17443 lines
669 KiB
Plaintext
17443 lines
669 KiB
Plaintext
Python History
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--------------
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This file contains the release messages for previous Python releases.
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As you read on you go back to the dark ages of Python's history.
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(Note: news about 2.5c2 and later 2.5 releases is in the Misc/NEWS
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file of the release25-maint branch.)
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======================================================================
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What's New in Python 2.5 release candidate 1?
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=============================================
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*Release date: 17-AUG-2006*
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Core and builtins
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-----------------
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||
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- Unicode objects will no longer raise an exception when being
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compared equal or unequal to a string and a UnicodeDecodeError
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exception occurs, e.g. as result of a decoding failure.
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|
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Instead, the equal (==) and unequal (!=) comparison operators will
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now issue a UnicodeWarning and interpret the two objects as
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unequal. The UnicodeWarning can be filtered as desired using
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the warning framework, e.g. silenced completely, turned into an
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exception, logged, etc.
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|
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Note that compare operators other than equal and unequal will still
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raise UnicodeDecodeError exceptions as they've always done.
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||
- Fix segfault when doing string formatting on subclasses of long.
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||
|
||
- Fix bug related to __len__ functions using values > 2**32 on 64-bit machines
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||
with new-style classes.
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- Fix bug related to __len__ functions returning negative values with
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classic classes.
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||
|
||
- Patch #1538606, Fix __index__() clipping. There were some problems
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||
discovered with the API and how integers that didn't fit into Py_ssize_t
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were handled. This patch attempts to provide enough alternatives
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to effectively use __index__.
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||
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- Bug #1536021: __hash__ may now return long int; the final hash
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||
value is obtained by invoking hash on the long int.
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||
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||
- Bug #1536786: buffer comparison could emit a RuntimeWarning.
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||
|
||
- Bug #1535165: fixed a segfault in input() and raw_input() when
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sys.stdin is closed.
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||
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||
- On Windows, the PyErr_Warn function is now exported from
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the Python dll again.
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||
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- Bug #1191458: tracing over for loops now produces a line event
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on each iteration. Fixing this problem required changing the .pyc
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magic number. This means that .pyc files generated before 2.5c1
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||
will be regenerated.
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||
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- Bug #1333982: string/number constants were inappropriately stored
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||
in the byte code and co_consts even if they were not used, ie
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immediately popped off the stack.
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- Fixed a reference-counting problem in property().
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||
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Library
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-------
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||
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||
- Fix a bug in the ``compiler`` package that caused invalid code to be
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generated for generator expressions.
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||
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||
- The distutils version has been changed to 2.5.0. The change to
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||
keep it programmatically in sync with the Python version running
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||
the code (introduced in 2.5b3) has been reverted. It will continue
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||
to be maintained manually as static string literal.
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||
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- If the Python part of a ctypes callback function returns None,
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||
and this cannot be converted to the required C type, an exception is
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||
printed with PyErr_WriteUnraisable. Before this change, the C
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||
callback returned arbitrary values to the calling code.
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- The __repr__ method of a NULL ctypes.py_object() no longer raises
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an exception.
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- uuid.UUID now has a bytes_le attribute. This returns the UUID in
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little-endian byte order for Windows. In addition, uuid.py gained some
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workarounds for clocks with low resolution, to stop the code yielding
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duplicate UUIDs.
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||
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- Patch #1540892: site.py Quitter() class attempts to close sys.stdin
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||
before raising SystemExit, allowing IDLE to honor quit() and exit().
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- Bug #1224621: make tabnanny recognize IndentationErrors raised by tokenize.
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- Patch #1536071: trace.py should now find the full module name of a
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||
file correctly even on Windows.
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||
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- logging's atexit hook now runs even if the rest of the module has
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already been cleaned up.
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||
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- Bug #1112549, fix DoS attack on cgi.FieldStorage.
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- Bug #1531405, format_exception no longer raises an exception if
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str(exception) raised an exception.
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- Fix a bug in the ``compiler`` package that caused invalid code to be
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generated for nested functions.
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Extension Modules
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-----------------
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||
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- Patch #1511317: don't crash on invalid hostname (alias) info.
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- Patch #1535500: fix segfault in BZ2File.writelines and make sure it
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raises the correct exceptions.
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- Patch # 1536908: enable building ctypes on OpenBSD/AMD64. The
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'-no-stack-protector' compiler flag for OpenBSD has been removed.
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- Patch #1532975 was applied, which fixes Bug #1533481: ctypes now
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uses the _as_parameter_ attribute when objects are passed to foreign
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function calls. The ctypes version number was changed to 1.0.1.
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- Bug #1530559, struct.pack raises TypeError where it used to convert.
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Passing float arguments to struct.pack when integers are expected
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now triggers a DeprecationWarning.
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Tests
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||
-----
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||
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- test_socketserver should now work on cygwin and not fail sporadically
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on other platforms.
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- test_mailbox should now work on cygwin versions 2006-08-10 and later.
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||
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- Bug #1535182: really test the xreadlines() method of bz2 objects.
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||
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||
- test_threading now skips testing alternate thread stack sizes on
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platforms that don't support changing thread stack size.
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||
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Documentation
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-------------
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- Patch #1534922: unittest docs were corrected and enhanced.
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||
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Build
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-----
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||
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- Bug #1535502, build _hashlib on Windows, and use masm assembler
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code in OpenSSL.
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||
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- Bug #1534738, win32 debug version of _msi should be _msi_d.pyd.
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||
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- Bug #1530448, ctypes build failure on Solaris 10 was fixed.
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||
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||
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C API
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-----
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||
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||
- New API for Unicode rich comparisons: PyUnicode_RichCompare()
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||
|
||
- Bug #1069160. Internal correctness changes were made to
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``PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc()``. A test case was added, and
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the documentation was changed to state that the return value
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is always 1 (normal) or 0 (if the specified thread wasn't found).
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||
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What's New in Python 2.5 beta 3?
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================================
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*Release date: 03-AUG-2006*
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Core and builtins
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-----------------
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||
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- _PyWeakref_GetWeakrefCount() now returns a Py_ssize_t; it previously
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returned a long (see PEP 353).
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- Bug #1515471: string.replace() accepts character buffers again.
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- Add PyErr_WarnEx() so C code can pass the stacklevel to warnings.warn().
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This provides the proper warning for struct.pack().
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PyErr_Warn() is now deprecated in favor of PyErr_WarnEx().
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||
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||
- Patch #1531113: Fix augmented assignment with yield expressions.
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Also fix a SystemError when trying to assign to yield expressions.
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- Bug #1529871: The speed enhancement patch #921466 broke Python's compliance
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with PEP 302. This was fixed by adding an ``imp.NullImporter`` type that is
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used in ``sys.path_importer_cache`` to cache non-directory paths and avoid
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excessive filesystem operations during imports.
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- Bug #1521947: When checking for overflow, ``PyOS_strtol()`` used some
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operations on signed longs that are formally undefined by C.
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Unfortunately, at least one compiler now cares about that, so complicated
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the code to make that compiler happy again.
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||
- Bug #1524310: Properly report errors from FindNextFile in os.listdir.
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- Patch #1232023: Stop including current directory in search
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path on Windows.
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- Fix some potential crashes found with failmalloc.
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- Fix warnings reported by Klocwork's static analysis tool.
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||
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- Bug #1512814, Fix incorrect lineno's when code within a function
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had more than 255 blank lines.
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- Patch #1521179: Python now accepts the standard options ``--help`` and
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``--version`` as well as ``/?`` on Windows.
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- Bug #1520864: unpacking singleton tuples in a 'for' loop (for x, in) works
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again. Fixing this problem required changing the .pyc magic number.
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This means that .pyc files generated before 2.5b3 will be regenerated.
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- Bug #1524317: Compiling Python ``--without-threads`` failed.
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The Python core compiles again, and, in a build without threads, the
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new ``sys._current_frames()`` returns a dictionary with one entry,
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mapping the faux "thread id" 0 to the current frame.
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- Bug #1525447: build on MacOS X on a case-sensitive filesystem.
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Library
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||
-------
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||
|
||
- Fix #1693149. Now you can pass several modules separated by
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comma to trace.py in the same --ignore-module option.
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- Correction of patch #1455898: In the mbcs decoder, set final=False
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for stream decoder, but final=True for the decode function.
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||
- os.urandom no longer masks unrelated exceptions like SystemExit or
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KeyboardInterrupt.
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||
- Bug #1525866: Don't copy directory stat times in
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shutil.copytree on Windows
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- Bug #1002398: The documentation for os.path.sameopenfile now correctly
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||
refers to file descriptors, not file objects.
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||
|
||
- The renaming of the xml package to xmlcore, and the import hackery done
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||
to make it appear at both names, has been removed. Bug #1511497,
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||
#1513611, and probably others.
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||
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||
- Bug #1441397: The compiler module now recognizes module and function
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docstrings correctly as it did in Python 2.4.
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||
|
||
- Bug #1529297: The rewrite of doctest for Python 2.4 unintentionally
|
||
lost that tests are sorted by name before being run. This rarely
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||
matters for well-written tests, but can create baffling symptoms if
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||
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
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||
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
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||
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
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||
common way people used to fill in inconsequential information in the time
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||
tuple pre-2.4.
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||
|
||
- 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
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||
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 a 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 a 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 to iterate 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 ouput (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 approprate 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 to ignore 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 an 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
|
||
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 to refer 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 a 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 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 to specify
|
||
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 to
|
||
associate 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 to give clearer test result output. 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 an 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 an 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
|
||
build-in function unicode(), an 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 propogate 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 paramter 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 an 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() an 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 a 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 ensueing 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 finialization 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_IsInitalized() 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 reproducable 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 contains 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() functin 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 objects 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 aquired 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 aquired
|
||
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 an 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!
|
||
|
||
Useing 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 constat definitions for sv (sgi only)
|
||
|
||
CD: symbolic constat 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 incompatiblity 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.
|