diff -r ffa851df0825 -r 2fb8b9db1c86 symbian-qemu-0.9.1-12/python-2.6.1/Misc/HISTORY --- /dev/null Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000 +++ b/symbian-qemu-0.9.1-12/python-2.6.1/Misc/HISTORY Fri Jul 31 15:01:17 2009 +0100 @@ -0,0 +1,17442 @@ +Python History +-------------- + +This file contains the release messages for previous Python releases. +As you read on you go back to the dark ages of Python's history. +(Note: news about 2.5c2 and later 2.5 releases is in the Misc/NEWS +file of the release25-maint branch.) + + +====================================================================== + + +What's New in Python 2.5 release candidate 1? +============================================= + +*Release date: 17-AUG-2006* + +Core and builtins +----------------- + +- Unicode objects will no longer raise an exception when being + compared equal or unequal to a string and a UnicodeDecodeError + exception occurs, e.g. as result of a decoding failure. + + Instead, the equal (==) and unequal (!=) comparison operators will + now issue a UnicodeWarning and interpret the two objects as + unequal. The UnicodeWarning can be filtered as desired using + the warning framework, e.g. silenced completely, turned into an + exception, logged, etc. + + Note that compare operators other than equal and unequal will still + raise UnicodeDecodeError exceptions as they've always done. + +- Fix segfault when doing string formatting on subclasses of long. + +- Fix bug related to __len__ functions using values > 2**32 on 64-bit machines + with new-style classes. + +- Fix bug related to __len__ functions returning negative values with + classic classes. + +- Patch #1538606, Fix __index__() clipping. There were some problems + discovered with the API and how integers that didn't fit into Py_ssize_t + were handled. This patch attempts to provide enough alternatives + to effectively use __index__. + +- Bug #1536021: __hash__ may now return long int; the final hash + value is obtained by invoking hash on the long int. + +- Bug #1536786: buffer comparison could emit a RuntimeWarning. + +- Bug #1535165: fixed a segfault in input() and raw_input() when + sys.stdin is closed. + +- On Windows, the PyErr_Warn function is now exported from + the Python dll again. + +- Bug #1191458: tracing over for loops now produces a line event + on each iteration. Fixing this problem required changing the .pyc + magic number. This means that .pyc files generated before 2.5c1 + will be regenerated. + +- Bug #1333982: string/number constants were inappropriately stored + in the byte code and co_consts even if they were not used, ie + immediately popped off the stack. + +- Fixed a reference-counting problem in property(). + + +Library +------- + +- Fix a bug in the ``compiler`` package that caused invalid code to be + generated for generator expressions. + +- The distutils version has been changed to 2.5.0. The change to + keep it programmatically in sync with the Python version running + the code (introduced in 2.5b3) has been reverted. It will continue + to be maintained manually as static string literal. + +- If the Python part of a ctypes callback function returns None, + and this cannot be converted to the required C type, an exception is + printed with PyErr_WriteUnraisable. Before this change, the C + callback returned arbitrary values to the calling code. + +- The __repr__ method of a NULL ctypes.py_object() no longer raises + an exception. + +- uuid.UUID now has a bytes_le attribute. This returns the UUID in + little-endian byte order for Windows. In addition, uuid.py gained some + workarounds for clocks with low resolution, to stop the code yielding + duplicate UUIDs. + +- Patch #1540892: site.py Quitter() class attempts to close sys.stdin + before raising SystemExit, allowing IDLE to honor quit() and exit(). + +- Bug #1224621: make tabnanny recognize IndentationErrors raised by tokenize. + +- Patch #1536071: trace.py should now find the full module name of a + file correctly even on Windows. + +- logging's atexit hook now runs even if the rest of the module has + already been cleaned up. + +- Bug #1112549, fix DoS attack on cgi.FieldStorage. + +- Bug #1531405, format_exception no longer raises an exception if + str(exception) raised an exception. + +- Fix a bug in the ``compiler`` package that caused invalid code to be + generated for nested functions. + + +Extension Modules +----------------- + +- Patch #1511317: don't crash on invalid hostname (alias) info. + +- Patch #1535500: fix segfault in BZ2File.writelines and make sure it + raises the correct exceptions. + +- Patch # 1536908: enable building ctypes on OpenBSD/AMD64. The + '-no-stack-protector' compiler flag for OpenBSD has been removed. + +- Patch #1532975 was applied, which fixes Bug #1533481: ctypes now + uses the _as_parameter_ attribute when objects are passed to foreign + function calls. The ctypes version number was changed to 1.0.1. + +- Bug #1530559, struct.pack raises TypeError where it used to convert. + Passing float arguments to struct.pack when integers are expected + now triggers a DeprecationWarning. + + +Tests +----- + +- test_socketserver should now work on cygwin and not fail sporadically + on other platforms. + +- test_mailbox should now work on cygwin versions 2006-08-10 and later. + +- Bug #1535182: really test the xreadlines() method of bz2 objects. + +- test_threading now skips testing alternate thread stack sizes on + platforms that don't support changing thread stack size. + + +Documentation +------------- + +- Patch #1534922: unittest docs were corrected and enhanced. + + +Build +----- + +- Bug #1535502, build _hashlib on Windows, and use masm assembler + code in OpenSSL. + +- Bug #1534738, win32 debug version of _msi should be _msi_d.pyd. + +- Bug #1530448, ctypes build failure on Solaris 10 was fixed. + + +C API +----- + +- New API for Unicode rich comparisons: PyUnicode_RichCompare() + +- Bug #1069160. Internal correctness changes were made to + ``PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc()``. A test case was added, and + the documentation was changed to state that the return value + is always 1 (normal) or 0 (if the specified thread wasn't found). + + +What's New in Python 2.5 beta 3? +================================ + +*Release date: 03-AUG-2006* + +Core and builtins +----------------- + +- _PyWeakref_GetWeakrefCount() now returns a Py_ssize_t; it previously + returned a long (see PEP 353). + +- Bug #1515471: string.replace() accepts character buffers again. + +- Add PyErr_WarnEx() so C code can pass the stacklevel to warnings.warn(). + This provides the proper warning for struct.pack(). + PyErr_Warn() is now deprecated in favor of PyErr_WarnEx(). + +- Patch #1531113: Fix augmented assignment with yield expressions. + Also fix a SystemError when trying to assign to yield expressions. + +- Bug #1529871: The speed enhancement patch #921466 broke Python's compliance + with PEP 302. This was fixed by adding an ``imp.NullImporter`` type that is + used in ``sys.path_importer_cache`` to cache non-directory paths and avoid + excessive filesystem operations during imports. + +- Bug #1521947: When checking for overflow, ``PyOS_strtol()`` used some + operations on signed longs that are formally undefined by C. + Unfortunately, at least one compiler now cares about that, so complicated + the code to make that compiler happy again. + +- Bug #1524310: Properly report errors from FindNextFile in os.listdir. + +- Patch #1232023: Stop including current directory in search + path on Windows. + +- Fix some potential crashes found with failmalloc. + +- Fix warnings reported by Klocwork's static analysis tool. + +- Bug #1512814, Fix incorrect lineno's when code within a function + had more than 255 blank lines. + +- Patch #1521179: Python now accepts the standard options ``--help`` and + ``--version`` as well as ``/?`` on Windows. + +- Bug #1520864: unpacking singleton tuples in a 'for' loop (for x, in) works + again. Fixing this problem required changing the .pyc magic number. + This means that .pyc files generated before 2.5b3 will be regenerated. + +- Bug #1524317: Compiling Python ``--without-threads`` failed. + The Python core compiles again, and, in a build without threads, the + new ``sys._current_frames()`` returns a dictionary with one entry, + mapping the faux "thread id" 0 to the current frame. + +- Bug #1525447: build on MacOS X on a case-sensitive filesystem. + + +Library +------- + +- Fix #1693149. Now you can pass several modules separated by + comma to trace.py in the same --ignore-module option. + +- Correction of patch #1455898: In the mbcs decoder, set final=False + for stream decoder, but final=True for the decode function. + +- os.urandom no longer masks unrelated exceptions like SystemExit or + KeyboardInterrupt. + +- Bug #1525866: Don't copy directory stat times in + shutil.copytree on Windows + +- Bug #1002398: The documentation for os.path.sameopenfile now correctly + refers to file descriptors, not file objects. + +- The renaming of the xml package to xmlcore, and the import hackery done + to make it appear at both names, has been removed. Bug #1511497, + #1513611, and probably others. + +- Bug #1441397: The compiler module now recognizes module and function + docstrings correctly as it did in Python 2.4. + +- Bug #1529297: The rewrite of doctest for Python 2.4 unintentionally + lost that tests are sorted by name before being run. This rarely + matters for well-written tests, but can create baffling symptoms if + side effects from one test to the next affect outcomes. ``DocTestFinder`` + has been changed to sort the list of tests it returns. + +- The distutils version has been changed to 2.5.0, and is now kept + in sync with sys.version_info[:3]. + +- Bug #978833: Really close underlying socket in _socketobject.close. + +- Bug #1459963: urllib and urllib2 now normalize HTTP header names with + title(). + +- Patch #1525766: In pkgutil.walk_packages, correctly pass the onerror callback + to recursive calls and call it with the failing package name. + +- Bug #1525817: Don't truncate short lines in IDLE's tool tips. + +- Patch #1515343: Fix printing of deprecated string exceptions with a + value in the traceback module. + +- Resync optparse with Optik 1.5.3: minor tweaks for/to tests. + +- Patch #1524429: Use repr() instead of backticks in Tkinter again. + +- Bug #1520914: Change time.strftime() to accept a zero for any position in its + argument tuple. For arguments where zero is illegal, the value is forced to + the minimum value that is correct. This is to support an undocumented but + common way people used to fill in inconsequential information in the time + tuple pre-2.4. + +- Patch #1220874: Update the binhex module for Mach-O. + +- The email package has improved RFC 2231 support, specifically for + recognizing the difference between encoded (name*0*=) and non-encoded + (name*0=) parameter continuations. This may change the types of + values returned from email.message.Message.get_param() and friends. + Specifically in some cases where non-encoded continuations were used, + get_param() used to return a 3-tuple of (None, None, string) whereas now it + will just return the string (since non-encoded continuations don't have + charset and language parts). + + Also, whereas % values were decoded in all parameter continuations, they are + now only decoded in encoded parameter parts. + +- Bug #1517990: IDLE keybindings on MacOS X now work correctly + +- Bug #1517996: IDLE now longer shows the default Tk menu when a + path browser, class browser or debugger is the frontmost window on MacOS X + +- Patch #1520294: Support for getset and member descriptors in types.py, + inspect.py, and pydoc.py. Specifically, this allows for querying the type + of an object against these built-in types and more importantly, for getting + their docstrings printed in the interactive interpreter's help() function. + + +Extension Modules +----------------- + +- Patch #1519025 and bug #926423: If a KeyboardInterrupt occurs during + a socket operation on a socket with a timeout, the exception will be + caught correctly. Previously, the exception was not caught. + +- Patch #1529514: The _ctypes extension is now compiled on more + openbsd target platforms. + +- The ``__reduce__()`` method of the new ``collections.defaultdict`` had + a memory leak, affecting pickles and deep copies. + +- Bug #1471938: Fix curses module build problem on Solaris 8; patch by + Paul Eggert. + +- Patch #1448199: Release interpreter lock in _winreg.ConnectRegistry. + +- Patch #1521817: Index range checking on ctypes arrays containing + exactly one element enabled again. This allows iterating over these + arrays, without the need to check the array size before. + +- Bug #1521375: When the code in ctypes.util.find_library was + run with root privileges, it could overwrite or delete + /dev/null in certain cases; this is now fixed. + +- Bug #1467450: On Mac OS X 10.3, RTLD_GLOBAL is now used as the + default mode for loading shared libraries in ctypes. + +- Because of a misspelled preprocessor symbol, ctypes was always + compiled without thread support; this is now fixed. + +- pybsddb Bug #1527939: bsddb module DBEnv dbremove and dbrename + methods now allow their database parameter to be None as the + sleepycat API allows. + +- Bug #1526460: Fix socketmodule compile on NetBSD as it has a different + bluetooth API compared with Linux and FreeBSD. + +Tests +----- + +- Bug #1501330: Change test_ossaudiodev to be much more tolerant in terms of + how long the test file should take to play. Now accepts taking 2.93 secs + (exact time) +/- 10% instead of the hard-coded 3.1 sec. + +- Patch #1529686: The standard tests ``test_defaultdict``, ``test_iterlen``, + ``test_uuid`` and ``test_email_codecs`` didn't actually run any tests when + run via ``regrtest.py``. Now they do. + +Build +----- + +- Bug #1439538: Drop usage of test -e in configure as it is not portable. + +Mac +--- + +- PythonLauncher now works correctly when the path to the script contains + characters that are treated specially by the shell (such as quotes). + +- Bug #1527397: PythonLauncher now launches scripts with the working directory + set to the directory that contains the script instead of the user home + directory. That latter was an implementation accident and not what users + expect. + + +What's New in Python 2.5 beta 2? +================================ + +*Release date: 11-JUL-2006* + +Core and builtins +----------------- + +- Bug #1441486: The literal representation of -(sys.maxint - 1) + again evaluates to 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 builtin. 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 builtin 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 builtin 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 + 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 builtin 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 + +- 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 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 builtin 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: HISTORY 60928 2008-02-21 19:46:35Z guido.van.rossum $), 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() builtin 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 builtin types, set() and frozenset(). + +- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator + over a sequence. + +- Added a sorted() builtin 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 builtin 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 + +- 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 builtin 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 builtin 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 builtin 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, 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 + 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 . + +- 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 . 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 . + + 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 ). + +- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see + ). + +- 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 builtin 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 + . + +- 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 builtin + module to assure that at least the builtin 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< -*-" 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 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 builtin 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 builtin 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 builtin 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 builtin 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 builtin 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 builtin 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 builtin 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)(?P)' 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 ] is a convoluted way to say + [] 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 a new-style class is now rendered as , + *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as (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 ; + previously, it was sometimes . + +- 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 builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern, + "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin + constructor, with the same signature as the builtin 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 builtin 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 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 + builtin 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, 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: + + +- 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: . + +- 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 + /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 builtin 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 + builtin 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 builtin + 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 "(? is now included by Python.h (if it + exists). INT_MAX and LONG_MAX will always be defined, even if + 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: + + [ for in ] + +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: + + [ for in if ] + +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 Misc/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.: 'Spam' instance has no attribute 'eggs'. This may +break code 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 IDLE home +page 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 .writelines() with a +list containing non-string objects would crash, and there were +situations where a lost SyntaxError could dump core. + +- The .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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 . + + * 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 + + * 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 neccessary, 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + ). + +Fri Apr 2 22:18:25 1999 Guido van Rossum + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * Tools/scripts/ndiff.py: Tim Peters writes: + + I should have waited overnight . 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 + . + +Sat Mar 27 13:34:01 1999 Guido van Rossum + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * Lib/gzip.py: use struct instead of bit-manipulate in Python + +Tue Mar 23 19:00:55 1999 Guido van Rossum + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * Lib/shlex.py: + Bug reported by Tobias Thelen: missing "self." in assignment target. + +Fri Mar 19 21:50:11 1999 Guido van Rossum + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * Lib/toaiff.py: + Use sndhdr instead of the obsolete whatsound module. + +Wed Feb 24 18:42:38 1999 Jeremy Hylton + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * 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 + + * Misc/NEWS: + Typo: "apparentlt" --> "apparently" + +Mon Feb 22 15:38:46 1999 Guido van Rossum + + * 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 + + * 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. '' 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 , 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 
, 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.
+
+- .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 builtin 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; ...
+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 ... 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
+ 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__: ''.
+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 builtin 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  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  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(, "") 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 
+"..slb" where  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 "...", where the 
+first three 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 
+ 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: builtin 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