transcribed changes from tut.tex
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Guido van Rossum
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Misc/NEWS
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Misc/NEWS
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===================================
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==> Release 1.2 <==
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===================================
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=====================================
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==> Release 1.3 (13 October 1995) <==
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=====================================
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- Changes to Misc/python-mode.el:
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- Wrapping and indentation within triple quote strings should work
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properly now.
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- `Standard' bug reporting mechanism (use C-c C-b)
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- py-mark-block was moved to C-c C-m
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- C-c C-v shows you the python-mode version
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- a basic python-font-lock-keywords has been added for Emacs 19
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font-lock colorizations.
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- proper interaction with pending-del and del-sel modes.
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- New py-electric-colon (:) command for improved outdenting. Also
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py-indent-line (TAB) should handle outdented lines better.
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- New commands py-outdent-left (C-c C-l) and py-indent-right (C-c C-r)
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Major change
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============
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- The Library Reference has been restructured, and many new and
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existing modules are now documented, in particular the debugger and
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the profiler, as well as the persistency and the WWW/Internet support
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modules.
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Two words: Keyword Arguments. See the first section of Chapter 12 of
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the Tutorial.
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- All known bugs have been fixed. For example the pow(2,2,3L) bug on
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Linux has been fixed. Also the re-entrancy problems with __del__ have
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been fixed.
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(The rest of this file is textually the same as the remaining sections
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of that chapter.)
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- All known memory leaks have been fixed.
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- Phase 2 of the Great Renaming has been executed. The header files
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now use the new names (PyObject instead of object, etc.). The linker
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also sees the new names. Most source files still use the old names,
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by virtue of the rename2.h header file. If you include Python.h, you
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only see the new names. Dynamically linked modules have to be
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recompiled. (Phase 3, fixing the rest of the sources, will be
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executed gradually with the release later versions.)
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Changes to the WWW and Internet tools
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=====================================
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- The hooks for implementing "safe-python" (better called "restricted
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execution") are in place. Specifically, the import statement is
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implemented by calling the built-in function __import__, and the
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built-in names used in a particular scope are taken from the
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dictionary __builtins__ in that scope's global dictionary. See also
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the new (unsupported, undocumented) module rexec.py.
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The "htmllib" module has been rewritten in an incompatible fashion.
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The new version is considerably more complete (HTML 2.0 except forms,
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but including all ISO-8859-1 entity definitions), and easy to use.
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Small changes to "sgmllib" have also been made, to better match the
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tokenization of HTML as recognized by other web tools.
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- The import statement now supports the syntax "import a.b.c" and
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"from a.b.c import name". No officially supported implementation
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exists, but one can be prototyped by replacing the built-in __import__
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function. A proposal by Ken Manheimer is provided as newimp.py.
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A new module "formatter" has been added, for use with the new
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"htmllib" module.
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- All machinery used by the import statement (or the built-in
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__import__ function) is now exposed through the new built-in module
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"imp" (see the library reference manual). All dynamic loading
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machinery is moved to the new file importdl.c.
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The "urllib"and "httplib" modules have been changed somewhat to allow
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overriding unknown URL types and to support authentication. They now
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use "mimetools.Message" instead of "rfc822.Message" to parse headers.
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The "endrequest()" method has been removed from the HTTP class since
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it breaks the interaction with some servers.
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- Persistent storage is supported through the use of the modules
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"pickle" and "shelve" (implemented in Python). There's also a "copy"
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module implementing deepcopy and normal (shallow) copy operations.
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See the library reference manual.
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The "rfc822.Message" class has been changed to allow a flag to be
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passed in that says that the file is unseekable.
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- Documentation strings for many objects types are accessible through
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the __doc__ attribute. Modules, classes and functions support special
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syntax to initialize the __doc__ attribute: if the first statement
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consists of just a string literal, that string literal becomes the
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value of the __doc__ attribute. The default __doc__ attribute is
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None. Documentation strings are also supported for built-in
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functions, types and modules; however this feature hasn't been widely
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used yet. See the 'new' module for an example. (Basically, the type
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object's tp_doc field contains the doc string for the type, and the
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4th member of the methodlist structure contains the doc string for the
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method.)
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The "ftplib" module has been fixed to be (hopefully) more robust on
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Linux.
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- The __coerce__ and __cmp__ methods for user-defined classes once
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again work as expected. As an example, there's a new standard class
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Complex in the library.
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Several new operations that are optionally supported by servers have
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been added to "nntplib": "xover", "xgtitle", "xpath" and "date".
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- The functions posix.popen() and posix.fdopen() now have an optional
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third argument to specify the buffer size, and default their second
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(mode) argument to 'r' -- in analogy to the builtin open() function.
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The same applies to posixfile.open() and the socket method makefile().
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Other Language Changes
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======================
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- The thread.exit_thread() function now raises SystemExit so that
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'finally' clauses are honored and a memory leak is plugged.
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The "raise" statement now takes an optional argument which specifies
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the traceback to be used when printing the exception's stack trace.
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This must be a traceback object, such as found in "sys.exc_traceback".
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When omitted or given as "None", the old behavior (to generate a stack
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trace entry for the current stack frame) is used.
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- Improved X11 and Motif support, by Sjoerd Mullender. This extension
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is being maintained and distributed separately.
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The tokenizer is now more tolerant of alien whitespace. Control-L in
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the leading whitespace of a line resets the column number to zero,
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while Control-R just before the end of the line is ignored.
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- Improved support for the Apple Macintosh, in part by Jack Jansen,
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e.g. interfaces to (a few) resource mananger functions, get/set file
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type and creator, gestalt, sound manager, speech manager, MacTCP, comm
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toolbox, and the think C console library. This is being maintained
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and distributed separately.
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Changes to Built-in Operations
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==============================
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- Improved version for Windows NT, by Mark Hammond. This is being
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maintained and distributed separately.
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For file objects, "f.read(0)" and "f.readline(0)" now return an empty
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string rather than reading an unlimited number of bytes. For the
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latter, omit the argument altogether or pass a negative value.
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- Used autoconf 2.0 to generate the configure script. Adapted
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configure.in to use the new features in autoconf 2.0.
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A new system variable, "sys.platform", has been added. It specifies
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the current platform, e.g. "sunos5" or "linux1".
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- It now builds on the NeXT without intervention, even on the 3.3
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Sparc pre-release.
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The built-in functions "input()" and "raw_input()" now use the GNU
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readline library when it has been configured (formerly, only
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interactive input to the interpreter itself was read using GNU
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readline). The GNU readline library provides elaborate line editing
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and history. The Python debugger ("pdb") is the first beneficiary of
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this change.
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- Characters passed to isspace() and friends are masked to nonnegative
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values.
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Two new built-in functions, "globals()" and "locals()", provide access
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to dictionaries containming current global and local variables,
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respectively. (These augment rather than replace "vars()", which
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returns the current local variables when called without an argument,
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and a module's global variables when called with an argument of type
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module.)
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- Correctly compute pow(-3.0, 3).
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The built-in function "compile()" now takes a third possible value for
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the kind of code to be compiled: specifying "'single'" generates code
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for a single interactive statement, which prints the output of
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expression statements that evaluate to something else than "None".
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- Fix portability problems with getopt (configure now checks for a
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non-GNU getopt).
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Library Changes
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===============
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- Don't add frozenmain.o to libPython.a.
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There are new module "ni" and "ihooks" that support importing modules
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with hierarchical names such as "A.B.C". This is enabled by writing
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"import ni; ni.ni()" at the very top of the main program. These
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modules are amply documented in the Python source.
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- Exceptions can now be classes. ALl built-in exceptions are still
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string objects, but this will change in the future.
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The module "rexec" has been rewritten (incompatibly) to define a class
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and to use "ihooks".
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- The socket module exports a long list of socket related symbols.
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(More built-in modules will export their symbolic constants instead of
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relying on a separately generated Python module.)
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The "string.split()" and "string.splitfields()" functions are now the
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same function (the presence or absence of the second argument
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determines which operation is invoked); similar for "string.join()"
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and "string.joinfields()".
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- When a module object is deleted, it clears out its own dictionary.
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This fixes a circularity in the references between functions and
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their global dictionary.
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The "Tkinter" module and its helper "Dialog" have been revamped to use
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keyword arguments. Tk 4.0 is now the standard. A new module
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"FileDialog" has been added which implements standard file selection
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dialogs.
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- Changed the error handling by [new]getargs() e.g. for "O&".
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The optional built-in modules "dbm" and "gdbm" are more coordinated
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--- their "open()" functions now take the same values for their "flag"
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argument, and the "flag" and "mode" argument have default values (to
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open the database for reading only, and to create the database with
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mode "0666" minuse the umask, respectively). The memory leaks have
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finally been fixed.
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- Dynamic loading of modules using shared libraries is supported for
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several new platforms.
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A new dbm-like module, "bsddb", has been added, which uses the BSD DB
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package's hash method.
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- Support "O&", "[...]" and "{...}" in mkvalue().
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A portable (though slow) dbm-clone, implemented in Python, has been
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added for systems where none of the above is provided. It is aptly
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dubbed "dumbdbm".
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- Extension to findmethod(): findmethodinchain() (where a chain is a
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linked list of methodlist arrays). The calling interface for
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findmethod() has changed: it now gets a pointer to the (static!)
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methodlist structure rather than just to the function name -- this
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saves copying flags etc. into the (short-lived) method object.
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The module "anydbm" provides a unified interface to "bsddb", "gdbm",
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"dbm", and "dumbdbm", choosing the first one available.
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- The callable() function is now public.
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A new extension module, "binascii", provides a variety of operations
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for conversion of text-encoded binary data.
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- Object types can define a few new operations by setting function
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pointers in the type object structure: tp_call defines how an object
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is called, and tp_str defines how an object's str() is computed.
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There are three new or rewritten companion modules implemented in
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Python that can encode and decode the most common such formats: "uu"
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(uuencode), "base64" and "binhex".
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--Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam <mailto:guido@cwi.nl>
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<http://www.cwi.nl/~guido/>
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A module to handle the MIME encoding quoted-printable has also been
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added: "quopri".
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The parser module (which provides an interface to the Python parser's
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abstract syntax trees) has been rewritten (incompatibly) by Fred
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Drake. It now lets you change the parse tree and compile the result!
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Other Changes
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=============
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The dynamic module loader recognizes the fact that different filenames
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point to the same shared library and loads the library only once, so
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you can have a single shared library that defines multiple modules.
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(SunOS / SVR4 style shared libraries only.)
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Jim Fulton's ``abstract object interface'' has been incorporated into
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the run-time API. For more detailes, read the files
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"Include/abstract.h" and "Objects/abstract.c".
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The Macintosh version is much more robust now.
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Numerous things I have forgotten or that are so obscure no-one will
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notice them anyway :-)
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