cpython/Misc/NEWS

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Python News
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(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
What's New in Python 3.0a3?
===========================
*Release date: XX-XXX-2008*
Core and Builtins
-----------------
- Fixed multiple reinitialization of the Python interpreter. The small int
list in longobject.c has caused a seg fault during the third finalization.
- Issue #1973: bytes.fromhex('') raises SystemError
- Issue #1771: remove cmp parameter from sorted() and list.sort()
- Issue #1969: split and rsplit in bytearray are inconsistent
- map() and itertools.imap() no longer accept None for the first argument.
Use zip() instead.
- Issue #1769: Now int("- 1") is not allowed any more.
- Object/longobject.c: long(float('nan')) raises an OverflowError instead
of returning 0.
- Issue #1762972: __file__ points to the source file instead of the pyc/pyo
file if the py file exists.
- Issue #1393: object_richcompare() returns NotImplemented instead of
False if the objects aren't equal, to give the other side a chance.
- Issue #1692: Interpreter was not displaying location of SyntaxError.
- Improve some exception messages when Windows fails to load an extension
module. Now we get for example '%1 is not a valid Win32 application' instead
of 'error code 193'. Also use Unicode strings to deal with non-English
locales.
- Issue #1587: Added instancemethod wrapper for PyCFunctions. The Python C API
has gained a new type *PyInstanceMethod_Type* and the functions
*PyInstanceMethod_Check(o)*, *PyInstanceMethod_New(func)* and
*PyInstanceMethod_Function(im)*.
- Constants gc.DEBUG_OBJECT and gc.DEBUG_INSTANCE have been removed from the
gc module; gc.DEBUG_COLLECTABLE or gc.DEBUG_UNCOLLECTABLE are now enough to
print the corresponding list of objects considered by the garbage collector.
- Issue #1580: New free format floating point representation based on
"Floating-Point Printer Sample Code", by Robert G. Burger. For example
repr(11./5) now returns '2.2' instead of '2.2000000000000002'.
- Issue #1573: Improper use of the keyword-only syntax makes the parser crash.
- Issue #1564: The set implementation should special-case PyUnicode instead
of PyString.
Extension Modules
-----------------
- Issue #1762972: Readded the reload() function as imp.reload()
Library
-------
- Issue #1703: getpass() should flush after writing prompt.
- Issue #1585: IDLE uses non-existent xrange() function.
- Issue #1578: Problems in win_getpass.
Build
-----
- Renamed --enable-unicode configure flag to --with-wide-unicode, since
Unicode strings can't be disabled anymore.
C API
-----
- Issue #1629: Renamed Py_Size, Py_Type and Py_Refcnt to Py_SIZE,
Py_TYPE and Py_REFCNT.
- New API PyImport_ImportModuleNoBlock(), works like PyImport_ImportModule()
but won't block on the import lock (returning an error instead).
What's New in Python 3.0a2?
===========================
*Release date: 07-Dec-2007*
(Note: this list is incomplete.)
Core and Builtins
-----------------
- str8 now has the same construction signature as bytes.
- Comparisons between str and str8 now return False/True for ==/!=. sqlite3
returns str8 when recreating on object from it's __conform__ value. The
struct module returns str8 for all string-related formats. This was true
before this change, but becomes more apparent thanks to string comparisons
always being False.
- Replaced `PyFile_FromFile()` with `PyFile_FromFd(fd, name. mode, buffer,
encoding, newline)`
- Fixed `imp.find_module()` to obey the -*- coding: -*- header.
- Changed `__file__` and `co_filename` to unicode. The path names are decoded
with `Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding` and a new API method
`PyUnicode_DecodeFSDefault(char*)` was added.
- io.open() and _fileio.FileIO have grown a new argument closefd. A false
value disables the closing of the file descriptor.
- Added a new option -b to issues warnings (-bb for errors) about certain
operations between bytes/buffer and str like str(b'') and comparsion.
- The standards streams sys.stdin, stdout and stderr may be None when the
when the C runtime library returns an invalid file descriptor for the
streams (fileno(stdin) < 0). For now this happens only for Windows GUI
apps and scripts started with `pythonw.exe`.
- Added PCbuild9 directory for VS 2008.
- Renamed structmember.h WRITE_RESTRICTED to PY_WRITE_RESTRICTED to work
around a name clash with VS 2008 on Windows.
- Unbound methods are gone for good. ClassObject.method returns an ordinary
function object, instance.method still returns a bound method object.
The API of bound methods is cleaned up, too. The im_class attribute is
removed and im_func + im_self are renamed to __func__ and __self__. The
factory PyMethod_New takes only func and instance as argument.
- intobject.h is no longer included by Python.h. The remains were moved
to longobject.h. It still exists to define several aliases from PyInt_
to PyLong_ functions.
- Removed sys.maxint, use sys.maxsize instead.
Extension Modules
-----------------
- The `hotshot` profiler has been removed; use `cProfile` instead.
Library
-------
- When loading an external file using testfile(), the passed-in encoding
argument was being ignored if __loader__ is defined and forcing the source to
be UTF-8.
- The methods `os.tmpnam()`, `os.tempnam()` and `os.tmpfile()` have been
removed in favor of the tempfile module.
- Removed the 'new' module.
- Removed all types from the 'types' module that are easily accessable through
builtins.
What's New in Python 3.0a1?
==========================
*Release date: 31-Aug-2007*
Core and Builtins
-----------------
- PEP 3131: Support non-ASCII identifiers.
- PEP 3120: Change default encoding to UTF-8.
- PEP 3123: Use proper C inheritance for PyObject.
- Removed the __oct__ and __hex__ special methods and added a bin()
builtin function.
- PEP 3127: octal literals now start with "0o". Old-style octal literals
are invalid. There are binary literals with a prefix of "0b".
This also affects int(x, 0).
- None, True, False are now keywords.
- PEP 3119: isinstance() and issubclass() can be overridden.
- Remove BaseException.message.
- Remove tuple parameter unpacking (PEP 3113).
- Remove the f_restricted attribute from frames. This naturally leads to the
removal of PyEval_GetRestricted() and PyFrame_IsRestricted().
- PEP 3132 was accepted. That means that you can do ``a, *b = range(5)``
to assign 0 to a and [1, 2, 3, 4] to b.
- range() now returns an iterator rather than a list. Floats are not allowed.
xrange() is no longer defined.
- Patch #1660500: hide iteration variable in list comps, add set comps
and use common code to handle compilation of iterative expressions
- By default, != returns the opposite of ==, unless the latter returns
NotImplemented.
- Patch #1680961: sys.exitfunc has been removed and replaced with a private
C-level API.
- PEP 3115: new metaclasses: the metaclass is now specified as a
keyword arg in the class statement, which can now use the full syntax of
a parameter list. Also, the metaclass can implement a __prepare__ function
which will be called to create the dictionary for the new class namespace.
- The long-deprecated argument "pend" of PyFloat_FromString() has been
removed.
- The dir() function has been extended to call the __dir__() method on
its argument, if it exists. If not, it will work like before. This allows
customizing the output of dir() in the presence of a __getattr__().
- Removed support for __members__ and __methods__.
- Removed indexing/slicing on BaseException.
- input() became raw_input(): the name input() now implements the
functionality formerly known as raw_input(); the name raw_input()
is no longer defined.
- Classes listed in an 'except' clause must inherit from BaseException.
- PEP 3106: dict.iterkeys(), .iteritems(), .itervalues() are now gone;
and .keys(), .items(), .values() return dict views, which behave
like sets.
- PEP 3105: print is now a function. Also (not in the PEP) the
'softspace' attribute of files is now gone (since print() doesn't use
it). A side effect of this change is that you can get incomplete
output lines in interactive sessions:
>>> print(42, end="")
42>>>
We may be able to fix this after the I/O library rewrite.
- PEP 3102: keyword-only arguments.
- Int/Long unification is complete. The 'long' built-in type
and literals with trailing 'L' or 'l' have been removed.
Performance may be sub-optimal (haven't really benchmarked).
- 'except E, V' must now be spelled as 'except E as V' and deletes V
at the end of the except clause; V must be a simple name.
- Added function annotations per PEP 3107.
- Added nonlocal declaration from PEP 3104
>>> def f(x):
... def inc():
... nonlocal x
... x += 1
... return x
... return inc
...
>>> inc = f(0)
>>> inc()
1
>>> inc()
2
- Moved intern() to sys.intern().
- exec is now a function.
- Renamed nb_nonzero to nb_bool and __nonzero__ to __bool__.
- Classic classes are a thing of the past. All classes are new style.
- Exceptions *must* derive from BaseException.
- Integer division always returns a float. The -Q option is no more.
All the following are gone:
* PyNumber_Divide and PyNumber_InPlaceDivide
* __div__, __rdiv__, and __idiv__
* nb_divide, nb_inplace_divide
* operator.div, operator.idiv, operator.__div__, operator.__idiv__
(Only __truediv__ and __floordiv__ remain, not sure how to handle them
if we want to re-use __div__ and friends. If we do, it will make
it harder to write code for both 2.x and 3.x.)
- 'as' and 'with' are keywords.
- Absolute import is the default behavior for 'import foo' etc.
- Removed support for syntax:
backticks (ie, `x`), <>
- Removed these Python builtins:
apply(), callable(), coerce(), execfile(), file(), reduce(), reload()
- Removed these Python methods:
{}.has_key
- Removed these opcodes:
BINARY_DIVIDE, INPLACE_DIVIDE, UNARY_CONVERT
- Remove C API support for restricted execution.
- zip(), map() and filter() now return iterators, behaving like their
itertools counterparts. This also affect map()'s behavior on
sequences of unequal length -- it now stops after the shortest one
is exhausted.
- Additions:
set literals, set comprehensions, ellipsis literal.
- Added class decorators per PEP 3129.
Extension Modules
-----------------
- Remove the imageop module. Obsolete long with its unit tests becoming
useless from the removal of rgbimg and imgfile.
- Removed these attributes from Python modules:
* operator module: div, idiv, __div__, __idiv__, isCallable, sequenceIncludes
* sys module: exc_clear(), exc_type, exc_value, exc_traceback
Library
-------
- Remove the compiler package. Use of the _ast module and (an eventual)
AST -> bytecode mechanism.
- Removed these modules:
* audiodev, Bastion, bsddb185, exceptions, linuxaudiodev,
md5, MimeWriter, mimify, popen2,
rexec, sets, sha, stringold, strop, sunaudiodev, timing, xmllib.
- Moved these modules to Tools/Demos:
* toaiff
- Remove obsolete IRIX modules: al/AL, cd/CD, cddb, cdplayer, cl/CL, DEVICE,
ERRNO, FILE, fl/FL, flp, fm, GET, gl/GL, GLWS, IN, imgfile, IOCTL, jpeg,
panel, panelparser, readcd, sgi, sv/SV, torgb, WAIT.
- Remove obsolete functions:
* commands.getstatus(), os.popen*,
- Remove functions in the string module that are also string methods;
Remove string.{letters, lowercase, uppercase}.
- Remove support for long obsolete platforms: plat-aix3, plat-irix5.
- Remove xmlrpclib.SlowParser. It was based on xmllib.
- Patch #1680961: atexit has been reimplemented in C.
- Add new codecs for UTF-32, UTF-32-LE and UTF-32-BE.
Build
-----
C API
-----
- Removed these Python slots:
__coerce__, __div__, __idiv__, __rdiv__
- Removed these C APIs:
PyNumber_Coerce(), PyNumber_CoerceEx(), PyMember_Get, PyMember_Set
- Removed these C slots/fields:
nb_divide, nb_inplace_divide
- Removed these macros:
staticforward, statichere, PyArg_GetInt, PyArg_NoArgs, _PyObject_Del
- Removed these typedefs:
intargfunc, intintargfunc, intobjargproc, intintobjargproc,
getreadbufferproc, getwritebufferproc, getsegcountproc, getcharbufferproc,
memberlist
Tests
-----
Documentation
-------------
Mac
---
- The cfmfile was removed.
Platforms
---------
- Support for BeOS and AtheOS was removed (according to PEP 11).
- Support for RiscOS, Irix, Tru64 was removed (alledgedly).
Tools/Demos
-----------
**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**