename2.h. But you're better off running | |
| Tools/scripts/fixcid.py -s Misc/RENAME on your source, so you can omit | |
| the rename2.h; it will disappear in the next release. | |
| - Various and sundry small bugs in the "abstract" interfaces have been | |
| fixed. Thanks to all the (involuntary) testers of the Python 1.4 | |
| version! Some new functions have been added, e.g. PySequence_List(o), | |
| equivalent to list(o) in Python. | |
| - New API functions PyLong_FromUnsignedLong() and | |
| PyLong_AsUnsignedLong(). | |
| - The API functions in the file cgensupport.c are no longer | |
| supported. This file has been moved to Modules and is only ever | |
| compiled when the SGI specific 'gl' module is built. | |
| - PyObject_Compare() can now raise an exception. Check with | |
| PyErr_Occurred(). The comparison function in an object type may also | |
| raise an exception. | |
| - The slice interface uses an upper bound of INT_MAX when no explicit | |
| upper bound is given (e.x. for a[1:]). It used to ask the object for | |
| its length and do the calculations. | |
| - Support for multiple independent interpreters. See Doc/api.tex, | |
| functions Py_NewInterpreter() and Py_EndInterpreter(). Since the | |
| documentation is incomplete, also see the new Demo/pysvr example | |
| (which shows how to use these in a threaded application) and the | |
| source code. | |
| - There is now a Py_Finalize() function which "de-initializes" | |
| Python. It is possible to completely restart the interpreter | |
| repeatedly by calling Py_Finalize() followed by Py_Initialize(). A | |
| change of functionality in Py_Initialize() means that it is now a | |
| fatal error to call it while the interpreter is already initialized. | |
| The old, half-hearted Py_Cleanup() routine is gone. Use of Py_Exit() | |
| is deprecated (it is nothing more than Py_Finalize() followed by | |
| exit()). | |
| - There are no known memory leaks left. While Py_Finalize() doesn't | |
| free *all* allocated memory (some of it is hard to track down), | |
| repeated calls to Py_Finalize() and Py_Initialize() do not create | |
| unaccessible heap blocks. | |
| - There is now explicit per-thread state. (Inspired by, but not the | |
| same as, Greg Stein's free threading patches.) | |
| - There is now better support for threading C applications. There are | |
| now explicit APIs to manipulate the interpreter lock. Read the source | |
| or the Demo/pysvr example; the new functions are | |
| PyEval_{Acquire,Release}{Lock,Thread}(). | |
| - The test macro DEBUG has changed to Py_DEBUG, to avoid interference | |
| with other libraries' DEBUG macros. Likewise for any other test | |
| macros that didn't yet start with Py_. | |
| - New wrappers around malloc() and friends: Py_Malloc() etc. call | |
| malloc() and call PyErr_NoMemory() when it fails; PyMem_Malloc() call | |
| just malloc(). Use of these wrappers could be essential if multiple | |
| memory allocators exist (e.g. when using certain DLL setups under | |
| Windows). (Idea by Jim Fulton.) | |
| - New C API PyImport_Import() which uses whatever __import__() hook | |
| that is installed for the current execution environment. By Jim | |
| Fulton. | |
| - It is now possible for an extension module's init function to fail | |
| non-fatally, by calling one of the PyErr_* functions and returning. | |
| - The PyInt_AS_LONG() and PyFloat_AS_DOUBLE() macros now cast their | |
| argument to the proper type, like the similar PyString macros already | |
| did. (Suggestion by Marc-Andre Lemburg.) Similar for PyList_GET_SIZE | |
| and PyList_GET_ITEM. | |
| - Some of the Py_Get* function, like Py_GetVersion() (but not yet | |
| Py_GetPath()) are now declared as returning a const char *. (More | |
| should follow.) | |
| - Changed the run-time library to check for exceptions after object | |
| comparisons. PyObject_Compare() can now return an exception; use | |
| PyErr_Occurred() to check (there is *no* special return value). | |
| - PyFile_WriteString() and Py_Flushline() now return error indicators | |
| instead of clearing exceptions. This fixes an obscure bug where using | |
| these would clear a pending exception, discovered by Just van Rossum. | |
| - There's a new function, PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords(), which parses | |
| an argument list including keyword arguments. Contributed by Geoff | |
| Philbrick. | |
| - PyArg_GetInt() is gone. | |
| - It's no longer necessary to include graminit.h when calling one of | |
| the extended parser API functions. The three public grammar start | |
| symbols are now in Python.h as Py_single_input, Py_file_input, and | |
| Py_eval_input. | |
| - The CObject interface has a new function, | |
| PyCObject_Import(module, name). It calls PyCObject_AsVoidPtr() | |
| on the object referenced by "module.name". | |
| Tkinter | |
| ------- | |
| - On popular demand, _tkinter once again installs a hook for readline | |
| that processes certain Tk events while waiting for the user to type | |
| (using PyOS_InputHook). | |
| - A patch by Craig McPheeters plugs the most obnoxious memory leaks, | |
| caused by command definitions referencing widget objects beyond their | |
| lifetime. | |
| - New standard dialog modules: tkColorChooser.py, tkCommonDialog.py, | |
| tkMessageBox.py, tkFileDialog.py, tkSimpleDialog.py These interface | |
| with the new Tk dialog scripts, and provide more "native platform" | |
| style file selection dialog boxes on some platforms. Contributed by | |
| Fredrik Lundh. | |
| - Tkinter.py: when the first Tk object is destroyed, it sets the | |
| hiddel global _default_root to None, so that when another Tk object is | |
| created it becomes the new default root. Other miscellaneous | |
| changes and fixes. | |
| - The Image class now has a configure method. | |
| - Added a bunch of new winfo options to Tkinter.py; we should now be | |
| up to date with Tk 4.2. The new winfo options supported are: | |
| mananger, pointerx, pointerxy, pointery, server, viewable, visualid, | |
| visualsavailable. | |
| - The broken bind() method on Canvas objects defined in the Canvas.py | |
| module has been fixed. The CanvasItem and Group classes now also have | |
| an unbind() method. | |
| - The problem with Tkinter.py falling back to trying to import | |
| "tkinter" when "_tkinter" is not found has been fixed -- it no longer | |
| tries "tkinter", ever. This makes diagnosing the problem "_tkinter | |
| not configured" much easier and will hopefully reduce the newsgroup | |
| traffic on this topic. | |
| - The ScrolledText module once again supports the 'cnf' parameter, to | |
| be compatible with the examples in Mark Lutz' book (I know, I know, | |
| too late...) | |
| - The _tkinter.c extension module has been revamped. It now support | |
| Tk versions 4.1 through 8.0; support for 4.0 has been dropped. It | |
| works well under Windows and Mac (with the latest Tk ports to those | |
| platforms). It also supports threading -- it is safe for one | |
| (Python-created) thread to be blocked in _tkinter.mainloop() while | |
| other threads modify widgets. To make the changes visible, those | |
| threads must use update_idletasks()method. (The patch for threading | |
| in 1.5a3 was broken; in 1.5a4, it is back in a different version, | |
| which requires access to the Tcl sources to get it to work -- hence it | |
| is disabled by default.) | |
| - A bug in _tkinter.c has been fixed, where Split() with a string | |
| containing an unmatched '"' could cause an exception or core dump. | |
| - Unfortunately, on Windows and Mac, Tk 8.0 no longer supports | |
| CreateFileHandler, so _tkinter.createfilehandler is not available on | |
| those platforms when using Tk 8.0 or later. I will have to rethink | |
| how to interface with Tcl's lower-level event mechanism, or with its | |
| channels (which are like Python's file-like objects). Jack Jansen has | |
| provided a fix for the Mac, so createfilehandler *is* actually | |
| supported there; maybe I can adapt his fix for Windows. | |
| Tools and Demos | |
| --------------- | |
| - A new regression test suite is provided, which tests most of the | |
| standard and built-in modules. The regression test is run by invoking | |
| the script Lib/test/regrtest.py. Barry Warsaw wrote the test harnass; | |
| he and Roger Masse contributed most of the new tests. | |
| - New tool: faqwiz -- the CGI script that is used to maintain the | |
| Python FAQ (http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/cgi-bin/faqw.py). In | |
| Tools/faqwiz. | |
| - New tool: webchecker -- a simple extensible web robot that, when | |
| aimed at a web server, checks that server for dead links. Available | |
| are a command line utility as well as a Tkinter based GUI version. In | |
| Tools/webchecker. A simplified version of this program is dissected | |
| in my article in O'Reilly's WWW Journal, the issue on Scripting | |
| Languages (Vol 2, No 2); Scripting the Web with Python (pp 97-120). | |
| Includes a parser for robots.txt files by Skip Montanaro. | |
| - New small tools: cvsfiles.py (prints a list of all files under CVS | |
| n a particular directory tree), treesync.py (a rather Guido-specific | |
| script to synchronize two source trees, one on Windows NT, the other | |
| one on Unix under CVS but accessible from the NT box), and logmerge.py | |
| (sort a collection of RCS or CVS logs by date). In Tools/scripts. | |
| - The freeze script now also works under Windows (NT). Another | |
| feature allows the -p option to be pointed at the Python source tree | |
| instead of the installation prefix. This was loosely based on part of | |
| xfreeze by Sam Rushing and Bill Tutt. | |
| - New examples (Demo/extend) that show how to use the generic | |
| extension makefile (Misc/Makefile.pre.in). | |
| - Tools/scripts/h2py.py now supports C++ comments. | |
| - Tools/scripts/pystone.py script is upgraded to version 1.1; there | |
| was a bug in version 1.0 (distributed with Python 1.4) that leaked | |
| memory. Also, in 1.1, the LOOPS variable is incremented to 10000. | |
| - Demo/classes/Rat.py completely rewritten by Sjoerd Mullender. | |
| Windows (NT and 95) | |
| ------------------- | |
| - New project files for Developer Studio (Visual C++) 5.0 for Windows | |
| NT (the old VC++ 4.2 Makefile is also still supported, but will | |
| eventually be withdrawn due to its bulkiness). | |
| - See the note on the new module search path in the "Miscellaneous" section | |
| above. | |
| - Support for Win32s (the 32-bit Windows API under Windows 3.1) is | |
| basically withdrawn. If it still works for you, you're lucky. | |
| - There's a new extension module, msvcrt.c, which provides various | |
| low-level operations defined in the Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library. | |
| These include locking(), setmode(), get_osfhandle(), set_osfhandle(), and | |
| console I/O functions like kbhit(), getch() and putch(). | |
| - The -u option not only sets the standard I/O streams to unbuffered | |
| status, but also sets them in binary mode. (This can also be done | |
| using msvcrt.setmode(), by the way.) | |
| - The, sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix variables point to the directory | |
| where Python is installed, or to the top of the source tree, if it was run | |
| from there. | |
| - The various os.path modules (posixpath, ntpath, macpath) now support | |
| passing more than two arguments to the join() function, so | |
| os.path.join(a, b, c) is the same as os.path.join(a, os.path.join(b, | |
| c)). | |
| - The ntpath module (normally used as os.path) supports ~ to $HOME | |
| expansion in expanduser(). | |
| - The freeze tool now works on Windows. | |
| - See also the Tkinter category for a sad note on | |
| _tkinter.createfilehandler(). | |
| - The truncate() method for file objects now works on Windows. | |
| - Py_Initialize() is no longer called when the DLL is loaded. You | |
| must call it yourself. | |
| - The time module's clock() function now has good precision through | |
| the use of the Win32 API QueryPerformanceCounter(). | |
| - Mark Hammond will release Python 1.5 versions of PythonWin and his | |
| other Windows specific code: the win32api extensions, COM/ActiveX | |
| support, and the MFC interface. | |
| Mac | |
| --- | |
| - As always, the Macintosh port will be done by Jack Jansen. He will | |
| make a separate announcement for the Mac specific source code and the | |
| binary distribution(s) when these are ready. | |
| ====================================================================== | |
| ===================================== | |
| ==> Release 1.4 (October 25 1996) <== | |
| ===================================== | |
| (Starting in reverse chronological order:) | |
| - Changed disclaimer notice. | |
| - Added SHELL=/bin/sh to Misc/Makefile.pre.in -- some Make versions | |
| default to the user's login shell. | |
| - In Lib/tkinter/Tkinter.py, removed bogus binding of <Delete> in Text | |
| widget, and bogus bspace() function. | |
| - In Lib/cgi.py, bumped __version__ to 2.0 and restored a truncated | |
| paragraph. | |
| - Fixed the NT Makefile (PC/vc40.mak) for VC 4.0 to set /MD for all | |
| subprojects, and to remove the (broken) experimental NumPy | |
| subprojects. | |
| - In Lib/py_compile.py, cast mtime to long() so it will work on Mac | |
| (where os.stat() returns mtimes as floats.) | |
| - Set self.rfile unbuffered (like self.wfile) in SocketServer.py, to | |
| fix POST in CGIHTTPServer.py. | |
| - Version 2.83 of Misc/python-mode.el for Emacs is included. | |
| - In Modules/regexmodule.c, fixed symcomp() to correctly handle a new | |
| group starting immediately after a group tag. | |
| - In Lib/SocketServer.py, changed the mode for rfile to unbuffered. | |
| - In Objects/stringobject.c, fixed the compare function to do the | |
| first char comparison in unsigned mode, for consistency with the way | |
| other characters are compared by memcmp(). | |
| - In Lib/tkinter/Tkinter.py, fixed Scale.get() to support floats. | |
| - In Lib/urllib.py, fix another case where openedurl wasn't set. | |
| (XXX Sorry, the rest is in totally random order. No time to fix it.) | |
| - SyntaxError exceptions detected during code generation | |
| (e.g. assignment to an expression) now include a line number. | |
| - Don't leave trailing / or \ in script directory inserted in front of | |
| sys.path. | |
| - Added a note to Tools/scripts/classfix.py abouts its historical | |
| importance. | |
| - Added Misc/Makefile.pre.in, a universal Makefile for extensions | |
| built outside the distribution. | |
| - Rewritten Misc/faq2html.py, by Ka-Ping Yee. | |
| - Install shared modules with mode 555 (needed for performance on some | |
| platforms). | |
| - Some changes to standard library modules to avoid calling append() | |
| with more than one argument -- while supported, this should be | |
| outlawed, and I don't want to set a bad example. | |
| - bdb.py (and hence pdb.py) supports calling run() with a code object | |
| instead of a code string. | |
| - Fixed an embarrassing bug cgi.py which prevented correct uploading | |
| of binary files from Netscape (which doesn't distinguish between | |
| binary and text files). Also added dormant logging support, which | |
| makes it easier to debug the cgi module itself. | |
| - Added default writer to constructor of NullFormatter class. | |
| - Use binary mode for socket.makefile() calls in ftplib.py. | |
| - The ihooks module no longer "installs" itself upon import -- this | |
| was an experimental feature that helped ironing out some bugs but that | |
| slowed down code that imported it without the need to install it | |
| (e.g. the rexec module). Also close the file in some cases and add | |
| the __file__ attribute to loaded modules. | |
| - The test program for mailbox.py is now more useful. | |
| - Added getparamnames() to Message class in mimetools.py -- it returns | |
| the names of parameters to the content-type header. | |
| - Fixed a typo in ni that broke the loop stripping "__." from names. | |
| - Fix sys.path[0] for scripts run via pdb.py's new main program. | |
| - profile.py can now also run a script, like pdb. | |
| - Fix a small bug in pyclbr -- don't add names starting with _ when | |
| emulating from ... import *. | |
| - Fixed a series of embarrassing typos in rexec's handling of standard | |
| I/O redirection. Added some more "safe" built-in modules: cmath, | |
| errno, operator. | |
| - Fixed embarrassing typo in shelve.py. | |
| - Added SliceType and EllipsisType to types.py. | |
| - In urllib.py, added handling for error 301 (same as 302); added | |
| geturl() method to get the URL after redirection. | |
| - Fixed embarrassing typo in xdrlib.py. Also fixed typo in Setup.in | |
| for _xdrmodule.c and removed redundant #include from _xdrmodule.c. | |
| - Fixed bsddbmodule.c to add binary mode indicator on platforms that | |
| have it. This should make it working on Windows NT. | |
| - Changed last uses of #ifdef NT to #ifdef MS_WINDOWS or MS_WIN32, | |
| whatever applies. Also rationalized some other tests for various MS | |
| platforms. | |
| - Added the sources for the NT installer script used for Python | |
| 1.4beta3. Not tested with this release, but better than nothing. | |
| - A compromise in pickle's defenses against Trojan horses: a | |
| user-defined function is now okay where a class is expected. A | |
| built-in function is not okay, to prevent pickling something that | |
| will execute os.system("rm -f *") when unpickling. | |
| - dis.py will print the name of local variables referenced by local | |
| load/store/delete instructions. | |
| - Improved portability of SimpleHTTPServer module to non-Unix | |
| platform. | |
| - The thread.h interface adds an extra argument to down_sema(). This | |
| only affects other C code that uses thread.c; the Python thread module | |
| doesn't use semaphores (which aren't provided on all platforms where | |
| Python threads are supported). Note: on NT, this change is not | |
| implemented. | |
| - Fixed some typos in abstract.h; corrected signature of | |
| PyNumber_Coerce, added PyMapping_DelItem. Also fixed a bug in | |
| abstract.c's PyObject_CallMethod(). | |
| - apply(classname, (), {}) now works even if the class has no | |
| __init__() method. | |
| - Implemented complex remainder and divmod() (these would dump core!). | |
| Conversion of complex numbers to int, long int or float now raises an | |
| exception, since there is no meaningful way to do it without losing | |
| information. | |
| - Fixed bug in built-in complex() function which gave the wrong result | |
| for two real arguments. | |
| - Change the hash algorithm for strings -- the multiplier is now | |
| 1000003 instead of 3, which gives better spread for short strings. | |
| - New default path for Windows NT, the registry structure now supports | |
| default paths for different install packages. (Mark Hammond -- the | |
| next PythonWin release will use this.) | |
| - Added more symbols to the python_nt.def file. | |
| - When using GNU readline, set rl_readline_name to "python". | |
| - The Ellipses built-in name has been renamed to Ellipsis -- this is | |
| the correct singular form. Thanks to Ka-Ping Yee, who saved us from | |
| eternal embarrassment. | |
| - Bumped the PYTHON_API_VERSION to 1006, due to the Ellipses -> | |
| Ellipsis name change. | |
| - Updated the library reference manual. Added documentation of | |
| restricted mode (rexec, Bastion) and the formatter module (for use | |
| with the htmllib module). Fixed the documentation of htmllib | |
| (finally). | |
| - The reference manual is now maintained in FrameMaker. | |
| - Upgraded scripts Doc/partparse.py and Doc/texi2html.py. | |
| - Slight improvements to Doc/Makefile. | |
| - Added fcntl.lockf(). This should be used for Unix file locking | |
| instead of the posixfile module; lockf() is more portable. | |
| - The getopt module now supports long option names, thanks to Lars | |
| Wizenius. | |
| - Plenty of changes to Tkinter and Canvas, mostly due to Fred Drake | |
| and Nils Fischbeck. | |
| - Use more bits of time.time() in whrandom's default seed(). | |
| - Performance hack for regex module's regs attribute. | |
| - Don't close already closed socket in socket module. | |
| - Correctly handle separators containing embedded nulls in | |
| strop.split, strop.find and strop.rfind. Also added more detail to | |
| error message for strop.atoi and friends. | |
| - Moved fallback definition for hypot() to Python/hypot.c. | |
| - Added fallback definition for strdup, in Python/strdup.c. | |
| - Fixed some bugs where a function would return 0 to indicate an error | |
| where it should return -1. | |
| - Test for error returned by time.localtime(), and rationalized its MS | |
| tests. | |
| - Added Modules/Setup.local file, which is processed after Setup. | |
| - Corrected bug in toplevel Makefile.in -- execution of regen script | |
| would not use the right PATH and PYTHONPATH. | |
| - Various and sundry NeXT configuration changes (sigh). | |
| - Support systems where libreadline needs neither termcap nor curses. | |
| - Improved ld_so_aix script and python.exp file (for AIX). | |
| - More stringent test for working <stdarg.h> in configure script. | |
| - Removed Demo/www subdirectory -- it was totally out of date. | |
| - Improved demos and docs for Fred Drake's parser module; fixed one | |
| typo in the module itself. | |
| ========================================= | |
| ==> Release 1.4beta3 (August 26 1996) <== | |
| ========================================= | |
| (XXX This is less readable that it should. I promise to restructure | |
| it for the final 1.4 release.) | |
| What's new in 1.4beta3 (since beta2)? | |
| ------------------------------------- | |
| - Name mangling to implement a simple form of class-private variables. | |
| A name of the form "__spam" can't easily be used outside the class. | |
| (This was added in 1.4beta3, but left out of the 1.4beta3 release | |
| message.) | |
| - In urllib.urlopen(): HTTP URLs containing user:passwd@host are now | |
| handled correctly when using a proxy server. | |
| - In ntpath.normpath(): don't truncate to 8+3 format. | |
| - In mimetools.choose_boundary(): don't die when getuid() or getpid() | |
| aren't defined. | |
| - Module urllib: some optimizations to (un)quoting. | |
| - New module MimeWriter for writing MIME documents. | |
| - More changes to formatter module. | |
| - The freeze script works once again and is much more robust (using | |
| sys.prefix etc.). It also supports a -o option to specify an | |
| output directory. | |
| - New module whichdb recognizes dbm, gdbm and bsddb/dbhash files. | |
| - The Doc/Makefile targets have been reorganized somewhat to remove the | |
| insistence on always generating PostScript. | |
| - The texinfo to html filter (Doc/texi2html.py) has been improved somewhat. | |
| - "errors.h" has been renamed to "pyerrors.h" to resolve a long-standing | |
| name conflict on the Mac. | |
| - Linking a module compiled with a different setting for Py_TRACE_REFS now | |
| generates a linker error rather than a core dump. | |
| - The cgi module has a new convenience function print_exception(), which | |
| formats a python exception using HTML. It also fixes a bug in the | |
| compatibility code and adds a dubious feature which makes it possible to | |
| have two query strings, one in the URL and one in the POST data. | |
| - A subtle change in the unpickling of class instances makes it possible | |
| to unpickle in restricted execution mode, where the __dict__ attribute is | |
| not available (but setattr() is). | |
| - Documentation for os.path.splitext() (== posixpath.splitext()) has been | |
| cleared up. It splits at the *last* dot. | |
| - posixfile locking is now also correctly supported on AIX. | |
| - The tempfile module once again honors an initial setting of tmpdir. It | |
| now works on Windows, too. | |
| - The traceback module has some new functions to extract, format and print | |
| the active stack. | |
| - Some translation functions in the urllib module have been made a little | |
| less sluggish. | |
| - The addtag_* methods for Canvas widgets in Tkinter as well as in the | |
| separate Canvas class have been fixed so they actually do something | |
| meaningful. | |
| - A tiny _test() function has been added to Tkinter.py. | |
| - A generic Makefile for dynamically loaded modules is provided in the Misc | |
| subdirectory (Misc/gMakefile). | |
| - A new version of python-mode.el for Emacs is provided. See | |
| http://www.python.org/ftp/emacs/pmdetails.html for details. The | |
| separate file pyimenu.el is no longer needed, imenu support is folded | |
| into python-mode.el. | |
| - The configure script can finally correctly find the readline library in a | |
| non-standard location. The LDFLAGS variable is passed on the Makefiles | |
| from the configure script. | |
| - Shared libraries are now installed as programs (i.e. with executable | |
| permission). This is required on HP-UX and won't hurt on other systems. | |
| - The objc.c module is no longer part of the distribution. Objective-C | |
| support may become available as contributed software on the ftp site. | |
| - The sybase module is no longer part of the distribution. A much | |
| improved sybase module is available as contributed software from the | |
| ftp site. | |
| - _tkinter is now compatible with Tcl 7.5 / Tk 4.1 patch1 on Windows and | |
| Mac (don't use unpatched Tcl/Tk!). The default line in the Setup.in file | |
| now links with Tcl 7.5 / Tk 4.1 rather than 7.4/4.0. | |
| - In Setup, you can now write "*shared*" instead of "*noconfig*", and you | |
| can use *.so and *.sl as shared libraries. | |
| - Some more fidgeting for AIX shared libraries. | |
| - The mpz module is now compatible with GMP 2.x. (Not tested by me.) | |
| (Note -- a complete replacement by Niels Mo"ller, called gpmodule, is | |
| available from the contrib directory on the ftp site.) | |
| - A warning is written to sys.stderr when a __del__ method raises an | |
| exception (formerly, such exceptions were completely ignored). | |
| - The configure script now defines HAVE_OLD_CPP if the C preprocessor is | |
| incapable of ANSI style token concatenation and stringification. | |
| - All source files (except a few platform specific modules) are once again | |
| compatible with K&R C compilers as well as ANSI compilers. In particular, | |
| ANSI-isms have been removed or made conditional in complexobject.c, | |
| getargs.c and operator.c. | |
| - The abstract object API has three new functions, PyObject_DelItem, | |
| PySequence_DelItem, and PySequence_DelSlice. | |
| - The operator module has new functions delitem and delslice, and the | |
| functions "or" and "and" are renamed to "or_" and "and_" (since "or" and | |
| "and" are reserved words). ("__or__" and "__and__" are unchanged.) | |
| - The environment module is no longer supported; putenv() is now a function | |
| in posixmodule (also under NT). | |
| - Error in filter(<function>, "") has been fixed. | |
| - Unrecognized keyword arguments raise TypeError, not KeyError. | |
| - Better portability, fewer bugs and memory leaks, fewer compiler warnings, | |
| some more documentation. | |
| - Bug in float power boundary case (0.0 to the negative integer power) | |
| fixed. | |
| - The test of negative number to the float power has been moved from the | |
| built-in pow() function to floatobject.c (so complex numbers can yield the | |
| correct result). | |
| - The bug introduced in beta2 where shared libraries loaded (using | |
| dlopen()) from the current directory would fail, has been fixed. | |
| - Modules imported as shared libraries now also have a __file__ attribute, | |
| giving the filename from which they were loaded. The only modules without | |
| a __file__ attribute now are built-in modules. | |
| - On the Mac, dynamically loaded modules can end in either ".slb" or | |
| ".<platform>.slb" where <platform> is either "CFM68K" or "ppc". The ".slb" | |
| extension should only be used for "fat" binaries. | |
| - C API addition: marshal.c now supports | |
| PyMarshal_WriteObjectToString(object). | |
| - C API addition: getargs.c now supports | |
| PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords(args, kwdict, format, kwnames, ...) | |
| to parse keyword arguments. | |
| - The PC versioning scheme (sys.winver) has changed once again. the | |
| version number is now "<digit>.<digit>.<digit>.<apiversion>", where the | |
| first three <digit>s are the Python version (e.g. "1.4.0" for Python 1.4, | |
| "1.4.1" for Python 1.4.1 -- the beta level is not included) and | |
| <apiversion> is the four-digit PYTHON_API_VERSION (currently 1005). | |
| - h2py.py accepts whitespace before the # in CPP directives | |
| - On Solaris 2.5, it should now be possible to use either Posix threads or | |
| Solaris threads (XXX: how do you select which is used???). (Note: the | |
| Python pthreads interface doesn't fully support semaphores yet -- anyone | |
| care to fix this?) | |
| - Thread support should now work on AIX, using either DCE threads or | |
| pthreads. | |
| - New file Demo/sockets/unicast.py | |
| - Working Mac port, with CFM68K support, with Tk 4.1 support (though not | |
| both) (XXX) | |
| - New project setup for PC port, now compatible with PythonWin, with | |
| _tkinter and NumPy support (XXX) | |
| - New module site.py (XXX) | |
| - New module xdrlib.py and optional support module _xdrmodule.c (XXX) | |
| - parser module adapted to new grammar, complete w/ Doc & Demo (XXX) | |
| - regen script fixed (XXX) | |
| - new machdep subdirectories Lib/{aix3,aix4,next3_3,freebsd2,linux2} (XXX) | |
| - testall now also tests math module (XXX) | |
| - string.atoi c.s. now raise an exception for an empty input string. | |
| - At last, it is no longer necessary to define HAVE_CONFIG_H in order to | |
| have config.h included at various places. | |
| - Unrecognized keyword arguments now raise TypeError rather than KeyError. | |
| - The makesetup script recognizes files with extension .so or .sl as | |
| (shared) libraries. | |
| - 'access' is no longer a reserved word, and all code related to its | |
| implementation is gone (or at least #ifdef'ed out). This should make | |
| Python a little speedier too! | |
| - Performance enhancements suggested by Sjoerd Mullender. This includes | |
| the introduction of two new optional function pointers in type object, | |
| getattro and setattro, which are like getattr and setattr but take a | |
| string object instead of a C string pointer. | |
| - New operations in string module: lstrip(s) and rstrip(s) strip whitespace | |
| only on the left or only on the right, A new optional third argument to | |
| split() specifies the maximum number of separators honored (so | |
| splitfields(s, sep, n) returns a list of at most n+1 elements). (Since | |
| 1.3, splitfields(s, None) is totally equivalent to split(s).) | |
| string.capwords() has an optional second argument specifying the | |
| separator (which is passed to split()). | |
| - regsub.split() has the same addition as string.split(). regsub.splitx(s, | |
| sep, maxsep) implements the functionality that was regsub.split(s, 1) in | |
| 1.4beta2 (return a list containing the delimiters as well as the words). | |
| - Final touch for AIX loading, rewritten Misc/AIX-NOTES. | |
| - In Modules/_tkinter.c, when using Tk 4.1 or higher, use className | |
| argument to _tkinter.create() to set Tcl's argv0 variable, so X | |
| resources use the right resource class again. | |
| - Add #undef fabs to Modules/mathmodule.c for macintosh. | |
| - Added some macro renames for AIX in Modules/operator.c. | |
| - Removed spurious 'E' from Doc/liberrno.tex. | |
| - Got rid of some cruft in Misc/ (dlMakefile, pyimenu.el); added new | |
| Misc/gMakefile and new version of Misc/python-mode.el. | |
| - Fixed typo in Lib/ntpath.py (islink has "return false" which gives a | |
| NameError). | |
| - Added missing "from types import *" to Lib/tkinter/Canvas.py. | |
| - Added hint about using default args for __init__ to pickle docs. | |
| - Corrected typo in Inclide/abstract.h: PySequence_Lenth -> | |
| PySequence_Length. | |
| - Some improvements to Doc/texi2html.py. | |
| - In Python/import.c, Cast unsigned char * in struct _frozen to char * | |
| in calls to rds_object(). | |
| - In doc/ref4.tex, added note about scope of lambda bodies. | |
| What's new in 1.4beta2 (since beta1)? | |
| ------------------------------------- | |
| - Portability bug in the md5.h header solved. | |
| - The PC build procedure now really works, and sets sys.platform to a | |
| meaningful value (a few things were botched in beta 1). Lib/dos_8x3 | |
| is now a standard part of the distribution (alas). | |
| - More improvements to the installation procedure. Typing "make install" | |
| now inserts the version number in the pathnames of almost everything | |
| installed, and creates the machine dependent modules (FCNTL.py etc.) if not | |
| supplied by the distribution. (XXX There's still a problem with the latter | |
| because the "regen" script requires that Python is installed. Some manual | |
| intervention may still be required.) (This has been fixed in 1.4beta3.) | |
| - New modules: errno, operator (XXX). | |
| - Changes for use with Numerical Python: built-in function slice() and | |
| Ellipses object, and corresponding syntax: | |
| x[lo:hi:stride] == x[slice(lo, hi, stride)] | |
| x[a, ..., z] == x[(a, Ellipses, z)] | |
| - New documentation for errno and cgi modules. | |
| - The directory containing the script passed to the interpreter is | |
| inserted in from of sys.path; "." is no longer a default path | |
| component. | |
| - Optional third string argument to string.translate() specifies | |
| characters to delete. New function string.maketrans() creates a | |
| translation table for translate() or for regex.compile(). | |
| - Module posix (and hence module os under Unix) now supports putenv(). | |
| Moreover, module os is enhanced so that if putenv() is supported, | |
| assignments to os.environ entries make the appropriate putenv() call. | |
| (XXX the putenv() implementation can leak a small amount of memory per | |
| call.) | |
| - pdb.py can now be invoked from the command line to debug a script: | |
| python pdb.py <script> <arg> ... | |
| - Much improved parseaddr() in rfc822. | |
| - In cgi.py, you can now pass an alternative value for environ to | |
| nearly all functions. | |
| - You can now assign to instance variables whose name begins and ends | |
| with '__'. | |
| - New version of Fred Drake's parser module and associates (token, | |
| symbol, AST). | |
| - New PYTHON_API_VERSION value and .pyc file magic number (again!). | |
| - The "complex" internal structure type is now called "Py_complex" to | |
| avoid name conflicts. | |
| - Numerous small bugs fixed. | |
| - Slight pickle speedups. | |
| - Some slight speedups suggested by Sjoerd (more coming in 1.4 final). | |
| - NeXT portability mods by Bill Bumgarner integrated. | |
| - Modules regexmodule.c, bsddbmodule.c and xxmodule.c have been | |
| converted to new naming style. | |
| What's new in 1.4beta1 (since 1.3)? | |
| ----------------------------------- | |
| - Added sys.platform and sys.exec_platform for Bill Janssen. | |
| - Installation has been completely overhauled. "make install" now installs | |
| everything, not just the python binary. Installation uses the install-sh | |
| script (borrowed from X11) to install each file. | |
| - New functions in the posix module: mkfifo, plock, remove (== unlink), | |
| and ftruncate. More functions are also available under NT. | |
| - New function in the fcntl module: flock. | |
| - Shared library support for FreeBSD. | |
| - The --with-readline option can now be used without a DIRECTORY argument, | |
| for systems where libreadline.* is in one of the standard places. It is | |
| also possible for it to be a shared library. | |
| - The extension tkinter has been renamed to _tkinter, to avoid confusion | |
| with Tkinter.py oncase insensitive file systems. It now supports Tk 4.1 as | |
| well as 4.0. | |
| - Author's change of address from CWI in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, to | |
| CNRI in Reston, VA, USA. | |
| - The math.hypot() function is now always available (if it isn't found in | |
| the C math library, Python provides its own implementation). | |
| - The latex documentation is now compatible with latex2e, thanks to David | |
| Ascher. | |
| - The expression x**y is now equivalent to pow(x, y). | |
| - The indexing expression x[a, b, c] is now equivalent to x[(a, b, c)]. | |
| - Complex numbers are now supported. Imaginary constants are written with | |
| a 'j' or 'J' prefix, general complex numbers can be formed by adding a real | |
| part to an imaginary part, like 3+4j. Complex numbers are always stored in | |
| floating point form, so this is equivalent to 3.0+4.0j. It is also | |
| possible to create complex numbers with the new built-in function | |
| complex(re, [im]). For the footprint-conscious, complex number support can | |
| be disabled by defining the symbol WITHOUT_COMPLEX. | |
| - New built-in function list() is the long-awaited counterpart of tuple(). | |
| - There's a new "cmath" module which provides the same functions as the | |
| "math" library but with complex arguments and results. (There are very | |
| good reasons why math.sqrt(-1) still raises an exception -- you have to use | |
| cmath.sqrt(-1) to get 1j for an answer.) | |
| - The Python.h header file (which is really the same as allobjects.h except | |
| it disables support for old style names) now includes several more files, | |
| so you have to have fewer #include statements in the average extension. | |
| - The NDEBUG symbol is no longer used. Code that used to be dependent on | |
| the presence of NDEBUG is now present on the absence of DEBUG. TRACE_REFS | |
| and REF_DEBUG have been renamed to Py_TRACE_REFS and Py_REF_DEBUG, | |
| respectively. At long last, the source actually compiles and links without | |
| errors when this symbol is defined. | |
| - Several symbols that didn't follow the new naming scheme have been | |
| renamed (usually by adding to rename2.h) to use a Py or _Py prefix. There | |
| are no external symbols left without a Py or _Py prefix, not even those | |
| defined by sources that were incorporated from elsewhere (regexpr.c, | |
| md5c.c). (Macros are a different story...) | |
| - There are now typedefs for the structures defined in config.c and | |
| frozen.c. | |
| - New PYTHON_API_VERSION value and .pyc file magic number. | |
| - New module Bastion. (XXX) | |
| - Improved performance of StringIO module. | |
| - UserList module now supports + and * operators. | |
| - The binhex and binascii modules now actually work. | |
| - The cgi module has been almost totally rewritten and documented. | |
| It now supports file upload and a new data type to handle forms more | |
| flexibly. | |
| - The formatter module (for use with htmllib) has been overhauled (again). | |
| - The ftplib module now supports passive mode and has doc strings. | |
| - In (ideally) all places where binary files are read or written, the file | |
| is now correctly opened in binary mode ('rb' or 'wb') so the code will work | |
| on Mac or PC. | |
| - Dummy versions of os.path.expandvars() and expanduser() are now provided | |
| on non-Unix platforms. | |
| - Module urllib now has two new functions url2pathname and pathname2url | |
| which turn local filenames into "file:..." URLs using the same rules as | |
| Netscape (why be different). it also supports urlretrieve() with a | |
| pathname parameter, and honors the proxy environment variables (http_proxy | |
| etc.). The URL parsing has been improved somewhat, too. | |
| - Micro improvements to urlparse. Added urlparse.urldefrag() which | |
| removes a trailing ``#fragment'' if any. | |
| - The mailbox module now supports MH style message delimiters as well. | |
| - The mhlib module contains some new functionality: setcontext() to set the | |
| current folder and parsesequence() to parse a sequence as commonly passed | |
| to MH commands (e.g. 1-10 or last:5). | |
| - New module mimify for conversion to and from MIME format of email | |
| messages. | |
| - Module ni now automatically installs itself when first imported -- this | |
| is against the normal rule that modules should define classes and functions | |
| but not invoke them, but appears more useful in the case that two | |
| different, independent modules want to use ni's features. | |
| - Some small performance enhancements in module pickle. | |
| - Small interface change to the profile.run*() family of functions -- more | |
| sensible handling of return values. | |
| - The officially registered Mac creator for Python files is 'Pyth'. This | |
| replaces 'PYTH' which was used before but never registered. | |
| - Added regsub.capwords(). (XXX) | |
| - Added string.capwords(), string.capitalize() and string.translate(). | |
| (XXX) | |
| - Fixed an interface bug in the rexec module: it was impossible to pass a | |
| hooks instance to the RExec class. rexec now also supports the dynamic | |
| loading of modules from shared libraries. Some other interfaces have been | |
| added too. | |
| - Module rfc822 now caches the headers in a dictionary for more efficient | |
| lookup. | |
| - The sgmllib module now understands a limited number of SGML "shorthands" | |
| like <A/.../ for <A>...</A>. (It's not clear that this was a good idea...) | |
| - The tempfile module actually tries a number of different places to find a | |
| usable temporary directory. (This was prompted by certain Linux | |
| installations that appear to be missing a /usr/tmp directory.) [A bug in | |
| the implementation that would ignore a pre-existing tmpdir global has been | |
| fixed in beta3.] | |
| - Much improved and enhanved FileDialog module for Tkinter. | |
| - Many small changes to Tkinter, to bring it more in line with Tk 4.0 (as | |
| well as Tk 4.1). | |
| - New socket interfaces include ntohs(), ntohl(), htons(), htonl(), and | |
| s.dup(). Sockets now work correctly on Windows. On Windows, the built-in | |
| extension is called _socket and a wrapper module win/socket.py provides | |
| "makefile()" and "dup()" functionality. On Windows, the select module | |
| works only with socket objects. | |
| - Bugs in bsddb module fixed (e.g. missing default argument values). | |
| - The curses extension now includes <ncurses.h> when available. | |
| - The gdbm module now supports opening databases in "fast" mode by | |
| specifying 'f' as the second character or the mode string. | |
| - new variables sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix pass corresponding | |
| configuration options / Makefile variables to the Python programmer. | |
| - The ``new'' module now supports creating new user-defined classes as well | |
| as instances thereof. | |
| - The soundex module now sports get_soundex() to get the soundex value for an | |
| arbitrary string (formerly it would only do soundex-based string | |
| comparison) as well as doc strings. | |
| - New object type "cobject" to safely wrap void pointers for passing them | |
| between various extension modules. | |
| - More efficient computation of float**smallint. | |
| - The mysterious bug whereby "x.x" (two occurrences of the same | |
| one-character name) typed from the commandline would sometimes fail | |
| mysteriously. | |
| - The initialization of the readline function can now be invoked by a C | |
| extension through PyOS_ReadlineInit(). | |
| - There's now an externally visible pointer PyImport_FrozenModules which | |
| can be changed by an embedding application. | |
| - The argument parsing functions now support a new format character 'D' to | |
| specify complex numbers. | |
| - Various memory leaks plugged and bugs fixed. | |
| - Improved support for posix threads (now that real implementations are | |
| beginning to apepar). Still no fully functioning semaphores. | |
| - Some various and sundry improvements and new entries in the Tools | |
| directory. | |
| ===================================== | |
| ==> Release 1.3 (13 October 1995) <== | |
| ===================================== | |
| Major change | |
| ============ | |
| Two words: Keyword Arguments. See the first section of Chapter 12 of | |
| the Tutorial. | |
| (The rest of this file is textually the same as the remaining sections | |
| of that chapter.) | |
| Changes to the WWW and Internet tools | |
| ===================================== | |
| The "htmllib" module has been rewritten in an incompatible fashion. | |
| The new version is considerably more complete (HTML 2.0 except forms, | |
| but including all ISO-8859-1 entity definitions), and easy to use. | |
| Small changes to "sgmllib" have also been made, to better match the | |
| tokenization of HTML as recognized by other web tools. | |
| A new module "formatter" has been added, for use with the new | |
| "htmllib" module. | |
| The "urllib"and "httplib" modules have been changed somewhat to allow | |
| overriding unknown URL types and to support authentication. They now | |
| use "mimetools.Message" instead of "rfc822.Message" to parse headers. | |
| The "endrequest()" method has been removed from the HTTP class since | |
| it breaks the interaction with some servers. | |
| The "rfc822.Message" class has been changed to allow a flag to be | |
| passed in that says that the file is unseekable. | |
| The "ftplib" module has been fixed to be (hopefully) more robust on | |
| Linux. | |
| Several new operations that are optionally supported by servers have | |
| been added to "nntplib": "xover", "xgtitle", "xpath" and "date". | |
| Other Language Changes | |
| ====================== | |
| The "raise" statement now takes an optional argument which specifies | |
| the traceback to be used when printing the exception's stack trace. | |
| This must be a traceback object, such as found in "sys.exc_traceback". | |
| When omitted or given as "None", the old behavior (to generate a stack | |
| trace entry for the current stack frame) is used. | |
| The tokenizer is now more tolerant of alien whitespace. Control-L in | |
| the leading whitespace of a line resets the column number to zero, | |
| while Control-R just before the end of the line is ignored. | |
| Changes to Built-in Operations | |
| ============================== | |
| For file objects, "f.read(0)" and "f.readline(0)" now return an empty | |
| string rather than reading an unlimited number of bytes. For the | |
| latter, omit the argument altogether or pass a negative value. | |
| A new system variable, "sys.platform", has been added. It specifies | |
| the current platform, e.g. "sunos5" or "linux1". | |
| The built-in functions "input()" and "raw_input()" now use the GNU | |
| readline library when it has been configured (formerly, only | |
| interactive input to the interpreter itself was read using GNU | |
| readline). The GNU readline library provides elaborate line editing | |
| and history. The Python debugger ("pdb") is the first beneficiary of | |
| this change. | |
| Two new built-in functions, "globals()" and "locals()", provide access | |
| to dictionaries containming current global and local variables, | |
| respectively. (These augment rather than replace "vars()", which | |
| returns the current local variables when called without an argument, | |
| and a module's global variables when called with an argument of type | |
| module.) | |
| The built-in function "compile()" now takes a third possible value for | |
| the kind of code to be compiled: specifying "'single'" generates code | |
| for a single interactive statement, which prints the output of | |
| expression statements that evaluate to something else than "None". | |
| Library Changes | |
| =============== | |
| There are new module "ni" and "ihooks" that support importing modules | |
| with hierarchical names such as "A.B.C". This is enabled by writing | |
| "import ni; ni.ni()" at the very top of the main program. These | |
| modules are amply documented in the Python source. | |
| The module "rexec" has been rewritten (incompatibly) to define a class | |
| and to use "ihooks". | |
| The "string.split()" and "string.splitfields()" functions are now the | |
| same function (the presence or absence of the second argument | |
| determines which operation is invoked); similar for "string.join()" | |
| and "string.joinfields()". | |
| The "Tkinter" module and its helper "Dialog" have been revamped to use | |
| keyword arguments. Tk 4.0 is now the standard. A new module | |
| "FileDialog" has been added which implements standard file selection | |
| dialogs. | |
| The optional built-in modules "dbm" and "gdbm" are more coordinated | |
| --- their "open()" functions now take the same values for their "flag" | |
| argument, and the "flag" and "mode" argument have default values (to | |
| open the database for reading only, and to create the database with | |
| mode "0666" minuse the umask, respectively). The memory leaks have | |
| finally been fixed. | |
| A new dbm-like module, "bsddb", has been added, which uses the BSD DB | |
| package's hash method. | |
| A portable (though slow) dbm-clone, implemented in Python, has been | |
| added for systems where none of the above is provided. It is aptly | |
| dubbed "dumbdbm". | |
| The module "anydbm" provides a unified interface to "bsddb", "gdbm", | |
| "dbm", and "dumbdbm", choosing the first one available. | |
| A new extension module, "binascii", provides a variety of operations | |
| for conversion of text-encoded binary data. | |
| There are three new or rewritten companion modules implemented in | |
| Python that can encode and decode the most common such formats: "uu" | |
| (uuencode), "base64" and "binhex". | |
| A module to handle the MIME encoding quoted-printable has also been | |
| added: "quopri". | |
| The parser module (which provides an interface to the Python parser's | |
| abstract syntax trees) has been rewritten (incompatibly) by Fred | |
| Drake. It now lets you change the parse tree and compile the result! | |
| The \code{syslog} module has been upgraded and documented. | |
| Other Changes | |
| ============= | |
| The dynamic module loader recognizes the fact that different filenames | |
| point to the same shared library and loads the library only once, so | |
| you can have a single shared library that defines multiple modules. | |
| (SunOS / SVR4 style shared libraries only.) | |
| Jim Fulton's ``abstract object interface'' has been incorporated into | |
| the run-time API. For more detailes, read the files | |
| "Include/abstract.h" and "Objects/abstract.c". | |
| The Macintosh version is much more robust now. | |
| Numerous things I have forgotten or that are so obscure no-one will | |
| notice them anyway :-) | |
| =================================== | |
| ==> Release 1.2 (13 April 1995) <== | |
| =================================== | |
| - Changes to Misc/python-mode.el: | |
| - Wrapping and indentation within triple quote strings should work | |
| properly now. | |
| - `Standard' bug reporting mechanism (use C-c C-b) | |
| - py-mark-block was moved to C-c C-m | |
| - C-c C-v shows you the python-mode version | |
| - a basic python-font-lock-keywords has been added for Emacs 19 | |
| font-lock colorizations. | |
| - proper interaction with pending-del and del-sel modes. | |
| - New py-electric-colon (:) command for improved outdenting. Also | |
| py-indent-line (TAB) should handle outdented lines better. | |
| - New commands py-outdent-left (C-c C-l) and py-indent-right (C-c C-r) | |
| - The Library Reference has been restructured, and many new and | |
| existing modules are now documented, in particular the debugger and | |
| the profiler, as well as the persistency and the WWW/Internet support | |
| modules. | |
| - All known bugs have been fixed. For example the pow(2,2,3L) bug on | |
| Linux has been fixed. Also the re-entrancy problems with __del__ have | |
| been fixed. | |
| - All known memory leaks have been fixed. | |
| - Phase 2 of the Great Renaming has been executed. The header files | |
| now use the new names (PyObject instead of object, etc.). The linker | |
| also sees the new names. Most source files still use the old names, | |
| by virtue of the rename2.h header file. If you include Python.h, you | |
| only see the new names. Dynamically linked modules have to be | |
| recompiled. (Phase 3, fixing the rest of the sources, will be | |
| executed gradually with the release later versions.) | |
| - The hooks for implementing "safe-python" (better called "restricted | |
| execution") are in place. Specifically, the import statement is | |
| implemented by calling the built-in function __import__, and the | |
| built-in names used in a particular scope are taken from the | |
| dictionary __builtins__ in that scope's global dictionary. See also | |
| the new (unsupported, undocumented) module rexec.py. | |
| - The import statement now supports the syntax "import a.b.c" and | |
| "from a.b.c import name". No officially supported implementation | |
| exists, but one can be prototyped by replacing the built-in __import__ | |
| function. A proposal by Ken Manheimer is provided as newimp.py. | |
| - All machinery used by the import statement (or the built-in | |
| __import__ function) is now exposed through the new built-in module | |
| "imp" (see the library reference manual). All dynamic loading | |
| machinery is moved to the new file importdl.c. | |
| - Persistent storage is supported through the use of the modules | |
| "pickle" and "shelve" (implemented in Python). There's also a "copy" | |
| module implementing deepcopy and normal (shallow) copy operations. | |
| See the library reference manual. | |
| - Documentation strings for many object types are accessible through | |
| the __doc__ attribute. Modules, classes and functions support special | |
| syntax to initialize the __doc__ attribute: if the first statement | |
| consists of just a string literal, that string literal becomes the | |
| value of the __doc__ attribute. The default __doc__ attribute is | |
| None. Documentation strings are also supported for built-in | |
| functions, types and modules; however this feature hasn't been widely | |
| used yet. See the 'new' module for an example. (Basically, the type | |
| object's tp_doc field contains the doc string for the type, and the | |
| 4th member of the methodlist structure contains the doc string for the | |
| method.) | |
| - The __coerce__ and __cmp__ methods for user-defined classes once | |
| again work as expected. As an example, there's a new standard class | |
| Complex in the library. | |
| - The functions posix.popen() and posix.fdopen() now have an optional | |
| third argument to specify the buffer size, and default their second | |
| (mode) argument to 'r' -- in analogy to the built-in open() function. | |
| The same applies to posixfile.open() and the socket method makefile(). | |
| - The thread.exit_thread() function now raises SystemExit so that | |
| 'finally' clauses are honored and a memory leak is plugged. | |
| - Improved X11 and Motif support, by Sjoerd Mullender. This extension | |
| is being maintained and distributed separately. | |
| - Improved support for the Apple Macintosh, in part by Jack Jansen, | |
| e.g. interfaces to (a few) resource mananger functions, get/set file | |
| type and creator, gestalt, sound manager, speech manager, MacTCP, comm | |
| toolbox, and the think C console library. This is being maintained | |
| and distributed separately. | |
| - Improved version for Windows NT, by Mark Hammond. This is being | |
| maintained and distributed separately. | |
| - Used autoconf 2.0 to generate the configure script. Adapted | |
| configure.in to use the new features in autoconf 2.0. | |
| - It now builds on the NeXT without intervention, even on the 3.3 | |
| Sparc pre-release. | |
| - Characters passed to isspace() and friends are masked to nonnegative | |
| values. | |
| - Correctly compute pow(-3.0, 3). | |
| - Fix portability problems with getopt (configure now checks for a | |
| non-GNU getopt). | |
| - Don't add frozenmain.o to libPython.a. | |
| - Exceptions can now be classes. ALl built-in exceptions are still | |
| string objects, but this will change in the future. | |
| - The socket module exports a long list of socket related symbols. | |
| (More built-in modules will export their symbolic constants instead of | |
| relying on a separately generated Python module.) | |
| - When a module object is deleted, it clears out its own dictionary. | |
| This fixes a circularity in the references between functions and | |
| their global dictionary. | |
| - Changed the error handling by [new]getargs() e.g. for "O&". | |
| - Dynamic loading of modules using shared libraries is supported for | |
| several new platforms. | |
| - Support "O&", "[...]" and "{...}" in mkvalue(). | |
| - Extension to findmethod(): findmethodinchain() (where a chain is a | |
| linked list of methodlist arrays). The calling interface for | |
| findmethod() has changed: it now gets a pointer to the (static!) | |
| methodlist structure rather than just to the function name -- this | |
| saves copying flags etc. into the (short-lived) method object. | |
| - The callable() function is now public. | |
| - Object types can define a few new operations by setting function | |
| pointers in the type object structure: tp_call defines how an object | |
| is called, and tp_str defines how an object's str() is computed. | |
| =================================== | |
| ==> Release 1.1.1 (10 Nov 1994) <== | |
| =================================== | |
| This is a pure bugfix release again. See the ChangeLog file for details. | |
| One exception: a few new features were added to tkinter. | |
| ================================= | |
| ==> Release 1.1 (11 Oct 1994) <== | |
| ================================= | |
| This release adds several new features, improved configuration and | |
| portability, and fixes more bugs than I can list here (including some | |
| memory leaks). | |
| The source compiles and runs out of the box on more platforms than | |
| ever -- including Windows NT. Makefiles or projects for a variety of | |
| non-UNIX platforms are provided. | |
| APOLOGY: some new features are badly documented or not at all. I had | |
| the choice -- postpone the new release indefinitely, or release it | |
| now, with working code but some undocumented areas. The problem with | |
| postponing the release is that people continue to suffer from existing | |
| bugs, and send me patches based on the previous release -- which I | |
| can't apply directly because my own source has changed. Also, some | |
| new modules (like signal) have been ready for release for quite some | |
| time, and people are anxiously waiting for them. In the case of | |
| signal, the interface is simple enough to figure out without | |
| documentation (if you're anxious enough :-). In this case it was not | |
| simple to release the module on its own, since it relies on many small | |
| patches elsewhere in the source. | |
| For most new Python modules, the source code contains comments that | |
| explain how to use them. Documentation for the Tk interface, written | |
| by Matt Conway, is available as tkinter-doc.tar.gz from the Python | |
| home and mirror ftp sites (see Misc/FAQ for ftp addresses). For the | |
| new operator overloading facilities, have a look at Demo/classes: | |
| Complex.py and Rat.py show how to implement a numeric type without and | |
| with __coerce__ method. Also have a look at the end of the Tutorial | |
| document (Doc/tut.tex). If you're still confused: use the newsgroup | |
| or mailing list. | |
| New language features: | |
| - More flexible operator overloading for user-defined classes | |
| (INCOMPATIBLE WITH PREVIOUS VERSIONS!) See end of tutorial. | |
| - Classes can define methods named __getattr__, __setattr__ and | |
| __delattr__ to trap attribute accesses. See end of tutorial. | |
| - Classes can define method __call__ so instances can be called | |
| directly. See end of tutorial. | |
| New support facilities: | |
| - The Makefiles (for the base interpreter as well as for extensions) | |
| now support creating dynamically loadable modules if the platform | |
| supports shared libraries. | |
| - Passing the interpreter a .pyc file as script argument will execute | |
| the code in that file. (On the Mac such files can be double-clicked!) | |
| - New Freeze script, to create independently distributable "binaries" | |
| of Python programs -- look in Demo/freeze | |
| - Improved h2py script (in Demo/scripts) follows #includes and | |
| supports macros with one argument | |
| - New module compileall generates .pyc files for all modules in a | |
| directory (tree) without also executing them | |
| - Threads should work on more platforms | |
| New built-in modules: | |
| - tkinter (support for Tcl's Tk widget set) is now part of the base | |
| distribution | |
| - signal allows catching or ignoring UNIX signals (unfortunately still | |
| undocumented -- any taker?) | |
| - termios provides portable access to POSIX tty settings | |
| - curses provides an interface to the System V curses library | |
| - syslog provides an interface to the (BSD?) syslog daemon | |
| - 'new' provides interfaces to create new built-in object types | |
| (e.g. modules and functions) | |
| - sybase provides an interface to SYBASE database | |
| New/obsolete built-in methods: | |
| - callable(x) tests whether x can be called | |
| - sockets now have a setblocking() method | |
| - sockets no longer have an allowbroadcast() method | |
| - socket methods send() and sendto() return byte count | |
| New standard library modules: | |
| - types.py defines standard names for built-in types, e.g. StringType | |
| - urlparse.py parses URLs according to the latest Internet draft | |
| - uu.py does uuencode/uudecode (not the fastest in the world, but | |
| quicker than installing uuencode on a non-UNIX machine :-) | |
| - New, faster and more powerful profile module.py | |
| - mhlib.py provides interface to MH folders and messages | |
| New facilities for extension writers (unfortunately still | |
| undocumented): | |
| - newgetargs() supports optional arguments and improved error messages | |
| - O!, O& O? formats for getargs allow more versatile type checking of | |
| non-standard types | |
| - can register pending asynchronous callback, to be called the next | |
| time the Python VM begins a new instruction (Py_AddPendingCall) | |
| - can register cleanup routines to be called when Python exits | |
| (Py_AtExit) | |
| - makesetup script understands C++ files in Setup file (use file.C | |
| or file.cc) | |
| - Make variable OPT is passed on to sub-Makefiles | |
| - An init<module>() routine may signal an error by not entering | |
| the module in the module table and raising an exception instead | |
| - For long module names, instead of foobarbletchmodule.c you can | |
| use foobarbletch.c | |
| - getintvalue() and getfloatvalue() try to convert any object | |
| instead of requiring an "intobject" or "floatobject" | |
| - All the [new]getargs() formats that retrieve an integer value | |
| will now also work if a float is passed | |
| - C function listtuple() converts list to tuple, fast | |
| - You should now call sigcheck() instead of intrcheck(); | |
| sigcheck() also sets an exception when it returns nonzero | |
| ==================================== | |
| ==> Release 1.0.3 (14 July 1994) <== | |
| ==================================== | |
| This release consists entirely of bug fixes to the C sources; see the | |
| head of ../ChangeLog for a complete list. Most important bugs fixed: | |
| - Sometimes the format operator (string%expr) would drop the last | |
| character of the format string | |
| - Tokenizer looped when last line did not end in \n | |
| - Bug when triple-quoted string ended in quote plus newline | |
| - Typo in socketmodule (listen) (== instead of =) | |
| - typing vars() at the >>> prompt would cause recursive output | |
| ================================== | |
| ==> Release 1.0.2 (4 May 1994) <== | |
| ================================== | |
| Overview of the most visible changes. Bug fixes are not listed. See | |
| also ChangeLog. | |
| Tokens | |
| ------ | |
| * String literals follow Standard C rules: they may be continued on | |
| the next line using a backslash; adjacent literals are concatenated | |
| at compile time. | |
| * A new kind of string literals, surrounded by triple quotes (""" or | |
| '''), can be continued on the next line without a backslash. | |
| Syntax | |
| ------ | |
| * Function arguments may have a default value, e.g. def f(a, b=1); | |
| defaults are evaluated at function definition time. This also applies | |
| to lambda. | |
| * The try-except statement has an optional else clause, which is | |
| executed when no exception occurs in the try clause. | |
| Interpreter | |
| ----------- | |
| * The result of a statement-level expression is no longer printed, | |
| except_ for expressions entered interactively. Consequently, the -k | |
| command line option is gone. | |
| * The result of the last printed interactive expression is assigned to | |
| the variable '_'. | |
| * Access to implicit global variables has been speeded up by removing | |
| an always-failing dictionary lookup in the dictionary of local | |
| variables (mod suggested by Steve Makewski and Tim Peters). | |
| * There is a new command line option, -u, to force stdout and stderr | |
| to be unbuffered. | |
| * Incorporated Steve Majewski's mods to import.c for dynamic loading | |
| under AIX. | |
| * Fewer chances of dumping core when trying to reload or re-import | |
| static built-in, dynamically loaded built-in, or frozen modules. | |
| * Loops over sequences now don't ask for the sequence's length when | |
| they start, but try to access items 0, 1, 2, and so on until they hit | |
| an IndexError. This makes it possible to create classes that generate | |
| infinite or indefinite sequences a la Steve Majewski. This affects | |
| for loops, the (not) in operator, and the built-in functions filter(), | |
| map(), max(), min(), reduce(). | |
| Changed Built-in operations | |
| --------------------------- | |
| * The '%' operator on strings (printf-style formatting) supports a new | |
| feature (adapted from a patch by Donald Beaudry) to allow | |
| '%(<key>)<format>' % {...} to take values from a dictionary by name | |
| instead of from a tuple by position (see also the new function | |
| vars()). | |
| * The '%s' formatting operator is changed to accept any type and | |
| convert it to a string using str(). | |
| * Dictionaries with more than 20,000 entries can now be created | |
| (thanks to Steve Kirsch). | |
| New Built-in Functions | |
| ---------------------- | |
| * vars() returns a dictionary containing the local variables; vars(m) | |
| returns a dictionary containing the variables of module m. Note: | |
| dir(x) is now equivalent to vars(x).keys(). | |
| Changed Built-in Functions | |
| -------------------------- | |
| * open() has an optional third argument to specify the buffer size: 0 | |
| for unbuffered, 1 for line buffered, >1 for explicit buffer size, <0 | |
| for default. | |
| * open()'s second argument is now optional; it defaults to "r". | |
| * apply() now checks that its second argument is indeed a tuple. | |
| New Built-in Modules | |
| -------------------- | |
| Changed Built-in Modules | |
| ------------------------ | |
| The thread module no longer supports exit_prog(). | |
| New Python Modules | |
| ------------------ | |
| * Module addpack contains a standard interface to modify sys.path to | |
| find optional packages (groups of related modules). | |
| * Module urllib contains a number of functions to access | |
| World-Wide-Web files specified by their URL. | |
| * Module httplib implements the client side of the HTTP protocol used | |
| by World-Wide-Web servers. | |
| * Module gopherlib implements the client side of the Gopher protocol. | |
| * Module mailbox (by Jack Jansen) contains a parser for UNIX and MMDF | |
| style mailbox files. | |
| * Module random contains various random distributions, e.g. gauss(). | |
| * Module lockfile locks and unlocks open files using fcntl (inspired | |
| by a similar module by Andy Bensky). | |
| * Module ntpath (by Jaap Vermeulen) implements path operations for | |
| Windows/NT. | |
| * Module test_thread (in Lib/test) contains a small test set for the | |
| thread module. | |
| Changed Python Modules | |
| ---------------------- | |
| * The string module's expandvars() function is now documented and is | |
| implemented in Python (using regular expressions) instead of forking | |
| off a shell process. | |
| * Module rfc822 now supports accessing the header fields using the | |
| mapping/dictionary interface, e.g. h['subject']. | |
| * Module pdb now makes it possible to set a break on a function | |
| (syntax: break <expression>, where <expression> yields a function | |
| object). | |
| Changed Demos | |
| ------------- | |
| * The Demo/scripts/freeze.py script is working again (thanks to Jaap | |
| Vermeulen). | |
| New Demos | |
| --------- | |
| * Demo/threads/Generator.py is a proposed interface for restartable | |
| functions a la Tim Peters. | |
| * Demo/scripts/newslist.py, by Quentin Stafford-Fraser, generates a | |
| directory full of HTML pages which between them contain links to all | |
| the newsgroups available on your server. | |
| * Demo/dns contains a DNS (Domain Name Server) client. | |
| * Demo/lutz contains miscellaneous demos by Mark Lutz (e.g. psh.py, a | |
| nice enhanced Python shell!!!). | |
| * Demo/turing contains a Turing machine by Amrit Prem. | |
| Documentation | |
| ------------- | |
| * Documented new language features mentioned above (but not all new | |
| modules). | |
| * Added a chapter to the Tutorial describing recent additions to | |
| Python. | |
| * Clarified some sentences in the reference manual, | |
| e.g. break/continue, local/global scope, slice assignment. | |
| Source Structure | |
| ---------------- | |
| * Moved Include/tokenizer.h to Parser/tokenizer.h. | |
| * Added Python/getopt.c for systems that don't have it. | |
| Emacs mode | |
| ---------- | |
| * Indentation of continuated lines is done more intelligently; | |
| consequently the variable py-continuation-offset is gone. | |
| ======================================== | |
| ==> Release 1.0.1 (15 February 1994) <== | |
| ======================================== | |
| * Many portability fixes should make it painless to build Python on | |
| several new platforms, e.g. NeXT, SEQUENT, WATCOM, DOS, and Windows. | |
| * Fixed test for <stdarg.h> -- this broke on some platforms. | |
| * Fixed test for shared library dynalic loading -- this broke on SunOS | |
| 4.x using the GNU loader. | |
| * Changed order and number of SVR4 networking libraries (it is now | |
| -lsocket -linet -lnsl, if these libraries exist). | |
| * Installing the build intermediate stages with "make libainstall" now | |
| also installs config.c.in, Setup and makesetup, which are used by the | |
| new Extensions mechanism. | |
| * Improved README file contains more hints and new troubleshooting | |
| section. | |
| * The built-in module strop now defines fast versions of three more | |
| functions of the standard string module: atoi(), atol() and atof(). | |
| The strop versions of atoi() and atol() support an optional second | |
| argument to specify the base (default 10). NOTE: you don't have to | |
| explicitly import strop to use the faster versions -- the string | |
| module contains code to let versions from stop override the default | |
| versions. | |
| * There is now a working Lib/dospath.py for those who use Python under | |
| DOS (or Windows). Thanks, Jaap! | |
| * There is now a working Modules/dosmodule.c for DOS (or Windows) | |
| system calls. | |
| * Lib.os.py has been reorganized (making it ready for more operating | |
| systems). | |
| * Lib/ospath.py is now obsolete (use os.path instead). | |
| * Many fixes to the tutorial to make it match Python 1.0. Thanks, | |
| Tim! | |
| * Fixed Doc/Makefile, Doc/README and various scripts there. | |
| * Added missing description of fdopen to Doc/libposix.tex. | |
| * Made cleanup() global, for the benefit of embedded applications. | |
| * Added parsing of addresses and dates to Lib/rfc822.py. | |
| * Small fixes to Lib/aifc.py, Lib/sunau.py, Lib/tzparse.py to make | |
| them usable at all. | |
| * New module Lib/wave.py reads RIFF (*.wav) audio files. | |
| * Module Lib/filewin.py moved to Lib/stdwin/filewin.py where it | |
| belongs. | |
| * New options and comments for Modules/makesetup (used by new | |
| Extension mechanism). | |
| * Misc/HYPE contains text of announcement of 1.0.0 in comp.lang.misc | |
| and elsewhere. | |
| * Fixed coredump in filter(None, 'abcdefg'). | |
| ======================================= | |
| ==> Release 1.0.0 (26 January 1994) <== | |
| ======================================= | |
| As is traditional, so many things have changed that I can't pretend to | |
| be complete in these release notes, but I'll try anyway :-) | |
| Note that the very last section is labeled "remaining bugs". | |
| Source organization and build process | |
| ------------------------------------- | |
| * The sources have finally been split: instead of a single src | |
| subdirectory there are now separate directories Include, Parser, | |
| Grammar, Objects, Python and Modules. Other directories also start | |
| with a capital letter: Misc, Doc, Lib, Demo. | |
| * A few extensions (notably Amoeba and X support) have been moved to a | |
| separate subtree Extensions, which is no longer in the core | |
| distribution, but separately ftp'able as extensions.tar.Z. (The | |
| distribution contains a placeholder Ext-dummy with a description of | |
| the Extensions subtree as well as the most recent versions of the | |
| scripts used there.) | |
| * A few large specialized demos (SGI video and www) have been | |
| moved to a separate subdirectory Demo2, which is no longer in the core | |
| distribution, but separately ftp'able as demo2.tar.Z. | |
| * Parts of the standard library have been moved to subdirectories: | |
| there are now standard subdirectories stdwin, test, sgi and sun4. | |
| * The configuration process has radically changed: I now use GNU | |
| autoconf. This makes it much easier to build on new Unix flavors, as | |
| well as fully supporting VPATH (if your Make has it). The scripts | |
| Configure.py and Addmodule.sh are no longer needed. Many source files | |
| have been adapted in order to work with the symbols that the configure | |
| script generated by autoconf defines (or not); the resulting source is | |
| much more portable to different C compilers and operating systems, | |
| even non Unix systems (a Mac port was done in an afternoon). See the | |
| toplevel README file for a description of the new build process. | |
| * GNU readline (a slightly newer version) is now a subdirectory of the | |
| Python toplevel. It is still not automatically configured (being | |
| totally autoconf-unaware :-). One problem has been solved: typing | |
| Control-C to a readline prompt will now work. The distribution no | |
| longer contains a "super-level" directory (above the python toplevel | |
| directory), and dl, dl-dld and GNU dld are no longer part of the | |
| Python distribution (you can still ftp them from | |
| ftp.cwi.nl:/pub/dynload). | |
| * The DOS functions have been taken out of posixmodule.c and moved | |
| into a separate file dosmodule.c. | |
| * There's now a separate file version.c which contains nothing but | |
| the version number. | |
| * The actual main program is now contained in config.c (unless NO_MAIN | |
| is defined); pythonmain.c now contains a function realmain() which is | |
| called from config.c's main(). | |
| * All files needed to use the built-in module md5 are now contained in | |
| the distribution. The module has been cleaned up considerably. | |
| Documentation | |
| ------------- | |
| * The library manual has been split into many more small latex files, | |
| so it is easier to edit Doc/lib.tex file to create a custom library | |
| manual, describing only those modules supported on your system. (This | |
| is not automated though.) | |
| * A fourth manual has been added, titled "Extending and Embedding the | |
| Python Interpreter" (Doc/ext.tex), which collects information about | |
| the interpreter which was previously spread over several files in the | |
| misc subdirectory. | |
| * The entire documentation is now also available on-line for those who | |
| have a WWW browser (e.g. NCSA Mosaic). Point your browser to the URL | |
| "http://www.cwi.nl/~guido/Python.html". | |
| Syntax | |
| ------ | |
| * Strings may now be enclosed in double quotes as well as in single | |
| quotes. There is no difference in interpretation. The repr() of | |
| string objects will use double quotes if the string contains a single | |
| quote and no double quotes. Thanks to Amrit Prem for these changes! | |
| * There is a new keyword 'exec'. This replaces the exec() built-in | |
| function. If a function contains an exec statement, local variable | |
| optimization is not performed for that particular function, thus | |
| making assignment to local variables in exec statements less | |
| confusing. (As a consequence, os.exec and python.exec have been | |
| renamed to execv.) | |
| * There is a new keyword 'lambda'. An expression of the form | |
| lambda <parameters> : <expression> | |
| yields an anonymous function. This is really only syntactic sugar; | |
| you can just as well define a local function using | |
| def some_temporary_name(<parameters>): return <expression> | |
| Lambda expressions are particularly useful in combination with map(), | |
| filter() and reduce(), described below. Thanks to Amrit Prem for | |
| submitting this code (as well as map(), filter(), reduce() and | |
| xrange())! | |
| Built-in functions | |
| ------------------ | |
| * The built-in module containing the built-in functions is called | |
| __builtin__ instead of builtin. | |
| * New built-in functions map(), filter() and reduce() perform standard | |
| functional programming operations (though not lazily): | |
| - map(f, seq) returns a new sequence whose items are the items from | |
| seq with f() applied to them. | |
| - filter(f, seq) returns a subsequence of seq consisting of those | |
| items for which f() is true. | |
| - reduce(f, seq, initial) returns a value computed as follows: | |
| acc = initial | |
| for item in seq: acc = f(acc, item) | |
| return acc | |
| * New function xrange() creates a "range object". Its arguments are | |
| the same as those of range(), and when used in a for loop a range | |
| objects also behaves identical. The advantage of xrange() over | |
| range() is that its representation (if the range contains many | |
| elements) is much more compact than that of range(). The disadvantage | |
| is that the result cannot be used to initialize a list object or for | |
| the "Python idiom" [RED, GREEN, BLUE] = range(3). On some modern | |
| architectures, benchmarks have shown that "for i in range(...): ..." | |
| actually executes *faster* than "for i in xrange(...): ...", but on | |
| memory starved machines like PCs running DOS range(100000) may be just | |
| too big to be represented at all... | |
| * Built-in function exec() has been replaced by the exec statement -- | |
| see above. | |
| The interpreter | |
| --------------- | |
| * Syntax errors are now not printed to stderr by the parser, but | |
| rather the offending line and other relevant information are packed up | |
| in the SyntaxError exception argument. When the main loop catches a | |
| SyntaxError exception it will print the error in the same format as | |
| previously, but at the proper position in the stack traceback. | |
| * You can now set a maximum to the number of traceback entries | |
| printed by assigning to sys.tracebacklimit. The default is 1000. | |
| * The version number in .pyc files has changed yet again. | |
| * It is now possible to have a .pyc file without a corresponding .py | |
| file. (Warning: this may break existing installations if you have an | |
| old .pyc file lingering around somewhere on your module search path | |
| without a corresponding .py file, when there is a .py file for a | |
| module of the same name further down the path -- the new interpreter | |
| will find the first .pyc file and complain about it, while the old | |
| interpreter would ignore it and use the .py file further down.) | |
| * The list sys.builtin_module_names is now sorted and also contains | |
| the names of a few hardwired built-in modules (sys, __main__ and | |
| __builtin__). | |
| * A module can now find its own name by accessing the global variable | |
| __name__. Assigning to this variable essentially renames the module | |
| (it should also be stored under a different key in sys.modules). | |
| A neat hack follows from this: a module that wants to execute a main | |
| program when called as a script no longer needs to compare | |
| sys.argv[0]; it can simply do "if __name__ == '__main__': main()". | |
| * When an object is printed by the print statement, its implementation | |
| of str() is used. This means that classes can define __str__(self) to | |
| direct how their instances are printed. This is different from | |
| __repr__(self), which should define an unambigous string | |
| representation of the instance. (If __str__() is not defined, it | |
| defaults to __repr__().) | |
| * Functions and code objects can now be compared meaningfully. | |
| * On systems supporting SunOS or SVR4 style shared libraries, dynamic | |
| loading of modules using shared libraries is automatically configured. | |
| Thanks to Bill Jansen and Denis Severson for contributing this change! | |
| Built-in objects | |
| ---------------- | |
| * File objects have acquired a new method writelines() which is the | |
| reverse of readlines(). (It does not actually write lines, just a | |
| list of strings, but the symmetry makes the choice of name OK.) | |
| Built-in modules | |
| ---------------- | |
| * Socket objects no longer support the avail() method. Use the select | |
| module instead, or use this function to replace it: | |
| def avail(f): | |
| import select | |
| return f in select.select([f], [], [], 0)[0] | |
| * Initialization of stdwin is done differently. It actually modifies | |
| sys.argv (taking out the options the X version of stdwin recognizes) | |
| the first time it is imported. | |
| * A new built-in module parser provides a rudimentary interface to the | |
| python parser. Corresponding standard library modules token and symbol | |
| defines the numeric values of tokens and non-terminal symbols. | |
| * The posix module has acquired new functions setuid(), setgid(), | |
| execve(), and exec() has been renamed to execv(). | |
| * The array module is extended with 8-byte object swaps, the 'i' | |
| format character, and a reverse() method. The read() and write() | |
| methods are renamed to fromfile() and tofile(). | |
| * The rotor module has freed of portability bugs. This introduces a | |
| backward compatibility problem: strings encoded with the old rotor | |
| module can't be decoded by the new version. | |
| * For select.select(), a timeout (4th) argument of None means the same | |
| as leaving the timeout argument out. | |
| * Module strop (and hence standard library module string) has acquired | |
| a new function: rindex(). Thanks to Amrit Prem! | |
| * Module regex defines a new function symcomp() which uses an extended | |
| regular expression syntax: parenthesized subexpressions may be labeled | |
| using the form "\(<labelname>...\)", and the group() method can return | |
| sub-expressions by name. Thanks to Tracy Tims for these changes! | |
| * Multiple threads are now supported on Solaris 2. Thanks to Sjoerd | |
| Mullender! | |
| Standard library modules | |
| ------------------------ | |
| * The library is now split in several subdirectories: all stuff using | |
| stdwin is in Lib/stdwin, all SGI specific (or SGI Indigo or GL) stuff | |
| is in Lib/sgi, all Sun Sparc specific stuff is in Lib/sun4, and all | |
| test modules are in Lib/test. The default module search path will | |
| include all relevant subdirectories by default. | |
| * Module os now knows about trying to import dos. It defines | |
| functions execl(), execle(), execlp() and execvp(). | |
| * New module dospath (should be attacked by a DOS hacker though). | |
| * All modules defining classes now define __init__() constructors | |
| instead of init() methods. THIS IS AN INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE! | |
| * Some minor changes and bugfixes module ftplib (mostly Steve | |
| Majewski's suggestions); the debug() method is renamed to | |
| set_debuglevel(). | |
| * Some new test modules (not run automatically by testall though): | |
| test_audioop, test_md5, test_rgbimg, test_select. | |
| * Module string now defines rindex() and rfind() in analogy of index() | |
| and find(). It also defines atof() and atol() (and corresponding | |
| exceptions) in analogy to atoi(). | |
| * Added help() functions to modules profile and pdb. | |
| * The wdb debugger (now in Lib/stdwin) now shows class or instance | |
| variables on a double click. Thanks to Sjoerd Mullender! | |
| * The (undocumented) module lambda has gone -- you couldn't import it | |
| any more, and it was basically more a demo than a library module... | |
| Multimedia extensions | |
| --------------------- | |
| * The optional built-in modules audioop and imageop are now standard | |
| parts of the interpreter. Thanks to Sjoerd Mullender and Jack Jansen | |
| for contributing this code! | |
| * There's a new operation in audioop: minmax(). | |
| * There's a new built-in module called rgbimg which supports portable | |
| efficient reading of SGI RCG image files. Thanks also to Paul | |
| Haeberli for the original code! (Who will contribute a GIF reader?) | |
| * The module aifc is gone -- you should now always use aifc, which has | |
| received a facelift. | |
| * There's a new module sunau., for reading Sun (and NeXT) audio files. | |
| * There's a new module audiodev which provides a uniform interface to | |
| (SGI Indigo and Sun Sparc) audio hardware. | |
| * There's a new module sndhdr which recognizes various sound files by | |
| looking in their header and checking for various magic words. | |
| Optimizations | |
| ------------- | |
| * Most optimizations below can be configured by compile-time flags. | |
| Thanks to Sjoerd Mullender for submitting these optimizations! | |
| * Small integers (default -1..99) are shared -- i.e. if two different | |
| functions compute the same value it is possible (but not | |
| guaranteed!!!) that they return the same *object*. Python programs | |
| can detect this but should *never* rely on it. | |
| * Empty tuples (which all compare equal) are shared in the same | |
| manner. | |
| * Tuples of size up to 20 (default) are put in separate free lists | |
| when deallocated. | |
| * There is a compile-time option to cache a string's hash function, | |
| but this appeared to have a negligeable effect, and as it costs 4 | |
| bytes per string it is disabled by default. | |
| Embedding Python | |
| ---------------- | |
| * The initialization interface has been simplified somewhat. You now | |
| only call "initall()" to initialize the interpreter. | |
| * The previously announced renaming of externally visible identifiers | |
| has not been carried out. It will happen in a later release. Sorry. | |
| Miscellaneous bugs that have been fixed | |
| --------------------------------------- | |
| * All known portability bugs. | |
| * Version 0.9.9 dumped core in <listobject>.sort() which has been | |
| fixed. Thanks to Jaap Vermeulen for fixing this and posting the fix | |
| on the mailing list while I was away! | |
| * Core dump on a format string ending in '%', e.g. in the expression | |
| '%' % None. | |
| * The array module yielded a bogus result for concatenation (a+b would | |
| yield a+a). | |
| * Some serious memory leaks in strop.split() and strop.splitfields(). | |
| * Several problems with the nis module. | |
| * Subtle problem when copying a class method from another class | |
| through assignment (the method could not be called). | |
| Remaining bugs | |
| -------------- | |
| * One problem with 64-bit machines remains -- since .pyc files are | |
| portable and use only 4 bytes to represent an integer object, 64-bit | |
| integer literals are silently truncated when written into a .pyc file. | |
| Work-around: use eval('123456789101112'). | |
| * The freeze script doesn't work any more. A new and more portable | |
| one can probably be cooked up using tricks from Extensions/mkext.py. | |
| * The dos support hasn't been tested yet. (Really Soon Now we should | |
| have a PC with a working C compiler!) | |
| =================================== | |
| ==> Release 0.9.9 (29 Jul 1993) <== | |
| =================================== | |
| I *believe* these are the main user-visible changes in this release, | |
| but there may be others. SGI users may scan the {src,lib}/ChangeLog | |
| files for improvements of some SGI specific modules, e.g. aifc and | |
| cl. Developers of extension modules should also read src/ChangeLog. | |
| Naming of C symbols used by the Python interpreter | |
| -------------------------------------------------- | |
| * This is the last release using the current naming conventions. New | |
| naming conventions are explained in the file misc/NAMING. | |
| Summarizing, all externally visible symbols get (at least) a "Py" | |
| prefix, and most functions are renamed to the standard form | |
| PyModule_FunctionName. | |
| * Writers of extensions are urged to start using the new naming | |
| conventions. The next release will use the new naming conventions | |
| throughout (it will also have a different source directory | |
| structure). | |
| * As a result of the preliminary work for the great renaming, many | |
| functions that were accidentally global have been made static. | |
| BETA X11 support | |
| ---------------- | |
| * There are now modules interfacing to the X11 Toolkit Intrinsics, the | |
| Athena widgets, and the Motif 1.1 widget set. These are not yet | |
| documented except through the examples and README file in the demo/x11 | |
| directory. It is expected that this interface will be replaced by a | |
| more powerful and correct one in the future, which may or may not be | |
| backward compatible. In other words, this part of the code is at most | |
| BETA level software! (Note: the rest of Python is rock solid as ever!) | |
| * I understand that the above may be a bit of a disappointment, | |
| however my current schedule does not allow me to change this situation | |
| before putting the release out of the door. By releasing it | |
| undocumented and buggy, at least some of the (working!) demo programs, | |
| like itr (my Internet Talk Radio browser) become available to a larger | |
| audience. | |
| * There are also modules interfacing to SGI's "Glx" widget (a GL | |
| window wrapped in a widget) and to NCSA's "HTML" widget (which can | |
| format HyperText Markup Language, the document format used by the | |
| World Wide Web). | |
| * I've experienced some problems when building the X11 support. In | |
| particular, the Xm and Xaw widget sets don't go together, and it | |
| appears that using X11R5 is better than using X11R4. Also the threads | |
| module and its link time options may spoil things. My own strategy is | |
| to build two Python binaries: one for use with X11 and one without | |
| it, which can contain a richer set of built-in modules. Don't even | |
| *think* of loading the X11 modules dynamically... | |
| Environmental changes | |
| --------------------- | |
| * Compiled files (*.pyc files) created by this Python version are | |
| incompatible with those created by the previous version. Both | |
| versions detect this and silently create a correct version, but it | |
| means that it is not a good idea to use the same library directory for | |
| an old and a new interpreter, since they will start to "fight" over | |
| the *.pyc files... | |
| * When a stack trace is printed, the exception is printed last instead | |
| of first. This means that if the beginning of the stack trace | |
| scrolled out of your window you can still see what exception caused | |
| it. | |
| * Sometimes interrupting a Python operation does not work because it | |
| hangs in a blocking system call. You can now kill the interpreter by | |
| interrupting it three times. The second time you interrupt it, a | |
| message will be printed telling you that the third interrupt will kill | |
| the interpreter. The "sys.exitfunc" feature still makes limited | |
| clean-up possible in this case. | |
| Changes to the command line interface | |
| ------------------------------------- | |
| * The python usage message is now much more informative. | |
| * New option -i enters interactive mode after executing a script -- | |
| useful for debugging. | |
| * New option -k raises an exception when an expression statement | |
| yields a value other than None. | |
| * For each option there is now also a corresponding environment | |
| variable. | |
| Using Python as an embedded language | |
| ------------------------------------ | |
| * The distribution now contains (some) documentation on the use of | |
| Python as an "embedded language" in other applications, as well as a | |
| simple example. See the file misc/EMBEDDING and the directory embed/. | |
| Speed improvements | |
| ------------------ | |
| * Function local variables are now generally stored in an array and | |
| accessed using an integer indexing operation, instead of through a | |
| dictionary lookup. (This compensates the somewhat slower dictionary | |
| lookup caused by the generalization of the dictionary module.) | |
| Changes to the syntax | |
| --------------------- | |
| * Continuation lines can now *sometimes* be written without a | |
| backslash: if the continuation is contained within nesting (), [] or | |
| {} brackets the \ may be omitted. There's a much improved | |
| python-mode.el in the misc directory which knows about this as well. | |
| * You can no longer use an empty set of parentheses to define a class | |
| without base classes. That is, you no longer write this: | |
| class Foo(): # syntax error | |
| ... | |
| You must write this instead: | |
| class Foo: | |
| ... | |
| This was already the preferred syntax in release 0.9.8 but many | |
| people seemed not to have picked it up. There's a Python script that | |
| fixes old code: demo/scripts/classfix.py. | |
| * There's a new reserved word: "access". The syntax and semantics are | |
| still subject of research and debate (as well as undocumented), but | |
| the parser knows about the keyword so you must not use it as a | |
| variable, function, or attribute name. | |
| Changes to the semantics of the language proper | |
| ----------------------------------------------- | |
| * The following compatibility hack is removed: if a function was | |
| defined with two or more arguments, and called with a single argument | |
| that was a tuple with just as many arguments, the items of this tuple | |
| would be used as the arguments. This is no longer supported. | |
| Changes to the semantics of classes and instances | |
| ------------------------------------------------- | |
| * Class variables are now also accessible as instance variables for | |
| reading (assignment creates an instance variable which overrides the | |
| class variable of the same name though). | |
| * If a class attribute is a user-defined function, a new kind of | |
| object is returned: an "unbound method". This contains a pointer to | |
| the class and can only be called with a first argument which is a | |
| member of that class (or a derived class). | |
| * If a class defines a method __init__(self, arg1, ...) then this | |
| method is called when a class instance is created by the classname() | |
| construct. Arguments passed to classname() are passed to the | |
| __init__() method. The __init__() methods of base classes are not | |
| automatically called; the derived __init__() method must call these if | |
| necessary (this was done so the derived __init__() method can choose | |
| the call order and arguments for the base __init__() methods). | |
| * If a class defines a method __del__(self) then this method is called | |
| when an instance of the class is about to be destroyed. This makes it | |
| possible to implement clean-up of external resources attached to the | |
| instance. As with __init__(), the __del__() methods of base classes | |
| are not automatically called. If __del__ manages to store a reference | |
| to the object somewhere, its destruction is postponed; when the object | |
| is again about to be destroyed its __del__() method will be called | |
| again. | |
| * Classes may define a method __hash__(self) to allow their instances | |
| to be used as dictionary keys. This must return a 32-bit integer. | |
| Minor improvements | |
| ------------------ | |
| * Function and class objects now know their name (the name given in | |
| the 'def' or 'class' statement that created them). | |
| * Class instances now know their class name. | |
| Additions to built-in operations | |
| -------------------------------- | |
| * The % operator with a string left argument implements formatting | |
| similar to sprintf() in C. The right argument is either a single | |
| value or a tuple of values. All features of Standard C sprintf() are | |
| supported except %p. | |
| * Dictionaries now support almost any key type, instead of just | |
| strings. (The key type must be an immutable type or must be a class | |
| instance where the class defines a method __hash__(), in order to | |
| avoid losing track of keys whose value may change.) | |
| * Built-in methods are now compared properly: when comparing x.meth1 | |
| and y.meth2, if x is equal to y and the methods are defined by the | |
| same function, x.meth1 compares equal to y.meth2. | |
| Additions to built-in functions | |
| ------------------------------- | |
| * str(x) returns a string version of its argument. If the argument is | |
| a string it is returned unchanged, otherwise it returns `x`. | |
| * repr(x) returns the same as `x`. (Some users found it easier to | |
| have this as a function.) | |
| * round(x) returns the floating point number x rounded to a whole | |
| number, represented as a floating point number. round(x, n) returns x | |
| rounded to n digits. | |
| * hasattr(x, name) returns true when x has an attribute with the given | |
| name. | |
| * hash(x) returns a hash code (32-bit integer) of an arbitrary | |
| immutable object's value. | |
| * id(x) returns a unique identifier (32-bit integer) of an arbitrary | |
| object. | |
| * compile() compiles a string to a Python code object. | |
| * exec() and eval() now support execution of code objects. | |
| Changes to the documented part of the library (standard modules) | |
| ---------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| * os.path.normpath() (a.k.a. posixpath.normpath()) has been fixed so | |
| the border case '/foo/..' returns '/' instead of ''. | |
| * A new function string.find() is added with similar semantics to | |
| string.index(); however when it does not find the given substring it | |
| returns -1 instead of raising string.index_error. | |
| Changes to built-in modules | |
| --------------------------- | |
| * New optional module 'array' implements operations on sequences of | |
| integers or floating point numbers of a particular size. This is | |
| useful to manipulate large numerical arrays or to read and write | |
| binary files consisting of numerical data. | |
| * Regular expression objects created by module regex now support a new | |
| method named group(), which returns one or more \(...\) groups by number. | |
| The number of groups is increased from 10 to 100. | |
| * Function compile() in module regex now supports an optional mapping | |
| argument; a variable casefold is added to the module which can be used | |
| as a standard uppercase to lowercase mapping. | |
| * Module time now supports many routines that are defined in the | |
| Standard C time interface (<time.h>): gmtime(), localtime(), | |
| asctime(), ctime(), mktime(), as well as these variables (taken from | |
| System V): timezone, altzone, daylight and tzname. (The corresponding | |
| functions in the undocumented module calendar have been removed; the | |
| undocumented and unfinished module tzparse is now obsolete and will | |
| disappear in a future release.) | |
| * Module strop (the fast built-in version of standard module string) | |
| now uses C's definition of whitespace instead of fixing it to space, | |
| tab and newline; in practice this usually means that vertical tab, | |
| form feed and return are now also considered whitespace. It exports | |
| the string of characters that are considered whitespace as well as the | |
| characters that are considered lowercase or uppercase. | |
| * Module sys now defines the variable builtin_module_names, a list of | |
| names of modules built into the current interpreter (including not | |
| yet imported, but excluding two special modules that always have to be | |
| defined -- sys and builtin). | |
| * Objects created by module sunaudiodev now also support flush() and | |
| close() methods. | |
| * Socket objects created by module socket now support an optional | |
| flags argument for their methods sendto() and recvfrom(). | |
| * Module marshal now supports dumping to and loading from strings, | |
| through the functions dumps() and loads(). | |
| * Module stdwin now supports some new functionality. You may have to | |
| ftp the latest version: ftp.cwi.nl:/pub/stdwin/stdwinforviews.tar.Z.) | |
| Bugs fixed | |
| ---------- | |
| * Fixed comparison of negative long integers. | |
| * The tokenizer no longer botches input lines longer than BUFSIZ. | |
| * Fixed several severe memory leaks in module select. | |
| * Fixed memory leaks in modules socket and sv. | |
| * Fixed memory leak in divmod() for long integers. | |
| * Problems with definition of floatsleep() on Suns fixed. | |
| * Many portability bugs fixed (and undoubtedly new ones added :-). | |
| Changes to the build procedure | |
| ------------------------------ | |
| * The Makefile supports some new targets: "make default" and "make | |
| all". Both are by normally equivalent to "make python". | |
| * The Makefile no longer uses $> since it's not supported by all | |
| versions of Make. | |
| * The header files now all contain #ifdef constructs designed to make | |
| it safe to include the same header file twice, as well as support for | |
| inclusion from C++ programs (automatic extern "C" { ... } added). | |
| Freezing Python scripts | |
| ----------------------- | |
| * There is now some support for "freezing" a Python script as a | |
| stand-alone executable binary file. See the script | |
| demo/scripts/freeze.py. It will require some site-specific tailoring | |
| of the script to get this working, but is quite worthwhile if you write | |
| Python code for other who may not have built and installed Python. | |
| MS-DOS | |
| ------ | |
| * A new MS-DOS port has been done, using MSC 6.0 (I believe). Thanks, | |
| Marcel van der Peijl! This requires fewer compatibility hacks in | |
| posixmodule.c. The executable is not yet available but will be soon | |
| (check the mailing list). | |
| * The default PYTHONPATH has changed. | |
| Changes for developers of extension modules | |
| ------------------------------------------- | |
| * Read src/ChangeLog for full details. | |
| SGI specific changes | |
| -------------------- | |
| * Read src/ChangeLog for full details. | |
| ================================== | |
| ==> Release 0.9.8 (9 Jan 1993) <== | |
| ================================== | |
| I claim no completeness here, but I've tried my best to scan the log | |
| files throughout my source tree for interesting bits of news. A more | |
| complete account of the changes is to be found in the various | |
| ChangeLog files. See also "News for release 0.9.7beta" below if you're | |
| still using release 0.9.6, and the file HISTORY if you have an even | |
| older release. | |
| --Guido | |
| Changes to the language proper | |
| ------------------------------ | |
| There's only one big change: the conformance checking for function | |
| argument lists (of user-defined functions only) is stricter. Earlier, | |
| you could get away with the following: | |
| (a) define a function of one argument and call it with any | |
| number of arguments; if the actual argument count wasn't | |
| one, the function would receive a tuple containing the | |
| arguments (an empty tuple if there were none). | |
| (b) define a function of two arguments, and call it with more | |
| than two arguments; if there were more than two arguments, | |
| the second argument would be passed as a tuple containing | |
| the second and further actual arguments. | |
| (Note that an argument (formal or actual) that is a tuple is counted as | |
| one; these rules don't apply inside such tuples, only at the top level | |
| of the argument list.) | |
| Case (a) was needed to accommodate variable-length argument lists; | |
| there is now an explicit "varargs" feature (precede the last argument | |
| with a '*'). Case (b) was needed for compatibility with old class | |
| definitions: up to release 0.9.4 a method with more than one argument | |
| had to be declared as "def meth(self, (arg1, arg2, ...)): ...". | |
| Version 0.9.6 provide better ways to handle both casees, bot provided | |
| backward compatibility; version 0.9.8 retracts the compatibility hacks | |
| since they also cause confusing behavior if a function is called with | |
| the wrong number of arguments. | |
| There's a script that helps converting classes that still rely on (b), | |
| provided their methods' first argument is called "self": | |
| demo/scripts/methfix.py. | |
| If this change breaks lots of code you have developed locally, try | |
| #defining COMPAT_HACKS in ceval.c. | |
| (There's a third compatibility hack, which is the reverse of (a): if a | |
| function is defined with two or more arguments, and called with a | |
| single argument that is a tuple with just as many arguments, the items | |
| of this tuple will be used as the arguments. Although this can (and | |
| should!) be done using the built-in function apply() instead, it isn't | |
| withdrawn yet.) | |
| One minor change: comparing instance methods works like expected, so | |
| that if x is an instance of a user-defined class and has a method m, | |
| then (x.m==x.m) yields 1. | |
| The following was already present in 0.9.7beta, but not explicitly | |
| mentioned in the NEWS file: user-defined classes can now define types | |
| that behave in almost allrespects like numbers. See | |
| demo/classes/Rat.py for a simple example. | |
| Changes to the build process | |
| ---------------------------- | |
| The Configure.py script and the Makefile has been made somewhat more | |
| bullet-proof, after reports of (minor) trouble on certain platforms. | |
| There is now a script to patch Makefile and config.c to add a new | |
| optional built-in module: Addmodule.sh. Read the script before using! | |
| Using Addmodule.sh, all optional modules can now be configured at | |
| compile time using Configure.py, so there are no modules left that | |
| require dynamic loading. | |
| The Makefile has been fixed to make it easier to use with the VPATH | |
| feature of some Make versions (e.g. SunOS). | |
| Changes affecting portability | |
| ----------------------------- | |
| Several minor portability problems have been solved, e.g. "malloc.h" | |
| has been renamed to "mymalloc.h", "strdup.c" is no longer used, and | |
| the system now tolerates malloc(0) returning 0. | |
| For dynamic loading on the SGI, Jack Jansen's dl 1.6 is now | |
| distributed with Python. This solves several minor problems, in | |
| particular scripts invoked using #! can now use dynamic loading. | |
| Changes to the interpreter interface | |
| ------------------------------------ | |
| On popular demand, there's finally a "profile" feature for interactive | |
| use of the interpreter. If the environment variable $PYTHONSTARTUP is | |
| set to the name of an existing file, Python statements in this file | |
| are executed when the interpreter is started in interactive mode. | |
| There is a new clean-up mechanism, complementing try...finally: if you | |
| assign a function object to sys.exitfunc, it will be called when | |
| Python exits or receives a SIGTERM or SIGHUP signal. | |
| The interpreter is now generally assumed to live in | |
| /usr/local/bin/python (as opposed to /usr/local/python). The script | |
| demo/scripts/fixps.py will update old scripts in place (you can easily | |
| modify it to do other similar changes). | |
| Most I/O that uses sys.stdin/stdout/stderr will now use any object | |
| assigned to those names as long as the object supports readline() or | |
| write() methods. | |
| The parser stack has been increased to 500 to accommodate more | |
| complicated expressions (7 levels used to be the practical maximum, | |
| it's now about 38). | |
| The limit on the size of the *run-time* stack has completely been | |
| removed -- this means that tuple or list displays can contain any | |
| number of elements (formerly more than 50 would crash the | |
| interpreter). | |
| Changes to existing built-in functions and methods | |
| -------------------------------------------------- | |
| The built-in functions int(), long(), float(), oct() and hex() now | |
| also apply to class instalces that define corresponding methods | |
| (__int__ etc.). | |
| New built-in functions | |
| ---------------------- | |
| The new functions str() and repr() convert any object to a string. | |
| The function repr(x) is in all respects equivalent to `x` -- some | |
| people prefer a function for this. The function str(x) does the same | |
| except if x is already a string -- then it returns x unchanged | |
| (repr(x) adds quotes and escapes "funny" characters as octal escapes). | |
| The new function cmp(x, y) returns -1 if x<y, 0 if x==y, 1 if x>y. | |
| Changes to general built-in modules | |
| ----------------------------------- | |
| The time module's functions are more general: time() returns a | |
| floating point number and sleep() accepts one. Their accuracies | |
| depends on the precision of the system clock. Millisleep is no longer | |
| needed (although it still exists for now), but millitimer is still | |
| needed since on some systems wall clock time is only available with | |
| seconds precision, while a source of more precise time exists that | |
| isn't synchronized with the wall clock. (On UNIX systems that support | |
| the BSD gettimeofday() function, time.time() is as time.millitimer().) | |
| The string representation of a file object now includes an address: | |
| '<file 'filename', mode 'r' at #######>' where ###### is a hex number | |
| (the object's address) to make it unique. | |
| New functions added to posix: nice(), setpgrp(), and if your system | |
| supports them: setsid(), setpgid(), tcgetpgrp(), tcsetpgrp(). | |
| Improvements to the socket module: socket objects have new methods | |
| getpeername() and getsockname(), and the {get,set}sockopt methods can | |
| now get/set any kind of option using strings built with the new struct | |
| module. And there's a new function fromfd() which creates a socket | |
| object given a file descriptor (useful for servers started by inetd, | |
| which have a socket connected to stdin and stdout). | |
| Changes to SGI-specific built-in modules | |
| ---------------------------------------- | |
| The FORMS library interface (fl) now requires FORMS 2.1a. Some new | |
| functions have been added and some bugs have been fixed. | |
| Additions to al (audio library interface): added getname(), | |
| getdefault() and getminmax(). | |
| The gl modules doesn't call "foreground()" when initialized (this | |
| caused some problems) like it dit in 0.9.7beta (but not before). | |
| There's a new gl function 'gversion() which returns a version string. | |
| The interface to sv (Indigo video interface) has totally changed. | |
| (Sorry, still no documentation, but see the examples in | |
| demo/sgi/{sv,video}.) | |
| Changes to standard library modules | |
| ----------------------------------- | |
| Most functions in module string are now much faster: they're actually | |
| implemented in C. The module containing the C versions is called | |
| "strop" but you should still import "string" since strop doesn't | |
| provide all the interfaces defined in string (and strop may be renamed | |
| to string when it is complete in a future release). | |
| string.index() now accepts an optional third argument giving an index | |
| where to start searching in the first argument, so you can find second | |
| and further occurrences (this is similar to the regular expression | |
| functions in regex). | |
| The definition of what string.splitfields(anything, '') should return | |
| is changed for the last time: it returns a singleton list containing | |
| its whole first argument unchanged. This is compatible with | |
| regsub.split() which also ignores empty delimiter matches. | |
| posixpath, macpath: added dirname() and normpath() (and basename() to | |
| macpath). | |
| The mainloop module (for use with stdwin) can now demultiplex input | |
| from other sources, as long as they can be polled with select(). | |
| New built-in modules | |
| -------------------- | |
| Module struct defines functions to pack/unpack values to/from strings | |
| representing binary values in native byte order. | |
| Module strop implements C versions of many functions from string (see | |
| above). | |
| Optional module fcntl defines interfaces to fcntl() and ioctl() -- | |
| UNIX only. (Not yet properly documented -- see however src/fcntl.doc.) | |
| Optional module mpz defines an interface to an altaernative long | |
| integer implementation, the GNU MPZ library. | |
| Optional module md5 uses the GNU MPZ library to calculate MD5 | |
| signatures of strings. | |
| There are also optional new modules specific to SGI machines: imageop | |
| defines some simple operations to images represented as strings; sv | |
| interfaces to the Indigo video board; cl interfaces to the (yet | |
| unreleased) compression library. | |
| New standard library modules | |
| ---------------------------- | |
| (Unfortunately the following modules are not all documented; read the | |
| sources to find out more about them!) | |
| autotest: run testall without showing any output unless it differs | |
| from the expected output | |
| bisect: use bisection to insert or find an item in a sorted list | |
| colorsys: defines conversions between various color systems (e.g. RGB | |
| <-> YUV) | |
| nntplib: a client interface to NNTP servers | |
| pipes: utility to construct pipeline from templates, e.g. for | |
| conversion from one file format to another using several utilities. | |
| regsub: contains three functions that are more or less compatible with | |
| awk functions of the same name: sub() and gsub() do string | |
| substitution, split() splits a string using a regular expression to | |
| define how separators are define. | |
| test_types: test operations on the built-in types of Python | |
| toaiff: convert various audio file formats to AIFF format | |
| tzparse: parse the TZ environment parameter (this may be less general | |
| than it could be, let me know if you fix it). | |
| (Note that the obsolete module "path" no longer exists.) | |
| New SGI-specific library modules | |
| -------------------------------- | |
| CL: constants for use with the built-in compression library interface (cl) | |
| Queue: a multi-producer, multi-consumer queue class implemented for | |
| use with the built-in thread module | |
| SOCKET: constants for use with built-in module socket, e.g. to set/get | |
| socket options. This is SGI-specific because the constants to be | |
| passed are system-dependent. You can generate a version for your own | |
| system by running the script demo/scripts/h2py.py with | |
| /usr/include/sys/socket.h as input. | |
| cddb: interface to the database used by the CD player | |
| torgb: convert various image file types to rgb format (requires pbmplus) | |
| New demos | |
| --------- | |
| There's an experimental interface to define Sun RPC clients and | |
| servers in demo/rpc. | |
| There's a collection of interfaces to WWW, WAIS and Gopher (both | |
| Python classes and program providing a user interface) in demo/www. | |
| This includes a program texi2html.py which converts texinfo files to | |
| HTML files (the format used hy WWW). | |
| The ibrowse demo has moved from demo/stdwin/ibrowse to demo/ibrowse. | |
| For SGI systems, there's a whole collection of programs and classes | |
| that make use of the Indigo video board in demo/sgi/{sv,video}. This | |
| represents a significant amount of work that we're giving away! | |
| There are demos "rsa" and "md5test" that exercise the mpz and md5 | |
| modules, respectively. The rsa demo is a complete implementation of | |
| the RSA public-key cryptosystem! | |
| A bunch of games and examples submitted by Stoffel Erasmus have been | |
| included in demo/stoffel. | |
| There are miscellaneous new files in some existing demo | |
| subdirectories: classes/bitvec.py, scripts/{fixps,methfix}.py, | |
| sgi/al/cmpaf.py, sockets/{mcast,gopher}.py. | |
| There are also many minor changes to existing files, but I'm too lazy | |
| to run a diff and note the differences -- you can do this yourself if | |
| you save the old distribution's demos. One highlight: the | |
| stdwin/python.py demo is much improved! | |
| Changes to the documentation | |
| ---------------------------- | |
| The LaTeX source for the library uses different macros to enable it to | |
| be converted to texinfo, and from there to INFO or HTML format so it | |
| can be browsed as a hypertext. The net result is that you can now | |
| read the Python library documentation in Emacs info mode! | |
| Changes to the source code that affect C extension writers | |
| ---------------------------------------------------------- | |
| The function strdup() no longer exists (it was used only in one places | |
| and is somewhat of a portability problem since some systems have the | |
| same function in their C library. | |
| The functions NEW() and RENEW() allocate one spare byte to guard | |
| against a NULL return from malloc(0) being taken for an error, but | |
| this should not be relied upon. | |
| ========================= | |
| ==> Release 0.9.7beta <== | |
| ========================= | |
| Changes to the language proper | |
| ------------------------------ | |
| User-defined classes can now implement operations invoked through | |
| special syntax, such as x[i] or `x` by defining methods named | |
| __getitem__(self, i) or __repr__(self), etc. | |
| Changes to the build process | |
| ---------------------------- | |
| Instead of extensive manual editing of the Makefile to select | |
| compile-time options, you can now run a Configure.py script. | |
| The Makefile as distributed builds a minimal interpreter sufficient to | |
| run Configure.py. See also misc/BUILD | |
| The Makefile now includes more "utility" targets, e.g. install and | |
| tags/TAGS | |
| Using the provided strtod.c and strtol.c are now separate options, as | |
| on the Sun the provided strtod.c dumps core :-( | |
| The regex module is now an option chosen by the Makefile, since some | |
| (old) C compilers choke on regexpr.c | |
| Changes affecting portability | |
| ----------------------------- | |
| You need STDWIN version 0.9.7 (released 30 June 1992) for the stdwin | |
| interface | |
| Dynamic loading is now supported for Sun (and other non-COFF systems) | |
| throug dld-3.2.3, as well as for SGI (a new version of Jack Jansen's | |
| DL is out, 1.4) | |
| The system-dependent code for the use of the select() system call is | |
| moved to one file: myselect.h | |
| Thanks to Jaap Vermeulen, the code should now port cleanly to the | |
| SEQUENT | |
| Changes to the interpreter interface | |
| ------------------------------------ | |
| The interpretation of $PYTHONPATH in the environment is different: it | |
| is inserted in front of the default path instead of overriding it | |
| Changes to existing built-in functions and methods | |
| -------------------------------------------------- | |
| List objects now support an optional argument to their sort() method, | |
| which is a comparison function similar to qsort(3) in C | |
| File objects now have a method fileno(), used by the new select module | |
| (see below) | |
| New built-in function | |
| --------------------- | |
| coerce(x, y): take two numbers and return a tuple containing them | |
| both converted to a common type | |
| Changes to built-in modules | |
| --------------------------- | |
| sys: fixed core dumps in settrace() and setprofile() | |
| socket: added socket methods setsockopt() and getsockopt(); and | |
| fileno(), used by the new select module (see below) | |
| stdwin: added fileno() == connectionnumber(), in support of new module | |
| select (see below) | |
| posix: added get{eg,eu,g,u}id(); waitpid() is now a separate function. | |
| gl: added qgetfd() | |
| fl: added several new functions, fixed several obscure bugs, adapted | |
| to FORMS 2.1 | |
| Changes to standard modules | |
| --------------------------- | |
| posixpath: changed implementation of ismount() | |
| string: atoi() no longer mistakes leading zero for octal number | |
| ... | |
| New built-in modules | |
| -------------------- | |
| Modules marked "dynamic only" are not configured at compile time but | |
| can be loaded dynamically. You need to turn on the DL or DLD option in | |
| the Makefile for support dynamic loading of modules (this requires | |
| external code). | |
| select: interfaces to the BSD select() system call | |
| dbm: interfaces to the (new) dbm library (dynamic only) | |
| nis: interfaces to some NIS functions (aka yellow pages) | |
| thread: limited form of multiple threads (sgi only) | |
| audioop: operations useful for audio programs, e.g. u-LAW and ADPCM | |
| coding (dynamic only) | |
| cd: interface to Indigo SCSI CDROM player audio library (sgi only) | |
| jpeg: read files in JPEG format (dynamic only, sgi only; needs | |
| external code) | |
| imgfile: read SGI image files (dynamic only, sgi only) | |
| sunaudiodev: interface to sun's /dev/audio (dynamic only, sun only) | |
| sv: interface to Indigo video library (sgi only) | |
| pc: a minimal set of MS-DOS interfaces (MS-DOS only) | |
| rotor: encryption, by Lance Ellinghouse (dynamic only) | |
| New standard modules | |
| -------------------- | |
| Not all these modules are documented. Read the source: | |
| lib/<modulename>.py. Sometimes a file lib/<modulename>.doc contains | |
| additional documentation. | |
| imghdr: recognizes image file headers | |
| sndhdr: recognizes sound file headers | |
| profile: print run-time statistics of Python code | |
| readcd, cdplayer: companion modules for built-in module cd (sgi only) | |
| emacs: interface to Emacs using py-connect.el (see below). | |
| SOCKET: symbolic constant definitions for socket options | |
| SUNAUDIODEV: symbolic constant definitions for sunaudiodef (sun only) | |
| SV: symbolic constant definitions for sv (sgi only) | |
| CD: symbolic constant definitions for cd (sgi only) | |
| New demos | |
| --------- | |
| scripts/pp.py: execute Python as a filter with a Perl-like command | |
| line interface | |
| classes/: examples using the new class features | |
| threads/: examples using the new thread module | |
| sgi/cd/: examples using the new cd module | |
| Changes to the documentation | |
| ---------------------------- | |
| The last-minute syntax changes of release 0.9.6 are now reflected | |
| everywhere in the manuals | |
| The reference manual has a new section (3.2) on implementing new kinds | |
| of numbers, sequences or mappings with user classes | |
| Classes are now treated extensively in the tutorial (chapter 9) | |
| Slightly restructured the system-dependent chapters of the library | |
| manual | |
| The file misc/EXTENDING incorporates documentation for mkvalue() and | |
| a new section on error handling | |
| The files misc/CLASSES and misc/ERRORS are no longer necessary | |
| The doc/Makefile now creates PostScript files automatically | |
| Miscellaneous changes | |
| --------------------- | |
| Incorporated Tim Peters' changes to python-mode.el, it's now version | |
| 1.06 | |
| A python/Emacs bridge (provided by Terrence M. Brannon) lets a Python | |
| program running in an Emacs buffer execute Emacs lisp code. The | |
| necessary Python code is in lib/emacs.py. The Emacs code is | |
| misc/py-connect.el (it needs some external Emacs lisp code) | |
| Changes to the source code that affect C extension writers | |
| ---------------------------------------------------------- | |
| New service function mkvalue() to construct a Python object from C | |
| values according to a "format" string a la getargs() | |
| Most functions from pythonmain.c moved to new pythonrun.c which is | |
| in libpython.a. This should make embedded versions of Python easier | |
| ceval.h is split in eval.h (which needs compile.h and only declares | |
| eval_code) and ceval.h (which doesn't need compile.hand declares the | |
| rest) | |
| ceval.h defines macros BGN_SAVE / END_SAVE for use with threads (to | |
| improve the parallellism of multi-threaded programs by letting other | |
| Python code run when a blocking system call or something similar is | |
| made) | |
| In structmember.[ch], new member types BYTE, CHAR and unsigned | |
| variants have been added | |
| New file xxmodule.c is a template for new extension modules. | |
| ================================== | |
| ==> Release 0.9.6 (6 Apr 1992) <== | |
| ================================== | |
| Misc news in 0.9.6: | |
| - Restructured the misc subdirectory | |
| - Reference manual completed, library manual much extended (with indexes!) | |
| - the GNU Readline library is now distributed standard with Python | |
| - the script "../demo/scripts/classfix.py" fixes Python modules using old | |
| class syntax | |
| - Emacs python-mode.el (was python.el) vastly improved (thanks, Tim!) | |
| - Because of the GNU copyleft business I am not using the GNU regular | |
| expression implementation but a free re-implementation by Tatu Ylonen | |
| that recently appeared in comp.sources.misc (Bravo, Tatu!) | |
| New features in 0.9.6: | |
| - stricter try stmt syntax: cannot mix except and finally clauses on 1 try | |
| - New module 'os' supplants modules 'mac' and 'posix' for most cases; | |
| module 'path' is replaced by 'os.path' | |
| - os.path.split() return value differs from that of old path.split() | |
| - sys.exc_type, sys.exc_value, sys.exc_traceback are set to the exception | |
| currently being handled | |
| - sys.last_type, sys.last_value, sys.last_traceback remember last unhandled | |
| exception | |
| - New function string.expandtabs() expands tabs in a string | |
| - Added times() interface to posix (user & sys time of process & children) | |
| - Added uname() interface to posix (returns OS type, hostname, etc.) | |
| - New built-in function execfile() is like exec() but from a file | |
| - Functions exec() and eval() are less picky about whitespace/newlines | |
| - New built-in functions getattr() and setattr() access arbitrary attributes | |
| - More generic argument handling in built-in functions (see "./EXTENDING") | |
| - Dynamic loading of modules written in C or C++ (see "./DYNLOAD") | |
| - Division and modulo for long and plain integers with negative operands | |
| have changed; a/b is now floor(float(a)/float(b)) and a%b is defined | |
| as a-(a/b)*b. So now the outcome of divmod(a,b) is the same as | |
| (a/b, a%b) for integers. For floats, % is also changed, but of course | |
| / is unchanged, and divmod(x,y) does not yield (x/y, x%y)... | |
| - A function with explicit variable-length argument list can be declared | |
| like this: def f(*args): ...; or even like this: def f(a, b, *rest): ... | |
| - Code tracing and profiling features have been added, and two source | |
| code debuggers are provided in the library (pdb.py, tty-oriented, | |
| and wdb, window-oriented); you can now step through Python programs! | |
| See sys.settrace() and sys.setprofile(), and "../lib/pdb.doc" | |
| - '==' is now the only equality operator; "../demo/scripts/eqfix.py" is | |
| a script that fixes old Python modules | |
| - Plain integer right shift now uses sign extension | |
| - Long integer shift/mask operations now simulate 2's complement | |
| to give more useful results for negative operands | |
| - Changed/added range checks for long/plain integer shifts | |
| - Options found after "-c command" are now passed to the command in sys.argv | |
| (note subtle incompatibility with "python -c command -- -options"!) | |
| - Module stdwin is better protected against touching objects after they've | |
| been closed; menus can now also be closed explicitly | |
| - Stdwin now uses its own exception (stdwin.error) | |
| New features in 0.9.5 (released as Macintosh application only, 2 Jan 1992): | |
| - dictionary objects can now be compared properly; e.g., {}=={} is true | |
| - new exception SystemExit causes termination if not caught; | |
| it is raised by sys.exit() so that 'finally' clauses can clean up, | |
| and it may even be caught. It does work interactively! | |
| - new module "regex" implements GNU Emacs style regular expressions; | |
| module "regexp" is rewritten in Python for backward compatibility | |
| - formal parameter lists may contain trailing commas | |
| Bugs fixed in 0.9.6: | |
| - assigning to or deleting a list item with a negative index dumped core | |
| - divmod(-10L,5L) returned (-3L, 5L) instead of (-2L, 0L) | |
| Bugs fixed in 0.9.5: | |
| - masking operations involving negative long integers gave wrong results | |
| =================================== | |
| ==> Release 0.9.4 (24 Dec 1991) <== | |
| =================================== | |
| - new function argument handling (see below) | |
| - built-in apply(func, args) means func(args[0], args[1], ...) | |
| - new, more refined exceptions | |
| - new exception string values (NameError = 'NameError' etc.) | |
| - better checking for math exceptions | |
| - for sequences (string/tuple/list), x[-i] is now equivalent to x[len(x)-i] | |
| - fixed list assignment bug: "a[1:1] = a" now works correctly | |
| - new class syntax, without extraneous parentheses | |
| - new 'global' statement to assign global variables from within a function | |
| New class syntax | |
| ---------------- | |
| You can now declare a base class as follows: | |
| class B: # Was: class B(): | |
| def some_method(self): ... | |
| ... | |
| and a derived class thusly: | |
| class D(B): # Was: class D() = B(): | |
| def another_method(self, arg): ... | |
| Multiple inheritance looks like this: | |
| class M(B, D): # Was: class M() = B(), D(): | |
| def this_or_that_method(self, arg): ... | |
| The old syntax is still accepted by Python 0.9.4, but will disappear | |
| in Python 1.0 (to be posted to comp.sources). | |
| New 'global' statement | |
| ---------------------- | |
| Every now and then you have a global variable in a module that you | |
| want to change from within a function in that module -- say, a count | |
| of calls to a function, or an option flag, etc. Until now this was | |
| not directly possible. While several kludges are known that | |
| circumvent the problem, and often the need for a global variable can | |
| be avoided by rewriting the module as a class, this does not always | |
| lead to clearer code. | |
| The 'global' statement solves this dilemma. Its occurrence in a | |
| function body means that, for the duration of that function, the | |
| names listed there refer to global variables. For instance: | |
| total = 0.0 | |
| count = 0 | |
| def add_to_total(amount): | |
| global total, count | |
| total = total + amount | |
| count = count + 1 | |
| 'global' must be repeated in each function where it is needed. The | |
| names listed in a 'global' statement must not be used in the function | |
| before the statement is reached. | |
| Remember that you don't need to use 'global' if you only want to *use* | |
| a global variable in a function; nor do you need ot for assignments to | |
| parts of global variables (e.g., list or dictionary items or | |
| attributes of class instances). This has not changed; in fact | |
| assignment to part of a global variable was the standard workaround. | |
| New exceptions | |
| -------------- | |
| Several new exceptions have been defined, to distinguish more clearly | |
| between different types of errors. | |
| name meaning was | |
| AttributeError reference to non-existing attribute NameError | |
| IOError unexpected I/O error RuntimeError | |
| ImportError import of non-existing module or name NameError | |
| IndexError invalid string, tuple or list index RuntimeError | |
| KeyError key not in dictionary RuntimeError | |
| OverflowError numeric overflow RuntimeError | |
| SyntaxError invalid syntax RuntimeError | |
| ValueError invalid argument value RuntimeError | |
| ZeroDivisionError division by zero RuntimeError | |
| The string value of each exception is now its name -- this makes it | |
| easier to experimentally find out which operations raise which | |
| exceptions; e.g.: | |
| >>> KeyboardInterrupt | |
| 'KeyboardInterrupt' | |
| >>> | |
| New argument passing semantics | |
| ------------------------------ | |
| Off-line discussions with Steve Majewski and Daniel LaLiberte have | |
| convinced me that Python's parameter mechanism could be changed in a | |
| way that made both of them happy (I hope), kept me happy, fixed a | |
| number of outstanding problems, and, given some backward compatibility | |
| provisions, would only break a very small amount of existing code -- | |
| probably all mine anyway. In fact I suspect that most Python users | |
| will hardly notice the difference. And yet it has cost me at least | |
| one sleepless night to decide to make the change... | |
| Philosophically, the change is quite radical (to me, anyway): a | |
| function is no longer called with either zero or one argument, which | |
| is a tuple if there appear to be more arguments. Every function now | |
| has an argument list containing 0, 1 or more arguments. This list is | |
| always implemented as a tuple, and it is a (run-time) error if a | |
| function is called with a different number of arguments than expected. | |
| What's the difference? you may ask. The answer is, very little unless | |
| you want to write variadic functions -- functions that may be called | |
| with a variable number of arguments. Formerly, you could write a | |
| function that accepted one or more arguments with little trouble, but | |
| writing a function that could be called with either 0 or 1 argument | |
| (or more) was next to impossible. This is now a piece of cake: you | |
| can simply declare an argument that receives the entire argument | |
| tuple, and check its length -- it will be of size 0 if there are no | |
| arguments. | |
| Another anomaly of the old system was the way multi-argument methods | |
| (in classes) had to be declared, e.g.: | |
| class Point(): | |
| def init(self, (x, y, color)): ... | |
| def setcolor(self, color): ... | |
| dev moveto(self, (x, y)): ... | |
| def draw(self): ... | |
| Using the new scheme there is no need to enclose the method arguments | |
| in an extra set of parentheses, so the above class could become: | |
| class Point: | |
| def init(self, x, y, color): ... | |
| def setcolor(self, color): ... | |
| dev moveto(self, x, y): ... | |
| def draw(self): ... | |
| That is, the equivalence rule between methods and functions has | |
| changed so that now p.moveto(x,y) is equivalent to Point.moveto(p,x,y) | |
| while formerly it was equivalent to Point.moveto(p,(x,y)). | |
| A special backward compatibility rule makes that the old version also | |
| still works: whenever a function with exactly two arguments (at the top | |
| level) is called with more than two arguments, the second and further | |
| arguments are packed into a tuple and passed as the second argument. | |
| This rule is invoked independently of whether the function is actually a | |
| method, so there is a slight chance that some erroneous calls of | |
| functions expecting two arguments with more than that number of | |
| arguments go undetected at first -- when the function tries to use the | |
| second argument it may find it is a tuple instead of what was expected. | |
| Note that this rule will be removed from future versions of the | |
| language; it is a backward compatibility provision *only*. | |
| Two other rules and a new built-in function handle conversion between | |
| tuples and argument lists: | |
| Rule (a): when a function with more than one argument is called with a | |
| single argument that is a tuple of the right size, the tuple's items | |
| are used as arguments. | |
| Rule (b): when a function with exactly one argument receives no | |
| arguments or more than one, that one argument will receive a tuple | |
| containing the arguments (the tuple will be empty if there were no | |
| arguments). | |
| A new built-in function, apply(), was added to support functions that | |
| need to call other functions with a constructed argument list. The call | |
| apply(function, tuple) | |
| is equivalent to | |
| function(tuple[0], tuple[1], ..., tuple[len(tuple)-1]) | |
| While no new argument syntax was added in this phase, it would now be | |
| quite sensible to add explicit syntax to Python for default argument | |
| values (as in C++ or Modula-3), or a "rest" argument to receive the | |
| remaining arguments of a variable-length argument list. | |
| ======================================================== | |
| ==> Release 0.9.3 (never made available outside CWI) <== | |
| ======================================================== | |
| - string sys.version shows current version (also printed on interactive entry) | |
| - more detailed exceptions, e.g., IOError, ZeroDivisionError, etc. | |
| - 'global' statement to declare module-global variables assigned in functions. | |
| - new class declaration syntax: class C(Base1, Base2, ...): suite | |
| (the old syntax is still accepted -- be sure to convert your classes now!) | |
| - C shifting and masking operators: << >> ~ & ^ | (for ints and longs). | |
| - C comparison operators: == != (the old = and <> remain valid). | |
| - floating point numbers may now start with a period (e.g., .14). | |
| - definition of integer division tightened (always truncates towards zero). | |
| - new builtins hex(x), oct(x) return hex/octal string from (long) integer. | |
| - new list method l.count(x) returns the number of occurrences of x in l. | |
| - new SGI module: al (Indigo and 4D/35 audio library). | |
| - the FORMS interface (modules fl and FL) now uses FORMS 2.0 | |
| - module gl: added lrect{read,write}, rectzoom and pixmode; | |
| added (non-GL) functions (un)packrect. | |
| - new socket method: s.allowbroadcast(flag). | |
| - many objects support __dict__, __methods__ or __members__. | |
| - dir() lists anything that has __dict__. | |
| - class attributes are no longer read-only. | |
| - classes support __bases__, instances support __class__ (and __dict__). | |
| - divmod() now also works for floats. | |
| - fixed obscure bug in eval('1 '). | |
| =================================== | |
| ==> Release 0.9.2 (Autumn 1991) <== | |
| =================================== | |
| Highlights | |
| ---------- | |
| - tutorial now (almost) complete; library reference reorganized | |
| - new syntax: continue statement; semicolons; dictionary constructors; | |
| restrictions on blank lines in source files removed | |
| - dramatically improved module load time through precompiled modules | |
| - arbitrary precision integers: compute 2 to the power 1000 and more... | |
| - arithmetic operators now accept mixed type operands, e.g., 3.14/4 | |
| - more operations on list: remove, index, reverse; repetition | |
| - improved/new file operations: readlines, seek, tell, flush, ... | |
| - process management added to the posix module: fork/exec/wait/kill etc. | |
| - BSD socket operations (with example servers and clients!) | |
| - many new STDWIN features (color, fonts, polygons, ...) | |
| - new SGI modules: font manager and FORMS library interface | |
| Extended list of changes in 0.9.2 | |
| --------------------------------- | |
| Here is a summary of the most important user-visible changes in 0.9.2, | |
| in somewhat arbitrary order. Changes in later versions are listed in | |
| the "highlights" section above. | |
| 1. Changes to the interpreter proper | |
| - Simple statements can now be separated by semicolons. | |
| If you write "if t: s1; s2", both s1 and s2 are executed | |
| conditionally. | |
| - The 'continue' statement was added, with semantics as in C. | |
| - Dictionary displays are now allowed on input: {key: value, ...}. | |
| - Blank lines and lines bearing only a comment no longer need to | |
| be indented properly. (A completely empty line still ends a multi- | |
| line statement interactively.) | |
| - Mixed arithmetic is supported, 1 compares equal to 1.0, etc. | |
| - Option "-c command" to execute statements from the command line | |
| - Compiled versions of modules are cached in ".pyc" files, giving a | |
| dramatic improvement of start-up time | |
| - Other, smaller speed improvements, e.g., extracting characters from | |
| strings, looking up single-character keys, and looking up global | |
| variables | |
| - Interrupting a print operation raises KeyboardInterrupt instead of | |
| only cancelling the print operation | |
| - Fixed various portability problems (it now passes gcc with only | |
| warnings -- more Standard C compatibility will be provided in later | |
| versions) | |
| - Source is prepared for porting to MS-DOS | |
| - Numeric constants are now checked for overflow (this requires | |
| standard-conforming strtol() and strtod() functions; a correct | |
| strtol() implementation is provided, but the strtod() provided | |
| relies on atof() for everything, including error checking | |
| 2. Changes to the built-in types, functions and modules | |
| - New module socket: interface to BSD socket primitives | |
| - New modules pwd and grp: access the UNIX password and group databases | |
| - (SGI only:) New module "fm" interfaces to the SGI IRIX Font Manager | |
| - (SGI only:) New module "fl" interfaces to Mark Overmars' FORMS library | |
| - New numeric type: long integer, for unlimited precision | |
| - integer constants suffixed with 'L' or 'l' are long integers | |
| - new built-in function long(x) converts int or float to long | |
| - int() and float() now also convert from long integers | |
| - New built-in function: | |
| - pow(x, y) returns x to the power y | |
| - New operation and methods for lists: | |
| - l*n returns a new list consisting of n concatenated copies of l | |
| - l.remove(x) removes the first occurrence of the value x from l | |
| - l.index(x) returns the index of the first occurrence of x in l | |
| - l.reverse() reverses l in place | |
| - New operation for tuples: | |
| - t*n returns a tuple consisting of n concatenated copies of t | |
| - Improved file handling: | |
| - f.readline() no longer restricts the line length, is faster, | |
| and isn't confused by null bytes; same for raw_input() | |
| - f.read() without arguments reads the entire (rest of the) file | |
| - mixing of print and sys.stdout.write() has different effect | |
| - New methods for files: | |
| - f.readlines() returns a list containing the lines of the file, | |
| as read with f.readline() | |
| - f.flush(), f.tell(), f.seek() call their stdio counterparts | |
| - f.isatty() tests for "tty-ness" | |
| - New posix functions: | |
| - _exit(), exec(), fork(), getpid(), getppid(), kill(), wait() | |
| - popen() returns a file object connected to a pipe | |
| - utime() replaces utimes() (the latter is not a POSIX name) | |
| - New stdwin features, including: | |
| - font handling | |
| - color drawing | |
| - scroll bars made optional | |
| - polygons | |
| - filled and xor shapes | |
| - text editing objects now have a 'settext' method | |
| 3. Changes to the standard library | |
| - Name change: the functions path.cat and macpath.cat are now called | |
| path.join and macpath.join | |
| - Added new modules: formatter, mutex, persist, sched, mainloop | |
| - Added some modules and functionality to the "widget set" (which is | |
| still under development, so please bear with me): | |
| DirList, FormSplit, TextEdit, WindowSched | |
| - Fixed module testall to work non-interactively | |
| - Module string: | |
| - added functions join() and joinfields() | |
| - fixed center() to work correct and make it "transitive" | |
| - Obsolete modules were removed: util, minmax | |
| - Some modules were moved to the demo directory | |
| 4. Changes to the demonstration programs | |
| - Added new useful scipts: byteyears, eptags, fact, from, lfact, | |
| objgraph, pdeps, pi, primes, ptags, which | |
| - Added a bunch of socket demos | |
| - Doubled the speed of ptags | |
| - Added new stdwin demos: microedit, miniedit | |
| - Added a windowing interface to the Python interpreter: python (most | |
| useful on the Mac) | |
| - Added a browser for Emacs info files: demo/stdwin/ibrowse | |
| (yes, I plan to put all STDWIN and Python documentation in texinfo | |
| form in the future) | |
| 5. Other changes to the distribution | |
| - An Emacs Lisp file "python.el" is provided to facilitate editing | |
| Python programs in GNU Emacs (slightly improved since posted to | |
| gnu.emacs.sources) | |
| - Some info on writing an extension in C is provided | |
| - Some info on building Python on non-UNIX platforms is provided | |
| ===================================== | |
| ==> Release 0.9.1 (February 1991) <== | |
| ===================================== | |
| - Micro changes only | |
| - Added file "patchlevel.h" | |
| ===================================== | |
| ==> Release 0.9.0 (February 1991) <== | |
| ===================================== | |
| Original posting to alt.sources. |