mirror of https://github.com/python/cpython.git
5539 lines
213 KiB
Plaintext
5539 lines
213 KiB
Plaintext
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.
|
|
|
|
|
|
======================================================================
|
|
|
|
|
|
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).
|
|
|
|
|
|
======================================================================
|
|
|
|
|
|
From 1.5b2 to 1.5
|
|
=================
|
|
|
|
- Newly documentated module: BaseHTTPServer.py, thanks to Greg Stein.
|
|
|
|
- Added doc strings to string.py, stropmodule.c, structmodule.c,
|
|
thanks to Charles Waldman.
|
|
|
|
- Many nits fixed in the manuals, thanks to Fred Drake and many others
|
|
(especially Rob Hooft and Andrew Kuchling). The HTML version now uses
|
|
HTML markup instead of inline GIF images for tables; only two images
|
|
are left (for obsure bits of math). The index of the HTML version has
|
|
also been much improved. Finally, it is once again possible to
|
|
generate an Emacs info file from the library manual (but I don't
|
|
commit to supporting this in future versions).
|
|
|
|
- New module: telnetlib.py (a simple telnet client library).
|
|
|
|
- New tool: Tools/versioncheck/, by Jack Jansen.
|
|
|
|
- Ported zlibmodule.c and bsddbmodule.c to NT; The project file for MS
|
|
DevStudio 5.0 now includes new subprojects to build the zlib and bsddb
|
|
extension modules.
|
|
|
|
- Many small changes again to Tkinter.py -- mostly bugfixes and adding
|
|
missing routines. Thanks to Greg McFarlane for reporting a bunch of
|
|
problems and proofreading my fixes.
|
|
|
|
- The re module and its documentation are up to date with the latest
|
|
version released to the string-sig (Dec. 22).
|
|
|
|
- Stop test_grp.py from failing when the /etc/group file is empty
|
|
(yes, this happens!).
|
|
|
|
- Fix bug in integer conversion (mystrtoul.c) that caused
|
|
4294967296==0 to be true!
|
|
|
|
- The VC++ 4.2 project file should be complete again.
|
|
|
|
- In tempfile.py, use a better template on NT, and add a new optional
|
|
argument "suffix" with default "" to specify a specific extension for
|
|
the temporary filename (needed sometimes on NT but perhaps also handy
|
|
elsewhere).
|
|
|
|
- Fixed some bugs in the FAQ wizard, and converted it to use re
|
|
instead of regex.
|
|
|
|
- Fixed a mysteriously undetected error in dlmodule.c (it was using a
|
|
totally bogus routine name to raise an exception).
|
|
|
|
- Fixed bug in import.c which wasn't using the new "dos-8x3" name yet.
|
|
|
|
- Hopefully harmless changes to the build process to support shared
|
|
libraries on DG/UX. This adds a target to create
|
|
libpython$(VERSION).so; however this target is *only* for DG/UX.
|
|
|
|
- Fixed a bug in the new format string error checking in getargs.c.
|
|
|
|
- A simple fix for infinite recursion when printing __builtins__:
|
|
reset '_' to None before printing and set it to the printed variable
|
|
*after* printing (and only when printing is successful).
|
|
|
|
- Fixed lib-tk/SimpleDialog.py to keep the dialog visible even if the
|
|
parent window is not (Skip Montanaro).
|
|
|
|
- Fixed the two most annoying problems with ftp URLs in
|
|
urllib.urlopen(); an empty file now correctly raises an error, and it
|
|
is no longer required to explicitly close the returned "file" object
|
|
before opening another ftp URL to the same host and directory.
|
|
|
|
|
|
======================================================================
|
|
|
|
|
|
From 1.5b1 to 1.5b2
|
|
===================
|
|
|
|
- Fixed a bug in cPickle.c that caused it to crash right away because
|
|
the version string had a different format.
|
|
|
|
- Changes in pickle.py and cPickle.c: when unpickling an instance of a
|
|
class that doesn't define the __getinitargs__() method, the __init__()
|
|
constructor is no longer called. This makes a much larger group of
|
|
classes picklable by default, but may occasionally change semantics.
|
|
To force calling __init__() on unpickling, define a __getinitargs__()
|
|
method. Other changes too, in particular cPickle now handles classes
|
|
defined in packages correctly. The same change applies to copying
|
|
instances with copy.py. The cPickle.c changes and some pickle.py
|
|
changes are courtesy Jim Fulton.
|
|
|
|
- Locale support in he "re" (Perl regular expressions) module. Use
|
|
the flag re.L (or re.LOCALE) to enable locale-specific matching
|
|
rules for \w and \b. The in-line syntax for this flag is (?L).
|
|
|
|
- The built-in function isinstance(x, y) now also succeeds when y is
|
|
a type object and type(x) is y.
|
|
|
|
- repr() and str() of class and instance objects now reflect the
|
|
package/module in which the class is defined.
|
|
|
|
- Module "ni" has been removed. (If you really need it, it's been
|
|
renamed to "ni1". Let me know if this causes any problems for you.
|
|
Package authors are encouraged to write __init__.py files that
|
|
support both ni and 1.5 package support, so the same version can be
|
|
used with Python 1.4 as well as 1.5.)
|
|
|
|
- The thread module is now automatically included when threads are
|
|
configured. (You must remove it from your existing Setup file,
|
|
since it is now in its own Setup.thread file.)
|
|
|
|
- New command line option "-x" to skip the first line of the script;
|
|
handy to make executable scripts on non-Unix platforms.
|
|
|
|
- In importdl.c, add the RTLD_GLOBAL to the dlopen() flags. I
|
|
haven't checked how this affects things, but it should make symbols
|
|
in one shared library available to the next one.
|
|
|
|
- The Windows installer now installs in the "Program Files" folder on
|
|
the proper volume by default.
|
|
|
|
- The Windows configuration adds a new main program, "pythonw", and
|
|
registers a new extension, ".pyw" that invokes this. This is a
|
|
pstandard Python interpreter that does not pop up a console window;
|
|
handy for pure Tkinter applications. All output to the original
|
|
stdout and stderr is lost; reading from the original stdin yields
|
|
EOF. Also, both python.exe and pythonw.exe now have a pretty icon
|
|
(a green snake in a box, courtesy Mark Hammond).
|
|
|
|
- Lots of improvements to emacs-mode.el again. See Barry's web page:
|
|
http://www.python.org/ftp/emacs/pmdetails.html.
|
|
|
|
- Lots of improvements and additions to the library reference manual;
|
|
many by Fred Drake.
|
|
|
|
- Doc strings for the following modules: rfc822.py, posixpath.py,
|
|
ntpath.py, httplib.py. Thanks to Mitch Chapman and Charles Waldman.
|
|
|
|
- Some more regression testing.
|
|
|
|
- An optional 4th (maxsplit) argument to strop.replace().
|
|
|
|
- Fixed handling of maxsplit in string.splitfields().
|
|
|
|
- Tweaked os.environ so it can be pickled and copied.
|
|
|
|
- The portability problems caused by indented preprocessor commands
|
|
and C++ style comments should be gone now.
|
|
|
|
- In random.py, added Pareto and Weibull distributions.
|
|
|
|
- The crypt module is now disabled in Modules/Setup.in by default; it
|
|
is rarely needed and causes errors on some systems where users often
|
|
don't know how to deal with those.
|
|
|
|
- Some improvements to the _tkinter build line suggested by Case Roole.
|
|
|
|
- A full suite of platform specific files for NetBSD 1.x, submitted by
|
|
Anders Andersen.
|
|
|
|
- New Solaris specific header STROPTS.py.
|
|
|
|
- Moved a confusing occurrence of *shared* from the comments in
|
|
Modules/Setup.in (people would enable this one instead of the real
|
|
one, and get disappointing results).
|
|
|
|
- Changed the default mode for directories to be group-writable when
|
|
the installation process creates them.
|
|
|
|
- Check for pthread support in "-l_r" for FreeBSD/NetBSD, and support
|
|
shared libraries for both.
|
|
|
|
- Support FreeBSD and NetBSD in posixfile.py.
|
|
|
|
- Support for the "event" command, new in Tk 4.2. By Case Roole.
|
|
|
|
- Add Tix_SafeInit() support to tkappinit.c.
|
|
|
|
- Various bugs fixed in "re.py" and "pcre.c".
|
|
|
|
- Fixed a bug (broken use of the syntax table) in the old "regexpr.c".
|
|
|
|
- In frozenmain.c, stdin is made unbuffered too when PYTHONUNBUFFERED
|
|
is set.
|
|
|
|
- Provide default blocksize for retrbinary in ftplib.py (Skip
|
|
Montanaro).
|
|
|
|
- In NT, pick the username up from different places in user.py (Jeff
|
|
Bauer).
|
|
|
|
- Patch to urlparse.urljoin() for ".." and "..#1", Marc Lemburg.
|
|
|
|
- Many small improvements to Jeff Rush' OS/2 support.
|
|
|
|
- ospath.py is gone; it's been obsolete for so many years now...
|
|
|
|
- The reference manual is now set up to prepare better HTML (still
|
|
using webmaker, alas).
|
|
|
|
- Add special handling to /Tools/freeze for Python modules that are
|
|
imported implicitly by the Python runtime: 'site' and 'exceptions'.
|
|
|
|
- Tools/faqwiz 0.8.3 -- add an option to suppress URL processing
|
|
inside <PRE>, by "Scott".
|
|
|
|
- Added ConfigParser.py, a generic parser for sectioned configuration
|
|
files.
|
|
|
|
- In _localemodule.c, LC_MESSAGES is not always defined; put it
|
|
between #ifdefs.
|
|
|
|
- Typo in resource.c: RUSAGE_CHILDERN -> RUSAGE_CHILDREN.
|
|
|
|
- Demo/scripts/newslist.py: Fix the way the version number is gotten
|
|
out of the RCS revision.
|
|
|
|
- PyArg_Parse[Tuple] now explicitly check for bad characters at the
|
|
end of the format string.
|
|
|
|
- Revamped PC/example_nt to support VC++ 5.x.
|
|
|
|
- <listobject>.sort() now uses a modified quicksort by Raymund Galvin,
|
|
after studying the GNU libg++ quicksort. This should be much faster
|
|
if there are lots of duplicates, and otherwise at least as good.
|
|
|
|
- Added "uue" as an alias for "uuencode" to mimetools.py. (Hm, the
|
|
uudecode bug where it complaints about trailing garbage is still there
|
|
:-( ).
|
|
|
|
- pickle.py requires integers in text mode to be in decimal notation
|
|
(it used to accept octal and hex, even though it would only generate
|
|
decimal numbers).
|
|
|
|
- In string.atof(), don't fail when the "re" module is unavailable.
|
|
Plug the ensueing security leak by supplying an empty __builtins__
|
|
directory to eval().
|
|
|
|
- A bunch of small fixes and improvements to Tkinter.py.
|
|
|
|
- Fixed a buffer overrun in PC/getpathp.c.
|
|
|
|
|
|
======================================================================
|
|
|
|
|
|
From 1.5a4 to 1.5b1
|
|
===================
|
|
|
|
- The Windows NT/95 installer now includes full HTML of all manuals.
|
|
It also has a checkbox that lets you decide whether to install the
|
|
interpreter and library. The WISE installer script for the installer
|
|
is included in the source tree as PC/python15.wse, and so are the
|
|
icons used for Python files. The config.c file for the Windows build
|
|
is now complete with the pcre module.
|
|
|
|
- sys.ps1 and sys.ps2 can now arbitrary objects; their str() is
|
|
evaluated for the prompt.
|
|
|
|
- The reference manual is brought up to date (more or less -- it still
|
|
needs work, e.g. in the area of package import).
|
|
|
|
- The icons used by latex2html are now included in the Doc
|
|
subdirectory (mostly so that tarring up the HTML files can be fully
|
|
automated). A simple index.html is also added to Doc (it only works
|
|
after you have successfully run latex2html).
|
|
|
|
- For all you would-be proselytizers out there: a new version of
|
|
Misc/BLURB describes Python more concisely, and Misc/comparisons
|
|
compares Python to several other languages. Misc/BLURB.WINDOWS
|
|
contains a blurb specifically aimed at Windows programmers (by Mark
|
|
Hammond).
|
|
|
|
- A new version of the Python mode for Emacs is included as
|
|
Misc/python-mode.el. There are too many new features to list here.
|
|
See http://www.python.org/ftp/emacs/pmdetails.html for more info.
|
|
|
|
- New module fileinput makes iterating over the lines of a list of
|
|
files easier. (This still needs some more thinking to make it more
|
|
extensible.)
|
|
|
|
- There's full OS/2 support, courtesy Jeff Rush. To build the OS/2
|
|
version, see PC/readme.txt and PC/os2vacpp. This is for IBM's Visual
|
|
Age C++ compiler. I expect that Jeff will also provide a binary
|
|
release for this platform.
|
|
|
|
- On Linux, the configure script now uses '-Xlinker -export-dynamic'
|
|
instead of '-rdynamic' to link the main program so that it exports its
|
|
symbols to shared libraries it loads dynamically. I hope this doesn't
|
|
break on older Linux versions; it is needed for mklinux and appears to
|
|
work on Linux 2.0.30.
|
|
|
|
- Some Tkinter resstructuring: the geometry methods that apply to a
|
|
master are now properly usable on toplevel master widgets. There's a
|
|
new (internal) widget class, BaseWidget. New, longer "official" names
|
|
for the geometry manager methods have been added,
|
|
e.g. "grid_columnconfigure()" instead of "columnconfigure()". The old
|
|
shorter names still work, and where there's ambiguity, pack wins over
|
|
place wins over grid. Also, the bind_class method now returns its
|
|
value.
|
|
|
|
- New, RFC-822 conformant parsing of email addresses and address lists
|
|
in the rfc822 module, courtesy Ben Escoto.
|
|
|
|
- New, revamped tkappinit.c with support for popular packages (PIL,
|
|
TIX, BLT, TOGL). For the last three, you need to execute the Tcl
|
|
command "load {} Tix" (or Blt, or Togl) to gain access to them.
|
|
The Modules/Setup line for the _tkinter module has been rewritten
|
|
using the cool line-breaking feature of most Bourne shells.
|
|
|
|
- New socket method connect_ex() returns the error code from connect()
|
|
instead of raising an exception on errors; this makes the logic
|
|
required for asynchronous connects simpler and more efficient.
|
|
|
|
- New "locale" module with (still experimental) interface to the
|
|
standard C library locale interface, courtesy Martin von Loewis. This
|
|
does not repeat my mistake in 1.5a4 of always calling
|
|
setlocale(LC_ALL, ""). In fact, we've pretty much decided that
|
|
Python's standard numerical formatting operations should always use
|
|
the conventions for the C locale; the locale module contains utility
|
|
functions to format numbers according to the user specified locale.
|
|
(All this is accomplished by an explicit call to setlocale(LC_NUMERIC,
|
|
"C") after locale-changing calls.) See the library manual. (Alas, the
|
|
promised changes to the "re" module for locale support have not been
|
|
materialized yet. If you care, volunteer!)
|
|
|
|
- Memory leak plugged in Py_BuildValue when building a dictionary.
|
|
|
|
- Shared modules can now live inside packages (hierarchical module
|
|
namespaces). No changes to the shared module itself are needed.
|
|
|
|
- Improved policy for __builtins__: this is a module in __main__ and a
|
|
dictionary everywhere else.
|
|
|
|
- Python no longer catches SIGHUP and SIGTERM by default. This was
|
|
impossible to get right in the light of thread contexts. If you want
|
|
your program to clean up when a signal happens, use the signal module
|
|
to set up your own signal handler.
|
|
|
|
- New Python/C API PyNumber_CoerceEx() does not return an exception
|
|
when no coercion is possible. This is used to fix a problem where
|
|
comparing incompatible numbers for equality would raise an exception
|
|
rather than return false as in Python 1.4 -- it once again will return
|
|
false.
|
|
|
|
- The errno module is changed again -- the table of error messages
|
|
(errorstr) is removed. Instead, you can use os.strerror(). This
|
|
removes redundance and a potential locale dependency.
|
|
|
|
- New module xmllib, to parse XML files. By Sjoerd Mullender.
|
|
|
|
- New C API PyOS_AfterFork() is called after fork() in posixmodule.c.
|
|
It resets the signal module's notion of what the current process ID
|
|
and thread are, so that signal handlers will work after (and across)
|
|
calls to os.fork().
|
|
|
|
- Fixed most occurrences of fatal errors due to missing thread state.
|
|
|
|
- For vgrind (a flexible source pretty printer) fans, there's a simple
|
|
Python definition in Misc/vgrindefs, courtesy Neale Pickett.
|
|
|
|
- Fixed memory leak in exec statement.
|
|
|
|
- The test.pystone module has a new function, pystones(loops=LOOPS),
|
|
which returns a (benchtime, stones) tuple. The main() function now
|
|
calls this and prints the report.
|
|
|
|
- Package directories now *require* the presence of an __init__.py (or
|
|
__init__.pyc) file before they are considered as packages. This is
|
|
done to prevent accidental subdirectories with common names from
|
|
overriding modules with the same name.
|
|
|
|
- Fixed some strange exceptions in __del__ methods in library modules
|
|
(e.g. urllib). This happens because the 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; <html>...</html>
|
|
feature; better install instructions; removed faqmain.py (which was an
|
|
older version).
|
|
|
|
- nntplib.py: Fixed some bugs reported by Lars Wirzenius (to Debian)
|
|
about the treatment of lines starting with '.'. Added a minimal test
|
|
function.
|
|
|
|
- struct module: ignore most whitespace in format strings.
|
|
|
|
- urllib.py: close the socket and temp file in URLopener.retrieve() so
|
|
that multiple retrievals using the same connection work.
|
|
|
|
- All standard exceptions are now classes by default; use -X to make
|
|
them strings (for backward compatibility only).
|
|
|
|
- There's a new standard exception hierarchy, defined in the standard
|
|
library module exceptions.py (which you never need to import
|
|
explicitly). See
|
|
http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/python/essays/stdexceptions.html for
|
|
more info.
|
|
|
|
- Three new C API functions:
|
|
|
|
- int PyErr_GivenExceptionMatches(obj1, obj2)
|
|
|
|
Returns 1 if obj1 and obj2 are the same object, or if obj1 is an
|
|
instance of type obj2, or of a class derived from obj2
|
|
|
|
- int PyErr_ExceptionMatches(obj)
|
|
|
|
Higher level wrapper around PyErr_GivenExceptionMatches() which uses
|
|
PyErr_Occurred() as obj1. This will be the more commonly called
|
|
function.
|
|
|
|
- void PyErr_NormalizeException(typeptr, valptr, tbptr)
|
|
|
|
Normalizes exceptions, and places the normalized values in the
|
|
arguments. If type is not a class, this does nothing. If type is a
|
|
class, then it makes sure that value is an instance of the class by:
|
|
|
|
1. if instance is of the type, or a class derived from type, it does
|
|
nothing.
|
|
|
|
2. otherwise it instantiates the class, using the value as an
|
|
argument. If value is None, it uses an empty arg tuple, and if
|
|
the value is a tuple, it uses just that.
|
|
|
|
- Another new C API function: PyErr_NewException() creates a new
|
|
exception class derived from Exception; when -X is given, it creates a
|
|
new string exception.
|
|
|
|
- core interpreter: remove the distinction between tuple and list
|
|
unpacking; allow an arbitrary sequence on the right hand side of any
|
|
unpack instruction. (UNPACK_LIST and UNPACK_TUPLE now do the same
|
|
thing, which should really be called UNPACK_SEQUENCE.)
|
|
|
|
- classes: Allow assignments to an instance's __dict__ or __class__,
|
|
so you can change ivars (including shared ivars -- shock horror) and
|
|
change classes dynamically. Also make the check on read-only
|
|
attributes of classes less draconic -- only the specials names
|
|
__dict__, __bases__, __name__ and __{get,set,del}attr__ can't be
|
|
assigned.
|
|
|
|
- Two new built-in functions: issubclass() and isinstance(). Both
|
|
take classes as their second arguments. The former takes a class as
|
|
the first argument and returns true iff first is second, or is a
|
|
subclass of second. The latter takes any object as the first argument
|
|
and returns true iff first is an instance of the second, or any
|
|
subclass of second.
|
|
|
|
- configure: Added configuration tests for presence of alarm(),
|
|
pause(), and getpwent().
|
|
|
|
- Doc/Makefile: changed latex2html targets.
|
|
|
|
- classes: Reverse the search order for the Don Beaudry hook so that
|
|
the first class with an applicable hook wins. Makes more sense.
|
|
|
|
- Changed the checks made in Py_Initialize() and Py_Finalize(). It is
|
|
now legal to call these more than once. The first call to
|
|
Py_Initialize() initializes, the first call to Py_Finalize()
|
|
finalizes. There's also a new API, Py_IsInitalized() which checks
|
|
whether we are already initialized (in case you want to leave things
|
|
as they were).
|
|
|
|
- Completely disable the declarations for malloc(), realloc() and
|
|
free(). Any 90's C compiler has these in header files, and the tests
|
|
to decide whether to suppress the declarations kept failing on some
|
|
platforms.
|
|
|
|
- *Before* (instead of after) signalmodule.o is added, remove both
|
|
intrcheck.o and sigcheck.o. This should get rid of warnings in ar or
|
|
ld on various systems.
|
|
|
|
- Added reop to PC/config.c
|
|
|
|
- configure: Decided to use -Aa -D_HPUX_SOURCE on HP-UX platforms.
|
|
Removed outdated HP-UX comments from README. Added Cray T3E comments.
|
|
|
|
- Various renames of statically defined functions that had name
|
|
conflicts on some systems, e.g. strndup (GNU libc), join (Cray),
|
|
roundup (sys/types.h).
|
|
|
|
- urllib.py: Interpret three slashes in file: URL as local file (for
|
|
Netscape on Windows/Mac).
|
|
|
|
- copy.py: Make sure the objects returned by __getinitargs__() are
|
|
kept alive (in the memo) to avoid a certain kind of nasty crash. (Not
|
|
easily reproducable because it requires a later call to
|
|
__getinitargs__() to return a tuple that happens to be allocated at
|
|
the same address.)
|
|
|
|
- Added definition of AR to toplevel Makefile. Renamed @buildno temp
|
|
file to buildno1.
|
|
|
|
- Moved Include/assert.h to Parser/assert.h, which seems to be the
|
|
only place where it's needed.
|
|
|
|
- Tweaked the dictionary lookup code again for some more speed
|
|
(Vladimir Marangozov).
|
|
|
|
- NT build: Changed the way python15.lib is included in the other
|
|
projects. Per Mark Hammond's suggestion, add it to the extra libs in
|
|
Settings instead of to the project's source files.
|
|
|
|
- regrtest.py: Change default verbosity so that there are only three
|
|
levels left: -q, default and -v. In default mode, the name of each
|
|
test is now printed. -v is the same as the old -vv. -q is more quiet
|
|
than the old default mode.
|
|
|
|
- Removed the old FAQ from the distribution. You now have to get it
|
|
from the web!
|
|
|
|
- Removed the PC/make_nt.in file from the distribution; it is no
|
|
longer needed.
|
|
|
|
- Changed the build sequence so that shared modules are built last.
|
|
This fixes things for AIX and doesn't hurt elsewhere.
|
|
|
|
- Improved test for GNU MP v1 in mpzmodule.c
|
|
|
|
- fileobject.c: ftell() on Linux discards all buffered data; changed
|
|
read() code to use lseek() instead to get the same effect
|
|
|
|
- configure.in, configure, importdl.c: NeXT sharedlib fixes
|
|
|
|
- tupleobject.c: PyTuple_SetItem asserts refcnt==1
|
|
|
|
- resource.c: Different strategy regarding whether to declare
|
|
getrusage() and getpagesize() -- #ifdef doesn't work, Linux has
|
|
conflicting decls in its headers. Choice: only declare the return
|
|
type, not the argument prototype, and not on Linux.
|
|
|
|
- importdl.c, configure*: set sharedlib extensions properly for NeXT
|
|
|
|
- configure*, Makefile.in, Modules/Makefile.pre.in: AIX shared libraries
|
|
fixed; moved addition of PURIFY to LINKCC to configure
|
|
|
|
- reopmodule.c, regexmodule.c, regexpr.c, zlibmodule.c: needed casts
|
|
added to shup up various compilers.
|
|
|
|
- _tkinter.c: removed buggy mac #ifndef
|
|
|
|
- Doc: various Mac documentation changes, added docs for 'ic' module
|
|
|
|
- PC/make_nt.in: deleted
|
|
|
|
- test_time.py, test_strftime.py: tweaks to catch %Z (which may return
|
|
"")
|
|
|
|
- test_rotor.py: print b -> print `b`
|
|
|
|
- Tkinter.py: (tagOrId) -> (tagOrId,)
|
|
|
|
- Tkinter.py: the Tk class now also has a configure() method and
|
|
friends (they have been moved to the Misc class to accomplish this).
|
|
|
|
- dict.get(key[, default]) returns dict[key] if it exists, or default
|
|
if it doesn't. The default defaults to None. This is quicker for
|
|
some applications than using either has_key() or try:...except
|
|
KeyError:....
|
|
|
|
- Tools/webchecker/: some small changes to webchecker.py; added
|
|
websucker.py (a simple web site mirroring script).
|
|
|
|
- Dictionary objects now have a get() method (also in UserDict.py).
|
|
dict.get(key, default) returns dict[key] if it exists and default
|
|
otherwise; default defaults to None.
|
|
|
|
- Tools/scripts/logmerge.py: print the author, too.
|
|
|
|
- Changes to import: support for "import a.b.c" is now built in. See
|
|
http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/python/essays/packages.html
|
|
for more info. Most important deviations from "ni.py": __init__.py is
|
|
executed in the package's namespace instead of as a submodule; and
|
|
there's no support for "__" or "__domain__". Note that "ni.py" is not
|
|
changed to match this -- it is simply declared obsolete (while at the
|
|
same time, it is documented...:-( ).
|
|
Unfortunately, "ihooks.py" has not been upgraded (but see "knee.py"
|
|
for an example implementation of hierarchical module import written in
|
|
Python).
|
|
|
|
- More changes to import: the site.py module is now imported by
|
|
default when Python is initialized; use -S to disable it. The site.py
|
|
module extends the path with several more directories: site-packages
|
|
inside the lib/python1.5/ directory, site-python in the lib/
|
|
directory, and pathnames mentioned in *.pth files found in either of
|
|
those directories. See
|
|
http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/python/essays/packages.html
|
|
for more info.
|
|
|
|
- Changes to standard library subdirectory names: those subdirectories
|
|
that are not packages have been renamed with a hypen in their name,
|
|
e.g. lib-tk, lib-stdwin, plat-win, plat-linux2, plat-sunos5, dos-8x3.
|
|
The test suite is now a package -- to run a test, you must now use
|
|
"import test.test_foo".
|
|
|
|
- A completely new re.py module is provided (thanks to Andrew
|
|
Kuchling, Tim Peters and Jeffrey Ollie) which uses Philip Hazel's
|
|
"pcre" re compiler and engine. For a while, the "old" re.py (which
|
|
was new in 1.5a3!) will be kept around as re1.py. The "old" regex
|
|
module and underlying parser and engine are still present -- while
|
|
regex is now officially obsolete, it will probably take several major
|
|
release cycles before it can be removed.
|
|
|
|
- The posix module now has a strerror() function which translates an
|
|
error code to a string.
|
|
|
|
- The emacs.py module (which was long obsolete) has been removed.
|
|
|
|
- The universal makefile Misc/Makefile.pre.in now features an
|
|
"install" target. By default, installed shared libraries go into
|
|
$exec_prefix/lib/python$VERSION/site-packages/.
|
|
|
|
- The install-sh script is installed with the other configuration
|
|
specific files (in the config/ subdirectory).
|
|
|
|
- It turns out whatsound.py and sndhdr.py were identical modules.
|
|
Since there's also an imghdr.py file, I propose to make sndhdr.py the
|
|
official one. For compatibility, whatsound.py imports * from
|
|
sndhdr.py.
|
|
|
|
- Class objects have a new attribute, __module__, giving the name of
|
|
the module in which they were declared. This is useful for pickle and
|
|
for printing the full name of a class exception.
|
|
|
|
- Many extension modules no longer issue a fatal error when their
|
|
initialization fails; the importing code now checks whether an error
|
|
occurred during module initialization, and correctly propagates the
|
|
exception to the import statement.
|
|
|
|
- Most extension modules now raise class-based exceptions (except when
|
|
-X is used).
|
|
|
|
- Subtle changes to PyEval_{Save,Restore}Thread(): always swap the
|
|
thread state -- just don't manipulate the lock if it isn't there.
|
|
|
|
- Fixed a bug in Python/getopt.c that made it do the wrong thing when
|
|
an option was a single '-'. Thanks to Andrew Kuchling.
|
|
|
|
- New module mimetypes.py will guess a MIME type from a filename's
|
|
extension.
|
|
|
|
- Windows: the DLL version is now settable via a resource rather than
|
|
being hardcoded. This can be used for "branding" a binary Python
|
|
distribution.
|
|
|
|
- urllib.py is now threadsafe -- it now uses re instead of regex, and
|
|
sys.exc_info() instead of sys.exc_{type,value}.
|
|
|
|
- Many other library modules that used to use
|
|
sys.exc_{type,value,traceback} are now more thread-safe by virtue of
|
|
using sys.exc_info().
|
|
|
|
- The functions in popen2 have an optional buffer size parameter.
|
|
Also, the command argument can now be either a string (passed to the
|
|
shell) or a list of arguments (passed directly to execv).
|
|
|
|
- Alas, the thread support for _tkinter released with 1.5a3 didn't
|
|
work. It's been rewritten. The bad news is that it now requires a
|
|
modified version of a file in the standard Tcl distribution, which you
|
|
must compile with a -I option pointing to the standard Tcl source
|
|
tree. For this reason, the thread support is disabled by default.
|
|
|
|
- The errno extension module adds two tables: errorcode maps errno
|
|
numbers to errno names (e.g. EINTR), and errorstr maps them to
|
|
message strings. (The latter is redundant because the new call
|
|
posix.strerror() now does the same, but alla...) (Marc-Andre Lemburg)
|
|
|
|
- The readline extension module now provides some interfaces to
|
|
internal readline routines that make it possible to write a completer
|
|
in Python. An example completer, rlcompleter.py, is provided.
|
|
|
|
When completing a simple identifier, it completes keywords,
|
|
built-ins and globals in __main__; when completing
|
|
NAME.NAME..., it evaluates (!) the expression up to the last
|
|
dot and completes its attributes.
|
|
|
|
It's very cool to do "import string" type "string.", hit the
|
|
completion key (twice), and see the list of names defined by
|
|
the string module!
|
|
|
|
Tip: to use the tab key as the completion key, call
|
|
|
|
readline.parse_and_bind("tab: complete")
|
|
|
|
- The traceback.py module has a new function tb_lineno() by Marc-Andre
|
|
Lemburg which extracts the line number from the linenumber table in
|
|
the code object. Apparently the traceback object doesn't contains the
|
|
right linenumber when -O is used. Rather than guessing whether -O is
|
|
on or off, the module itself uses tb_lineno() unconditionally.
|
|
|
|
- Fixed Demo/tkinter/matt/canvas-moving-or-creating.py: change bind()
|
|
to tag_bind() so it works again.
|
|
|
|
- The pystone script is now a standard library module. Example use:
|
|
"import test.pystone; test.pystone.main()".
|
|
|
|
- The import of the readline module in interactive mode is now also
|
|
attempted when -i is specified. (Yes, I know, giving in to Marc-Andre
|
|
Lemburg, who asked for this. :-)
|
|
|
|
- rfc822.py: Entirely rewritten parseaddr() function by Sjoerd
|
|
Mullender, to be closer to the standard. This fixes the getaddr()
|
|
method. Unfortunately, getaddrlist() is as broken as ever, since it
|
|
splits on commas without regard for RFC 822 quoting conventions.
|
|
|
|
- pprint.py: correctly emit trailing "," in singleton tuples.
|
|
|
|
- _tkinter.c: export names for its type objects, TkappType and
|
|
TkttType.
|
|
|
|
- pickle.py: use __module__ when defined; fix a particularly hard to
|
|
reproduce bug that confuses the memo when temporary objects are
|
|
returned by custom pickling interfaces; and a semantic change: when
|
|
unpickling the instance variables of an instance, use
|
|
inst.__dict__.update(value) instead of a for loop with setattr() over
|
|
the value.keys(). This is more consistent (the pickling doesn't use
|
|
getattr() either but pickles inst.__dict__) and avoids problems with
|
|
instances that have a __setattr__ hook. But it *is* a semantic change
|
|
(because the setattr hook is no longer used). So beware!
|
|
|
|
- config.h is now installed (at last) in
|
|
$exec_prefix/include/python1.5/. For most sites, this means that it
|
|
is actually in $prefix/include/python1.5/, with all the other Python
|
|
include files, since $prefix and $exec_prefix are the same by
|
|
default.
|
|
|
|
- The imp module now supports parts of the functionality to implement
|
|
import of hierarchical module names. It now supports find_module()
|
|
and load_module() for all types of modules. Docstrings have been
|
|
added for those functions in the built-in imp module that are still
|
|
relevant (some old interfaces are obsolete). For a sample
|
|
implementation of hierarchical module import in Python, see the new
|
|
library module knee.py.
|
|
|
|
- The % operator on string objects now allows arbitrary nested parens
|
|
in a %(...)X style format. (Brad Howes)
|
|
|
|
- Reverse the order in which Setup and Setup.local are passed to the
|
|
makesetup script. This allows variable definitions in Setup.local to
|
|
override definitions in Setup. (But you'll still have to edit Setup
|
|
if you want to disable modules that are enabled by default, or if such
|
|
modules need non-standard options.)
|
|
|
|
- Added PyImport_ImportModuleEx(name, globals, locals, fromlist); this
|
|
is like PyImport_ImporModule(name) but receives the globals and locals
|
|
dict and the fromlist arguments as well. (The name is a char*; the
|
|
others are PyObject*s).
|
|
|
|
- The 'p' format in the struct extension module alloded to above is
|
|
new in 1.5a4.
|
|
|
|
- The types.py module now uses try-except in a few places to make it
|
|
more likely that it can be imported in restricted mode. Some type
|
|
names are undefined in that case, e.g. CodeType (inaccessible),
|
|
FileType (not always accessible), and TracebackType and FrameType
|
|
(inaccessible).
|
|
|
|
- In urllib.py: added separate administration of temporary files
|
|
created y URLopener.retrieve() so cleanup() can properly remove them.
|
|
The old code removed everything in tempcache which was a bad idea if
|
|
the user had passed a non-temp file into it. Also, in basejoin(),
|
|
interpret relative paths starting in "../". This is necessary if the
|
|
server uses symbolic links.
|
|
|
|
- The Windows build procedure and project files are now based on
|
|
Microsoft Visual C++ 5.x. The build now takes place in the PCbuild
|
|
directory. It is much more robust, and properly builds separate Debug
|
|
and Release versions. (The installer will be added shortly.)
|
|
|
|
- Added casts and changed some return types in regexpr.c to avoid
|
|
compiler warnings or errors on some platforms.
|
|
|
|
- The AIX build tools for shared libraries now supports VPATH. (Donn
|
|
Cave)
|
|
|
|
- By default, disable the "portable" multimedia modules audioop,
|
|
imageop, and rgbimg, since they don't work on 64-bit platforms.
|
|
|
|
- Fixed a nasty bug in cStringIO.c when code was actually using the
|
|
close() method (the destructors would try to free certain fields a
|
|
second time).
|
|
|
|
- For those who think they need it, there's a "user.py" module. This
|
|
is *not* imported by default, but can be imported to run user-specific
|
|
setup commands, ~/.pythonrc.py.
|
|
|
|
- Various speedups suggested by Fredrik Lundh, Marc-Andre Lemburg,
|
|
Vladimir Marangozov, and others.
|
|
|
|
- Added os.altsep; this is '/' on DOS/Windows, and None on systems
|
|
with a sane filename syntax.
|
|
|
|
- os.py: Write out the dynamic OS choice, to avoid exec statements.
|
|
Adding support for a new OS is now a bit more work, but I bet that
|
|
'dos' or 'nt' will cover most situations...
|
|
|
|
- The obsolete exception AccessError is now really gone.
|
|
|
|
- Tools/faqwiz/: New installation instructions show how to maintain
|
|
multiple FAQs. Removed bootstrap script from end of faqwiz.py module.
|
|
Added instructions to bootstrap script, too. Version bumped to 0.8.1.
|
|
Added <html>...</html> feature suggested by Skip Montanaro. Added
|
|
leading text for Roulette, default to 'Hit Reload ...'. Fix typo in
|
|
default SRCDIR.
|
|
|
|
- Documentation for the relatively new modules "keyword" and "symbol"
|
|
has been added (to the end of the section on the parser extension
|
|
module).
|
|
|
|
- In module bisect.py, but functions have two optional argument 'lo'
|
|
and 'hi' which allow you to specify a subsequence of the array to
|
|
operate on.
|
|
|
|
- In ftplib.py, changed most methods to return their status (even when
|
|
it is always "200 OK") rather than swallowing it.
|
|
|
|
- main() now calls setlocale(LC_ALL, ""), if setlocale() and
|
|
<locale.h> are defined.
|
|
|
|
- Changes to configure.in, the configure script, and both
|
|
Makefile.pre.in files, to support SGI's SGI_ABI platform selection
|
|
environment variable.
|
|
|
|
|
|
======================================================================
|
|
|
|
|
|
From 1.4 to 1.5a3
|
|
=================
|
|
|
|
Security
|
|
--------
|
|
|
|
- If you are using the setuid script C wrapper (Misc/setuid-prog.c),
|
|
please use the new version. The old version has a huge security leak.
|
|
|
|
Miscellaneous
|
|
-------------
|
|
|
|
- Because of various (small) incompatible changes in the Python
|
|
bytecode interpreter, the magic number for .pyc files has changed
|
|
again.
|
|
|
|
- The default module search path is now much saner. Both on Unix and
|
|
Windows, it is essentially derived from the path to the executable
|
|
(which can be overridden by setting the environment variable
|
|
$PYTHONHOME). The value of $PYTHONPATH on Windows is now inserted in
|
|
front of the default path, like in Unix (instead of overriding the
|
|
default path). On Windows, the directory containing the executable is
|
|
added to the end of the path.
|
|
|
|
- A new version of python-mode.el for Emacs has been included. Also,
|
|
a new file ccpy-style.el has been added to configure Emacs cc-mode for
|
|
the preferred style in Python C sources.
|
|
|
|
- On Unix, when using sys.argv[0] to insert the script directory in
|
|
front of sys.path, expand a symbolic link. You can now install a
|
|
program in a private directory and have a symbolic link to it in a
|
|
public bin directory, and it will put the private directory in the
|
|
module search path. Note that the symlink is expanded in sys.path[0]
|
|
but not in sys.argv[0], so you can still tell the name by which you
|
|
were invoked.
|
|
|
|
- It is now recommended to use ``#!/usr/bin/env python'' instead of
|
|
``#!/usr/local/bin/python'' at the start of executable scripts, except
|
|
for CGI scripts. It has been determined that the use of /usr/bin/env
|
|
is more portable than that of /usr/local/bin/python -- scripts almost
|
|
never have to be edited when the Python interpreter lives in a
|
|
non-standard place. Note that this doesn't work for CGI scripts since
|
|
the python executable often doesn't live in the HTTP server's default
|
|
search path.
|
|
|
|
- The silly -s command line option and the corresponding
|
|
PYTHONSUPPRESS environment variable (and the Py_SuppressPrint global
|
|
flag in the Python/C API) are gone.
|
|
|
|
- Most problems on 64-bit platforms should now be fixed. Andrew
|
|
Kuchling helped. Some uncommon extension modules are still not
|
|
clean (image and audio ops?).
|
|
|
|
- Fixed a bug where multiple anonymous tuple arguments would be mixed up
|
|
when using the debugger or profiler (reported by Just van Rossum).
|
|
The simplest example is ``def f((a,b),(c,d)): print a,b,c,d''; this
|
|
would print the wrong value when run under the debugger or profiler.
|
|
|
|
- The hacks that the dictionary implementation used to speed up
|
|
repeated lookups of the same C string were removed; these were a
|
|
source of subtle problems and don't seem to serve much of a purpose
|
|
any longer.
|
|
|
|
- All traces of support for the long dead access statement have been
|
|
removed from the sources.
|
|
|
|
- Plugged the two-byte memory leak in the tokenizer when reading an
|
|
interactive EOF.
|
|
|
|
- There's a -O option to the interpreter that removes SET_LINENO
|
|
instructions and assert statements (see below); it uses and produces
|
|
.pyo files instead of .pyc files. The speedup is only a few percent
|
|
in most cases. The line numbers are still available in the .pyo file,
|
|
as a separate table (which is also available in .pyc files). However,
|
|
the removal of the SET_LINENO instructions means that the debugger
|
|
(pdb) can't set breakpoints on lines in -O mode. The traceback module
|
|
contains a function to extract a line number from the code object
|
|
referenced in a traceback object. In the future it should be possible
|
|
to write external bytecode optimizers that create better optimized
|
|
.pyo files, and there should be more control over optimization;
|
|
consider the -O option a "teaser". Without -O, the assert statement
|
|
actually generates code that first checks __debug__; if this variable
|
|
is false, the assertion is not checked. __debug__ is a built-in
|
|
variable whose value is initialized to track the -O flag (it's true
|
|
iff -O is not specified). With -O, no code is generated for assert
|
|
statements, nor for code of the form ``if __debug__: <something>''.
|
|
Sorry, no further constant folding happens.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Performance
|
|
-----------
|
|
|
|
- It's much faster (almost twice for pystone.py -- see
|
|
Tools/scripts). See the entry on string interning below.
|
|
|
|
- Some speedup by using separate free lists for method objects (both
|
|
the C and the Python variety) and for floating point numbers.
|
|
|
|
- Big speedup by allocating frame objects with a single malloc() call.
|
|
The Python/C API for frames is changed (you shouldn't be using this
|
|
anyway).
|
|
|
|
- Significant speedup by inlining some common opcodes for common operand
|
|
types (e.g. i+i, i-i, and list[i]). Fredrik Lundh.
|
|
|
|
- Small speedup by reordering the method tables of some common
|
|
objects (e.g. list.append is now first).
|
|
|
|
- Big optimization to the read() method of file objects. A read()
|
|
without arguments now attempts to use fstat to allocate a buffer of
|
|
the right size; for pipes and sockets, it will fall back to doubling
|
|
the buffer size. While that the improvement is real on all systems,
|
|
it is most dramatic on Windows.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Documentation
|
|
-------------
|
|
|
|
- Many new pieces of library documentation were contributed, mostly by
|
|
Andrew Kuchling. Even cmath is now documented! There's also a
|
|
chapter of the library manual, "libundoc.tex", which provides a
|
|
listing of all undocumented modules, plus their status (e.g. internal,
|
|
obsolete, or in need of documentation). Also contributions by Sue
|
|
Williams, Skip Montanaro, and some module authors who succumbed to
|
|
pressure to document their own contributed modules :-). Note that
|
|
printing the documentation now kills fewer trees -- the margins have
|
|
been reduced.
|
|
|
|
- I have started documenting the Python/C API. Unfortunately this project
|
|
hasn't been completed yet. It will be complete before the final release of
|
|
Python 1.5, though. At the moment, it's better to read the LaTeX source
|
|
than to attempt to run it through LaTeX and print the resulting dvi file.
|
|
|
|
- The posix module (and hence os.py) now has doc strings! Thanks to Neil
|
|
Schemenauer. I received a few other contributions of doc strings. In most
|
|
other places, doc strings are still wishful thinking...
|
|
|
|
|
|
Language changes
|
|
----------------
|
|
|
|
- Private variables with leading double underscore are now a permanent
|
|
feature of the language. (These were experimental in release 1.4. I have
|
|
favorable experience using them; I can't label them "experimental"
|
|
forever.)
|
|
|
|
- There's new string literal syntax for "raw strings". Prefixing a string
|
|
literal with the letter r (or R) disables all escape processing in the
|
|
string; for example, r'\n' is a two-character string consisting of a
|
|
backslash followed by the letter n. This combines with all forms of string
|
|
quotes; it is actually useful for triple quoted doc strings which might
|
|
contain references to \n or \t. An embedded quote prefixed with a
|
|
backslash does not terminate the string, but the backslash is still
|
|
included in the string; for example, r'\'' is a two-character string
|
|
consisting of a backslash and a quote. (Raw strings are also
|
|
affectionately known as Robin strings, after their inventor, Robin
|
|
Friedrich.)
|
|
|
|
- There's a simple assert statement, and a new exception
|
|
AssertionError. For example, ``assert foo > 0'' is equivalent to ``if
|
|
not foo > 0: raise AssertionError''. Sorry, the text of the asserted
|
|
condition is not available; it would be too complicated to generate
|
|
code for this (since the code is generated from a parse tree).
|
|
However, the text is displayed as part of the traceback!
|
|
|
|
- The raise statement has a new feature: when using "raise SomeClass,
|
|
somevalue" where somevalue is not an instance of SomeClass, it
|
|
instantiates SomeClass(somevalue). In 1.5a4, if somevalue is an
|
|
instance of a *derived* class of SomeClass, the exception class raised
|
|
is set to somevalue.__class__, and SomeClass is ignored after that.
|
|
|
|
- Duplicate keyword arguments are now detected at compile time;
|
|
f(a=1,a=2) is now a syntax error.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to 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 linraries to link with) in the Modules/Setup file.
|
|
Importing the module installs some hooks which enable command line
|
|
editing. When the interpreter shell is invoked interactively, it
|
|
attempts to import the readline module; when this fails, the default
|
|
input mechanism is used. The hook variables are PyOS_InputHook and
|
|
PyOS_ReadlineFunctionPointer. (Code contributed by Lee Busby, with
|
|
ideas from William Magro.)
|
|
|
|
- New build procedure: a single library, libpython1.5.a, is now built,
|
|
which contains absolutely everything except for a one-line main()
|
|
program (which calls Py_Main(argc, argv) to start the interpreter
|
|
shell). This makes life much simpler for applications that need to
|
|
embed Python. The serial number of the build is now included in the
|
|
version string (sys.version).
|
|
|
|
- As far as I can tell, neither gcc -Wall nor the Microsoft compiler
|
|
emits a single warning any more when compiling Python.
|
|
|
|
- A number of new Makefile variables have been added for special
|
|
situations, e.g. LDLAST is appended to the link command. These are
|
|
used by editing the Makefile or passing them on the make command
|
|
line.
|
|
|
|
- A set of patches from Lee Busby has been integrated that make it
|
|
possible to catch floating point exceptions. Use the configure option
|
|
--with-fpectl to enable the patches; the extension modules fpectl and
|
|
fpetest provide control to enable/disable and test the feature,
|
|
respectively.
|
|
|
|
- The support for shared libraries under AIX is now simpler and more
|
|
robust. Thanks to Vladimir Marangozov for revamping his own patches!
|
|
|
|
- The Modules/makesetup script now reads a file Setup.local as well as
|
|
a file Setup. Most changes to the Setup script can be done by editing
|
|
Setup.local instead, which makes it easier to carry a particular setup
|
|
over from one release to the next.
|
|
|
|
- The Modules/makesetup script now copies any "include" lines it
|
|
encounters verbatim into the output Makefile. It also recognizes .cxx
|
|
and .cpp as C++ source files.
|
|
|
|
- The configure script is smarter about C compiler options; e.g. with
|
|
gcc it uses -O2 and -g when possible, and on some other platforms it
|
|
uses -Olimit 1500 to avoid a warning from the optimizer about the main
|
|
loop in ceval.c (which has more than 1000 basic blocks).
|
|
|
|
- The configure script now detects whether malloc(0) returns a NULL
|
|
pointer or a valid block (of length zero). This avoids the nonsense
|
|
of always adding one byte to all malloc() arguments on most platforms.
|
|
|
|
- The configure script has a new option, --with-dec-threads, to enable
|
|
DEC threads on DEC Alpha platforms. Also, --with-threads is now an
|
|
alias for --with-thread (this was the Most Common Typo in configure
|
|
arguments).
|
|
|
|
- Many changes in Doc/Makefile; amongst others, latex2html is now used
|
|
to generate HTML from all latex documents.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Change to the Python/C API
|
|
--------------------------
|
|
|
|
- Because some interfaces have changed, the PYTHON_API macro has been
|
|
bumped. Most extensions built for the old API version will still run,
|
|
but I can't guarantee this. Python prints a warning message on
|
|
version mismatches; it dumps core when the version mismatch causes a
|
|
serious problem :-)
|
|
|
|
- I've completed the Grand Renaming, with the help of Roger Masse and
|
|
Barry Warsaw. This makes reading or debugging the code much easier.
|
|
Many other unrelated code reorganizations have also been carried out.
|
|
The allobjects.h header file is gone; instead, you would have to
|
|
include Python.h followed by rename2.h. But you're better off running
|
|
Tools/scripts/fixcid.py -s Misc/RENAME on your source, so you can omit
|
|
the rename2.h; it will disappear in the next release.
|
|
|
|
- Various and sundry small bugs in the "abstract" interfaces have been
|
|
fixed. Thanks to all the (involuntary) testers of the Python 1.4
|
|
version! Some new functions have been added, e.g. PySequence_List(o),
|
|
equivalent to list(o) in Python.
|
|
|
|
- New API functions PyLong_FromUnsignedLong() and
|
|
PyLong_AsUnsignedLong().
|
|
|
|
- The API functions in the file cgensupport.c are no longer
|
|
supported. This file has been moved to Modules and is only ever
|
|
compiled when the SGI specific 'gl' module is built.
|
|
|
|
- PyObject_Compare() can now raise an exception. Check with
|
|
PyErr_Occurred(). The comparison function in an object type may also
|
|
raise an exception.
|
|
|
|
- The slice interface uses an upper bound of INT_MAX when no explicit
|
|
upper bound is given (e.x. for a[1:]). It used to ask the object for
|
|
its length and do the calculations.
|
|
|
|
- Support for multiple independent interpreters. See Doc/api.tex,
|
|
functions Py_NewInterpreter() and Py_EndInterpreter(). Since the
|
|
documentation is incomplete, also see the new Demo/pysvr example
|
|
(which shows how to use these in a threaded application) and the
|
|
source code.
|
|
|
|
- There is now a Py_Finalize() function which "de-initializes"
|
|
Python. It is possible to completely restart the interpreter
|
|
repeatedly by calling Py_Finalize() followed by Py_Initialize(). A
|
|
change of functionality in Py_Initialize() means that it is now a
|
|
fatal error to call it while the interpreter is already initialized.
|
|
The old, half-hearted Py_Cleanup() routine is gone. Use of Py_Exit()
|
|
is deprecated (it is nothing more than Py_Finalize() followed by
|
|
exit()).
|
|
|
|
- There are no known memory leaks left. While Py_Finalize() doesn't
|
|
free *all* allocated memory (some of it is hard to track down),
|
|
repeated calls to Py_Finalize() and Py_Initialize() do not create
|
|
unaccessible heap blocks.
|
|
|
|
- There is now explicit per-thread state. (Inspired by, but not the
|
|
same as, Greg Stein's free threading patches.)
|
|
|
|
- There is now better support for threading C applications. There are
|
|
now explicit APIs to manipulate the interpreter lock. Read the source
|
|
or the Demo/pysvr example; the new functions are
|
|
PyEval_{Acquire,Release}{Lock,Thread}().
|
|
|
|
- The test macro DEBUG has changed to Py_DEBUG, to avoid interference
|
|
with other libraries' DEBUG macros. Likewise for any other test
|
|
macros that didn't yet start with Py_.
|
|
|
|
- New wrappers around malloc() and friends: Py_Malloc() etc. call
|
|
malloc() and call PyErr_NoMemory() when it fails; PyMem_Malloc() call
|
|
just malloc(). Use of these wrappers could be essential if multiple
|
|
memory allocators exist (e.g. when using certain DLL setups under
|
|
Windows). (Idea by Jim Fulton.)
|
|
|
|
- New C API PyImport_Import() which uses whatever __import__() hook
|
|
that is installed for the current execution environment. By Jim
|
|
Fulton.
|
|
|
|
- It is now possible for an extension module's init function to fail
|
|
non-fatally, by calling one of the PyErr_* functions and returning.
|
|
|
|
- The PyInt_AS_LONG() and PyFloat_AS_DOUBLE() macros now cast their
|
|
argument to the proper type, like the similar PyString macros already
|
|
did. (Suggestion by Marc-Andre Lemburg.) Similar for PyList_GET_SIZE
|
|
and PyList_GET_ITEM.
|
|
|
|
- Some of the Py_Get* function, like Py_GetVersion() (but not yet
|
|
Py_GetPath()) are now declared as returning a const char *. (More
|
|
should follow.)
|
|
|
|
- Changed the run-time library to check for exceptions after object
|
|
comparisons. PyObject_Compare() can now return an exception; use
|
|
PyErr_Occurred() to check (there is *no* special return value).
|
|
|
|
- PyFile_WriteString() and Py_Flushline() now return error indicators
|
|
instead of clearing exceptions. This fixes an obscure bug where using
|
|
these would clear a pending exception, discovered by Just van Rossum.
|
|
|
|
- There's a new function, PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords(), which parses
|
|
an argument list including keyword arguments. Contributed by Geoff
|
|
Philbrick.
|
|
|
|
- PyArg_GetInt() is gone.
|
|
|
|
- It's no longer necessary to include graminit.h when calling one of
|
|
the extended parser API functions. The three public grammar start
|
|
symbols are now in Python.h as Py_single_input, Py_file_input, and
|
|
Py_eval_input.
|
|
|
|
- The CObject interface has a new function,
|
|
PyCObject_Import(module, name). It calls PyCObject_AsVoidPtr()
|
|
on the object referenced by "module.name".
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tkinter
|
|
-------
|
|
|
|
- On popular demand, _tkinter once again installs a hook for readline
|
|
that processes certain Tk events while waiting for the user to type
|
|
(using PyOS_InputHook).
|
|
|
|
- A patch by Craig McPheeters plugs the most obnoxious memory leaks,
|
|
caused by command definitions referencing widget objects beyond their
|
|
lifetime.
|
|
|
|
- New standard dialog modules: tkColorChooser.py, tkCommonDialog.py,
|
|
tkMessageBox.py, tkFileDialog.py, tkSimpleDialog.py These interface
|
|
with the new Tk dialog scripts, and provide more "native platform"
|
|
style file selection dialog boxes on some platforms. Contributed by
|
|
Fredrik Lundh.
|
|
|
|
- Tkinter.py: when the first Tk object is destroyed, it sets the
|
|
hiddel global _default_root to None, so that when another Tk object is
|
|
created it becomes the new default root. Other miscellaneous
|
|
changes and fixes.
|
|
|
|
- The Image class now has a configure method.
|
|
|
|
- Added a bunch of new winfo options to Tkinter.py; we should now be
|
|
up to date with Tk 4.2. The new winfo options supported are:
|
|
mananger, pointerx, pointerxy, pointery, server, viewable, visualid,
|
|
visualsavailable.
|
|
|
|
- The broken bind() method on Canvas objects defined in the Canvas.py
|
|
module has been fixed. The CanvasItem and Group classes now also have
|
|
an unbind() method.
|
|
|
|
- The problem with Tkinter.py falling back to trying to import
|
|
"tkinter" when "_tkinter" is not found has been fixed -- it no longer
|
|
tries "tkinter", ever. This makes diagnosing the problem "_tkinter
|
|
not configured" much easier and will hopefully reduce the newsgroup
|
|
traffic on this topic.
|
|
|
|
- The ScrolledText module once again supports the 'cnf' parameter, to
|
|
be compatible with the examples in Mark Lutz' book (I know, I know,
|
|
too late...)
|
|
|
|
- The _tkinter.c extension module has been revamped. It now support
|
|
Tk versions 4.1 through 8.0; support for 4.0 has been dropped. It
|
|
works well under Windows and Mac (with the latest Tk ports to those
|
|
platforms). It also supports threading -- it is safe for one
|
|
(Python-created) thread to be blocked in _tkinter.mainloop() while
|
|
other threads modify widgets. To make the changes visible, those
|
|
threads must use update_idletasks()method. (The patch for threading
|
|
in 1.5a3 was broken; in 1.5a4, it is back in a different version,
|
|
which requires access to the Tcl sources to get it to work -- hence it
|
|
is disabled by default.)
|
|
|
|
- A bug in _tkinter.c has been fixed, where Split() with a string
|
|
containing an unmatched '"' could cause an exception or core dump.
|
|
|
|
- Unfortunately, on Windows and Mac, Tk 8.0 no longer supports
|
|
CreateFileHandler, so _tkinter.createfilehandler is not available on
|
|
those platforms when using Tk 8.0 or later. I will have to rethink
|
|
how to interface with Tcl's lower-level event mechanism, or with its
|
|
channels (which are like Python's file-like objects). Jack Jansen has
|
|
provided a fix for the Mac, so createfilehandler *is* actually
|
|
supported there; maybe I can adapt his fix for Windows.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tools and Demos
|
|
---------------
|
|
|
|
- A new regression test suite is provided, which tests most of the
|
|
standard and built-in modules. The regression test is run by invoking
|
|
the script Lib/test/regrtest.py. Barry Warsaw wrote the test harnass;
|
|
he and Roger Masse contributed most of the new tests.
|
|
|
|
- New tool: faqwiz -- the CGI script that is used to maintain the
|
|
Python FAQ (http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/cgi-bin/faqw.py). In
|
|
Tools/faqwiz.
|
|
|
|
- New tool: webchecker -- a simple extensible web robot that, when
|
|
aimed at a web server, checks that server for dead links. Available
|
|
are a command line utility as well as a Tkinter based GUI version. In
|
|
Tools/webchecker. A simplified version of this program is dissected
|
|
in my article in O'Reilly's WWW Journal, the issue on Scripting
|
|
Languages (Vol 2, No 2); Scripting the Web with Python (pp 97-120).
|
|
Includes a parser for robots.txt files by Skip Montanaro.
|
|
|
|
- New small tools: cvsfiles.py (prints a list of all files under CVS
|
|
n a particular directory tree), treesync.py (a rather Guido-specific
|
|
script to synchronize two source trees, one on Windows NT, the other
|
|
one on Unix under CVS but accessible from the NT box), and logmerge.py
|
|
(sort a collection of RCS or CVS logs by date). In Tools/scripts.
|
|
|
|
- The freeze script now also works under Windows (NT). Another
|
|
feature allows the -p option to be pointed at the Python source tree
|
|
instead of the installation prefix. This was loosely based on part of
|
|
xfreeze by Sam Rushing and Bill Tutt.
|
|
|
|
- New examples (Demo/extend) that show how to use the generic
|
|
extension makefile (Misc/Makefile.pre.in).
|
|
|
|
- Tools/scripts/h2py.py now supports C++ comments.
|
|
|
|
- Tools/scripts/pystone.py script is upgraded to version 1.1; there
|
|
was a bug in version 1.0 (distributed with Python 1.4) that leaked
|
|
memory. Also, in 1.1, the LOOPS variable is incremented to 10000.
|
|
|
|
- Demo/classes/Rat.py completely rewritten by Sjoerd Mullender.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Windows (NT and 95)
|
|
-------------------
|
|
|
|
- New project files for Developer Studio (Visual C++) 5.0 for Windows
|
|
NT (the old VC++ 4.2 Makefile is also still supported, but will
|
|
eventually be withdrawn due to its bulkiness).
|
|
|
|
- See the note on the new module search path in the "Miscellaneous" section
|
|
above.
|
|
|
|
- Support for Win32s (the 32-bit Windows API under Windows 3.1) is
|
|
basically withdrawn. If it still works for you, you're lucky.
|
|
|
|
- There's a new extension module, msvcrt.c, which provides various
|
|
low-level operations defined in the Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library.
|
|
These include locking(), setmode(), get_osfhandle(), set_osfhandle(), and
|
|
console I/O functions like kbhit(), getch() and putch().
|
|
|
|
- The -u option not only sets the standard I/O streams to unbuffered
|
|
status, but also sets them in binary mode. (This can also be done
|
|
using msvcrt.setmode(), by the way.)
|
|
|
|
- The, sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix variables point to the directory
|
|
where Python is installed, or to the top of the source tree, if it was run
|
|
from there.
|
|
|
|
- The various os.path modules (posixpath, ntpath, macpath) now support
|
|
passing more than two arguments to the join() function, so
|
|
os.path.join(a, b, c) is the same as os.path.join(a, os.path.join(b,
|
|
c)).
|
|
|
|
- The ntpath module (normally used as os.path) supports ~ to $HOME
|
|
expansion in expanduser().
|
|
|
|
- The freeze tool now works on Windows.
|
|
|
|
- See also the Tkinter category for a sad note on
|
|
_tkinter.createfilehandler().
|
|
|
|
- The truncate() method for file objects now works on Windows.
|
|
|
|
- Py_Initialize() is no longer called when the DLL is loaded. You
|
|
must call it yourself.
|
|
|
|
- The time module's clock() function now has good precision through
|
|
the use of the Win32 API QueryPerformanceCounter().
|
|
|
|
- Mark Hammond will release Python 1.5 versions of PythonWin and his
|
|
other Windows specific code: the win32api extensions, COM/ActiveX
|
|
support, and the MFC interface.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mac
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
- As always, the Macintosh port will be done by Jack Jansen. He will
|
|
make a separate announcement for the Mac specific source code and the
|
|
binary distribution(s) when these are ready.
|
|
|
|
|
|
======================================================================
|
|
|
|
|
|
=====================================
|
|
==> Release 1.4 (October 25 1996) <==
|
|
=====================================
|
|
|
|
(Starting in reverse chronological order:)
|
|
|
|
- Changed disclaimer notice.
|
|
|
|
- Added SHELL=/bin/sh to Misc/Makefile.pre.in -- some Make versions
|
|
default to the user's login shell.
|
|
|
|
- In Lib/tkinter/Tkinter.py, removed bogus binding of <Delete> in Text
|
|
widget, and bogus bspace() function.
|
|
|
|
- In Lib/cgi.py, bumped __version__ to 2.0 and restored a truncated
|
|
paragraph.
|
|
|
|
- Fixed the NT Makefile (PC/vc40.mak) for VC 4.0 to set /MD for all
|
|
subprojects, and to remove the (broken) experimental NumPy
|
|
subprojects.
|
|
|
|
- In Lib/py_compile.py, cast mtime to long() so it will work on Mac
|
|
(where os.stat() returns mtimes as floats.)
|
|
- Set self.rfile unbuffered (like self.wfile) in SocketServer.py, to
|
|
fix POST in CGIHTTPServer.py.
|
|
|
|
- Version 2.83 of Misc/python-mode.el for Emacs is included.
|
|
|
|
- In Modules/regexmodule.c, fixed symcomp() to correctly handle a new
|
|
group starting immediately after a group tag.
|
|
|
|
- In Lib/SocketServer.py, changed the mode for rfile to unbuffered.
|
|
|
|
- In Objects/stringobject.c, fixed the compare function to do the
|
|
first char comparison in unsigned mode, for consistency with the way
|
|
other characters are compared by memcmp().
|
|
|
|
- In Lib/tkinter/Tkinter.py, fixed Scale.get() to support floats.
|
|
|
|
- In Lib/urllib.py, fix another case where openedurl wasn't set.
|
|
|
|
(XXX Sorry, the rest is in totally random order. No time to fix it.)
|
|
|
|
- SyntaxError exceptions detected during code generation
|
|
(e.g. assignment to an expression) now include a line number.
|
|
|
|
- Don't leave trailing / or \ in script directory inserted in front of
|
|
sys.path.
|
|
|
|
- Added a note to Tools/scripts/classfix.py abouts its historical
|
|
importance.
|
|
|
|
- Added Misc/Makefile.pre.in, a universal Makefile for extensions
|
|
built outside the distribution.
|
|
|
|
- Rewritten Misc/faq2html.py, by Ka-Ping Yee.
|
|
|
|
- Install shared modules with mode 555 (needed for performance on some
|
|
platforms).
|
|
|
|
- Some changes to standard library modules to avoid calling append()
|
|
with more than one argument -- while supported, this should be
|
|
outlawed, and I don't want to set a bad example.
|
|
|
|
- bdb.py (and hence pdb.py) supports calling run() with a code object
|
|
instead of a code string.
|
|
|
|
- Fixed an embarrassing bug cgi.py which prevented correct uploading
|
|
of binary files from Netscape (which doesn't distinguish between
|
|
binary and text files). Also added dormant logging support, which
|
|
makes it easier to debug the cgi module itself.
|
|
|
|
- Added default writer to constructor of NullFormatter class.
|
|
|
|
- Use binary mode for socket.makefile() calls in ftplib.py.
|
|
|
|
- The ihooks module no longer "installs" itself upon import -- this
|
|
was an experimental feature that helped ironing out some bugs but that
|
|
slowed down code that imported it without the need to install it
|
|
(e.g. the rexec module). Also close the file in some cases and add
|
|
the __file__ attribute to loaded modules.
|
|
|
|
- The test program for mailbox.py is now more useful.
|
|
|
|
- Added getparamnames() to Message class in mimetools.py -- it returns
|
|
the names of parameters to the content-type header.
|
|
|
|
- Fixed a typo in ni that broke the loop stripping "__." from names.
|
|
|
|
- Fix sys.path[0] for scripts run via pdb.py's new main program.
|
|
|
|
- profile.py can now also run a script, like pdb.
|
|
|
|
- Fix a small bug in pyclbr -- don't add names starting with _ when
|
|
emulating from ... import *.
|
|
|
|
- Fixed a series of embarrassing typos in rexec's handling of standard
|
|
I/O redirection. Added some more "safe" built-in modules: cmath,
|
|
errno, operator.
|
|
|
|
- Fixed embarrassing typo in shelve.py.
|
|
|
|
- Added SliceType and EllipsisType to types.py.
|
|
|
|
- In urllib.py, added handling for error 301 (same as 302); added
|
|
geturl() method to get the URL after redirection.
|
|
|
|
- Fixed embarrassing typo in xdrlib.py. Also fixed typo in Setup.in
|
|
for _xdrmodule.c and removed redundant #include from _xdrmodule.c.
|
|
|
|
- Fixed bsddbmodule.c to add binary mode indicator on platforms that
|
|
have it. This should make it working on Windows NT.
|
|
|
|
- Changed last uses of #ifdef NT to #ifdef MS_WINDOWS or MS_WIN32,
|
|
whatever applies. Also rationalized some other tests for various MS
|
|
platforms.
|
|
|
|
- Added the sources for the NT installer script used for Python
|
|
1.4beta3. Not tested with this release, but better than nothing.
|
|
|
|
- A compromise in pickle's defenses against Trojan horses: a
|
|
user-defined function is now okay where a class is expected. A
|
|
built-in function is not okay, to prevent pickling something that
|
|
will execute os.system("rm -f *") when unpickling.
|
|
|
|
- dis.py will print the name of local variables referenced by local
|
|
load/store/delete instructions.
|
|
|
|
- Improved portability of SimpleHTTPServer module to non-Unix
|
|
platform.
|
|
|
|
- The thread.h interface adds an extra argument to down_sema(). This
|
|
only affects other C code that uses thread.c; the Python thread module
|
|
doesn't use semaphores (which aren't provided on all platforms where
|
|
Python threads are supported). Note: on NT, this change is not
|
|
implemented.
|
|
|
|
- Fixed some typos in abstract.h; corrected signature of
|
|
PyNumber_Coerce, added PyMapping_DelItem. Also fixed a bug in
|
|
abstract.c's PyObject_CallMethod().
|
|
|
|
- apply(classname, (), {}) now works even if the class has no
|
|
__init__() method.
|
|
|
|
- Implemented complex remainder and divmod() (these would dump core!).
|
|
Conversion of complex numbers to int, long int or float now raises an
|
|
exception, since there is no meaningful way to do it without losing
|
|
information.
|
|
|
|
- Fixed bug in built-in complex() function which gave the wrong result
|
|
for two real arguments.
|
|
|
|
- Change the hash algorithm for strings -- the multiplier is now
|
|
1000003 instead of 3, which gives better spread for short strings.
|
|
|
|
- New default path for Windows NT, the registry structure now supports
|
|
default paths for different install packages. (Mark Hammond -- the
|
|
next PythonWin release will use this.)
|
|
|
|
- Added more symbols to the python_nt.def file.
|
|
|
|
- When using GNU readline, set rl_readline_name to "python".
|
|
|
|
- The Ellipses built-in name has been renamed to Ellipsis -- this is
|
|
the correct singular form. Thanks to Ka-Ping Yee, who saved us from
|
|
eternal embarrassment.
|
|
|
|
- Bumped the PYTHON_API_VERSION to 1006, due to the Ellipses ->
|
|
Ellipsis name change.
|
|
|
|
- Updated the library reference manual. Added documentation of
|
|
restricted mode (rexec, Bastion) and the formatter module (for use
|
|
with the htmllib module). Fixed the documentation of htmllib
|
|
(finally).
|
|
|
|
- The reference manual is now maintained in FrameMaker.
|
|
|
|
- Upgraded scripts Doc/partparse.py and Doc/texi2html.py.
|
|
|
|
- Slight improvements to Doc/Makefile.
|
|
|
|
- Added fcntl.lockf(). This should be used for Unix file locking
|
|
instead of the posixfile module; lockf() is more portable.
|
|
|
|
- The getopt module now supports long option names, thanks to Lars
|
|
Wizenius.
|
|
|
|
- Plenty of changes to Tkinter and Canvas, mostly due to Fred Drake
|
|
and Nils Fischbeck.
|
|
|
|
- Use more bits of time.time() in whrandom's default seed().
|
|
|
|
- Performance hack for regex module's regs attribute.
|
|
|
|
- Don't close already closed socket in socket module.
|
|
|
|
- Correctly handle separators containing embedded nulls in
|
|
strop.split, strop.find and strop.rfind. Also added more detail to
|
|
error message for strop.atoi and friends.
|
|
|
|
- Moved fallback definition for hypot() to Python/hypot.c.
|
|
|
|
- Added fallback definition for strdup, in Python/strdup.c.
|
|
|
|
- Fixed some bugs where a function would return 0 to indicate an error
|
|
where it should return -1.
|
|
|
|
- Test for error returned by time.localtime(), and rationalized its MS
|
|
tests.
|
|
|
|
- Added Modules/Setup.local file, which is processed after Setup.
|
|
|
|
- Corrected bug in toplevel Makefile.in -- execution of regen script
|
|
would not use the right PATH and PYTHONPATH.
|
|
|
|
- Various and sundry NeXT configuration changes (sigh).
|
|
|
|
- Support systems where libreadline needs neither termcap nor curses.
|
|
|
|
- Improved ld_so_aix script and python.exp file (for AIX).
|
|
|
|
- More stringent test for working <stdarg.h> in configure script.
|
|
|
|
- Removed Demo/www subdirectory -- it was totally out of date.
|
|
|
|
- Improved demos and docs for Fred Drake's parser module; fixed one
|
|
typo in the module itself.
|
|
|
|
|
|
=========================================
|
|
==> Release 1.4beta3 (August 26 1996) <==
|
|
=========================================
|
|
|
|
|
|
(XXX This is less readable that it should. I promise to restructure
|
|
it for the final 1.4 release.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
What's new in 1.4beta3 (since beta2)?
|
|
-------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
- Name mangling to implement a simple form of class-private variables.
|
|
A name of the form "__spam" can't easily be used outside the class.
|
|
(This was added in 1.4beta3, but left out of the 1.4beta3 release
|
|
message.)
|
|
|
|
- In urllib.urlopen(): HTTP URLs containing user:passwd@host are now
|
|
handled correctly when using a proxy server.
|
|
|
|
- In ntpath.normpath(): don't truncate to 8+3 format.
|
|
|
|
- In mimetools.choose_boundary(): don't die when getuid() or getpid()
|
|
aren't defined.
|
|
|
|
- Module urllib: some optimizations to (un)quoting.
|
|
|
|
- New module MimeWriter for writing MIME documents.
|
|
|
|
- More changes to formatter module.
|
|
|
|
- The freeze script works once again and is much more robust (using
|
|
sys.prefix etc.). It also supports a -o option to specify an
|
|
output directory.
|
|
|
|
- New module whichdb recognizes dbm, gdbm and bsddb/dbhash files.
|
|
|
|
- The Doc/Makefile targets have been reorganized somewhat to remove the
|
|
insistence on always generating PostScript.
|
|
|
|
- The texinfo to html filter (Doc/texi2html.py) has been improved somewhat.
|
|
|
|
- "errors.h" has been renamed to "pyerrors.h" to resolve a long-standing
|
|
name conflict on the Mac.
|
|
|
|
- Linking a module compiled with a different setting for Py_TRACE_REFS now
|
|
generates a linker error rather than a core dump.
|
|
|
|
- The cgi module has a new convenience function print_exception(), which
|
|
formats a python exception using HTML. It also fixes a bug in the
|
|
compatibility code and adds a dubious feature which makes it possible to
|
|
have two query strings, one in the URL and one in the POST data.
|
|
|
|
- A subtle change in the unpickling of class instances makes it possible
|
|
to unpickle in restricted execution mode, where the __dict__ attribute is
|
|
not available (but setattr() is).
|
|
|
|
- Documentation for os.path.splitext() (== posixpath.splitext()) has been
|
|
cleared up. It splits at the *last* dot.
|
|
|
|
- posixfile locking is now also correctly supported on AIX.
|
|
|
|
- The tempfile module once again honors an initial setting of tmpdir. It
|
|
now works on Windows, too.
|
|
|
|
- The traceback module has some new functions to extract, format and print
|
|
the active stack.
|
|
|
|
- Some translation functions in the urllib module have been made a little
|
|
less sluggish.
|
|
|
|
- The addtag_* methods for Canvas widgets in Tkinter as well as in the
|
|
separate Canvas class have been fixed so they actually do something
|
|
meaningful.
|
|
|
|
- A tiny _test() function has been added to Tkinter.py.
|
|
|
|
- A generic Makefile for dynamically loaded modules is provided in the Misc
|
|
subdirectory (Misc/gMakefile).
|
|
|
|
- A new version of python-mode.el for Emacs is provided. See
|
|
http://www.python.org/ftp/emacs/pmdetails.html for details. The
|
|
separate file pyimenu.el is no longer needed, imenu support is folded
|
|
into python-mode.el.
|
|
|
|
- The configure script can finally correctly find the readline library in a
|
|
non-standard location. The LDFLAGS variable is passed on the the Makefiles
|
|
from the configure script.
|
|
|
|
- Shared libraries are now installed as programs (i.e. with executable
|
|
permission). This is required on HP-UX and won't hurt on other systems.
|
|
|
|
- The objc.c module is no longer part of the distribution. Objective-C
|
|
support may become available as contributed software on the ftp site.
|
|
|
|
- The sybase module is no longer part of the distribution. A much
|
|
improved sybase module is available as contributed software from the
|
|
ftp site.
|
|
|
|
- _tkinter is now compatible with Tcl 7.5 / Tk 4.1 patch1 on Windows and
|
|
Mac (don't use unpatched Tcl/Tk!). The default line in the Setup.in file
|
|
now links with Tcl 7.5 / Tk 4.1 rather than 7.4/4.0.
|
|
|
|
- In Setup, you can now write "*shared*" instead of "*noconfig*", and you
|
|
can use *.so and *.sl as shared libraries.
|
|
|
|
- Some more fidgeting for AIX shared libraries.
|
|
|
|
- The mpz module is now compatible with GMP 2.x. (Not tested by me.)
|
|
(Note -- a complete replacement by Niels Mo"ller, called gpmodule, is
|
|
available from the contrib directory on the ftp site.)
|
|
|
|
- A warning is written to sys.stderr when a __del__ method raises an
|
|
exception (formerly, such exceptions were completely ignored).
|
|
|
|
- The configure script now defines HAVE_OLD_CPP if the C preprocessor is
|
|
incapable of ANSI style token concatenation and stringification.
|
|
|
|
- All source files (except a few platform specific modules) are once again
|
|
compatible with K&R C compilers as well as ANSI compilers. In particular,
|
|
ANSI-isms have been removed or made conditional in complexobject.c,
|
|
getargs.c and operator.c.
|
|
|
|
- The abstract object API has three new functions, PyObject_DelItem,
|
|
PySequence_DelItem, and PySequence_DelSlice.
|
|
|
|
- The operator module has new functions delitem and delslice, and the
|
|
functions "or" and "and" are renamed to "or_" and "and_" (since "or" and
|
|
"and" are reserved words). ("__or__" and "__and__" are unchanged.)
|
|
|
|
- The environment module is no longer supported; putenv() is now a function
|
|
in posixmodule (also under NT).
|
|
|
|
- Error in filter(<function>, "") has been fixed.
|
|
|
|
- Unrecognized keyword arguments raise TypeError, not KeyError.
|
|
|
|
- Better portability, fewer bugs and memory leaks, fewer compiler warnings,
|
|
some more documentation.
|
|
|
|
- Bug in float power boundary case (0.0 to the negative integer power)
|
|
fixed.
|
|
|
|
- The test of negative number to the float power has been moved from the
|
|
built-in pow() functin to floatobject.c (so complex numbers can yield the
|
|
correct result).
|
|
|
|
- The bug introduced in beta2 where shared libraries loaded (using
|
|
dlopen()) from the current directory would fail, has been fixed.
|
|
|
|
- Modules imported as shared libraries now also have a __file__ attribute,
|
|
giving the filename from which they were loaded. The only modules without
|
|
a __file__ attribute now are built-in modules.
|
|
|
|
- On the Mac, dynamically loaded modules can end in either ".slb" or
|
|
".<platform>.slb" where <platform> is either "CFM68K" or "ppc". The ".slb"
|
|
extension should only be used for "fat" binaries.
|
|
|
|
- C API addition: marshal.c now supports
|
|
PyMarshal_WriteObjectToString(object).
|
|
|
|
- C API addition: getargs.c now supports
|
|
PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords(args, kwdict, format, kwnames, ...)
|
|
to parse keyword arguments.
|
|
|
|
- The PC versioning scheme (sys.winver) has changed once again. the
|
|
version number is now "<digit>.<digit>.<digit>.<apiversion>", where the
|
|
first three <digit>s are the Python version (e.g. "1.4.0" for Python 1.4,
|
|
"1.4.1" for Python 1.4.1 -- the beta level is not included) and
|
|
<apiversion> is the four-digit PYTHON_API_VERSION (currently 1005).
|
|
|
|
- h2py.py accepts whitespace before the # in CPP directives
|
|
|
|
- On Solaris 2.5, it should now be possible to use either Posix threads or
|
|
Solaris threads (XXX: how do you select which is used???). (Note: the
|
|
Python pthreads interface doesn't fully support semaphores yet -- anyone
|
|
care to fix this?)
|
|
|
|
- Thread support should now work on AIX, using either DCE threads or
|
|
pthreads.
|
|
|
|
- New file Demo/sockets/unicast.py
|
|
|
|
- Working Mac port, with CFM68K support, with Tk 4.1 support (though not
|
|
both) (XXX)
|
|
|
|
- New project setup for PC port, now compatible with PythonWin, with
|
|
_tkinter and NumPy support (XXX)
|
|
|
|
- New module site.py (XXX)
|
|
|
|
- New module xdrlib.py and optional support module _xdrmodule.c (XXX)
|
|
|
|
- parser module adapted to new grammar, complete w/ Doc & Demo (XXX)
|
|
|
|
- regen script fixed (XXX)
|
|
|
|
- new machdep subdirectories Lib/{aix3,aix4,next3_3,freebsd2,linux2} (XXX)
|
|
|
|
- testall now also tests math module (XXX)
|
|
|
|
- string.atoi c.s. now raise an exception for an empty input string.
|
|
|
|
- At last, it is no longer necessary to define HAVE_CONFIG_H in order to
|
|
have config.h included at various places.
|
|
|
|
- Unrecognized keyword arguments now raise TypeError rather than KeyError.
|
|
|
|
- The makesetup script recognizes files with extension .so or .sl as
|
|
(shared) libraries.
|
|
|
|
- 'access' is no longer a reserved word, and all code related to its
|
|
implementation is gone (or at least #ifdef'ed out). This should make
|
|
Python a little speedier too!
|
|
|
|
- Performance enhancements suggested by Sjoerd Mullender. This includes
|
|
the introduction of two new optional function pointers in type object,
|
|
getattro and setattro, which are like getattr and setattr but take a
|
|
string object instead of a C string pointer.
|
|
|
|
- New operations in string module: lstrip(s) and rstrip(s) strip whitespace
|
|
only on the left or only on the right, A new optional third argument to
|
|
split() specifies the maximum number of separators honored (so
|
|
splitfields(s, sep, n) returns a list of at most n+1 elements). (Since
|
|
1.3, splitfields(s, None) is totally equivalent to split(s).)
|
|
string.capwords() has an optional second argument specifying the
|
|
separator (which is passed to split()).
|
|
|
|
- regsub.split() has the same addition as string.split(). regsub.splitx(s,
|
|
sep, maxsep) implements the functionality that was regsub.split(s, 1) in
|
|
1.4beta2 (return a list containing the delimiters as well as the words).
|
|
|
|
- Final touch for AIX loading, rewritten Misc/AIX-NOTES.
|
|
|
|
- In Modules/_tkinter.c, when using Tk 4.1 or higher, use className
|
|
argument to _tkinter.create() to set Tcl's argv0 variable, so X
|
|
resources use the right resource class again.
|
|
|
|
- Add #undef fabs to Modules/mathmodule.c for macintosh.
|
|
|
|
- Added some macro renames for AIX in Modules/operator.c.
|
|
|
|
- Removed spurious 'E' from Doc/liberrno.tex.
|
|
|
|
- Got rid of some cruft in Misc/ (dlMakefile, pyimenu.el); added new
|
|
Misc/gMakefile and new version of Misc/python-mode.el.
|
|
|
|
- Fixed typo in Lib/ntpath.py (islink has "return false" which gives a
|
|
NameError).
|
|
|
|
- Added missing "from types import *" to Lib/tkinter/Canvas.py.
|
|
|
|
- Added hint about using default args for __init__ to pickle docs.
|
|
|
|
- Corrected typo in Inclide/abstract.h: PySequence_Lenth ->
|
|
PySequence_Length.
|
|
|
|
- Some improvements to Doc/texi2html.py.
|
|
|
|
- In Python/import.c, Cast unsigned char * in struct _frozen to char *
|
|
in calls to rds_object().
|
|
|
|
- In doc/ref4.tex, added note about scope of lambda bodies.
|
|
|
|
What's new in 1.4beta2 (since beta1)?
|
|
-------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
- Portability bug in the md5.h header solved.
|
|
|
|
- The PC build procedure now really works, and sets sys.platform to a
|
|
meaningful value (a few things were botched in beta 1). Lib/dos_8x3
|
|
is now a standard part of the distribution (alas).
|
|
|
|
- More improvements to the installation procedure. Typing "make install"
|
|
now inserts the version number in the pathnames of almost everything
|
|
installed, and creates the machine dependent modules (FCNTL.py etc.) if not
|
|
supplied by the distribution. (XXX There's still a problem with the latter
|
|
because the "regen" script requires that Python is installed. Some manual
|
|
intervention may still be required.) (This has been fixed in 1.4beta3.)
|
|
|
|
- New modules: errno, operator (XXX).
|
|
|
|
- Changes for use with Numerical Python: 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 mdoules.
|
|
|
|
- The directory containing the script passed to the interpreter is
|
|
inserted in from of sys.path; "." is no longer a default path
|
|
component.
|
|
|
|
- Optional third string argument to string.translate() specifies
|
|
characters to delete. New function string.maketrans() creates a
|
|
translation table for translate() or for regex.compile().
|
|
|
|
- Module posix (and hence module os under Unix) now supports putenv().
|
|
Moreover, module os is enhanced so that if putenv() is supported,
|
|
assignments to os.environ entries make the appropriate putenv() call.
|
|
(XXX the putenv() implementation can leak a small amount of memory per
|
|
call.)
|
|
|
|
- pdb.py can now be invoked from the command line to debug a script:
|
|
python pdb.py <script> <arg> ...
|
|
|
|
- Much improved parseaddr() in rfc822.
|
|
|
|
- In cgi.py, you can now pass an alternative value for environ to
|
|
nearly all functions.
|
|
|
|
- You can now assign to instance variables whose name begins and ends
|
|
with '__'.
|
|
|
|
- New version of Fred Drake's parser module and associates (token,
|
|
symbol, AST).
|
|
|
|
- New PYTHON_API_VERSION value and .pyc file magic number (again!).
|
|
|
|
- The "complex" internal structure type is now called "Py_complex" to
|
|
avoid name conflicts.
|
|
|
|
- Numerous small bugs fixed.
|
|
|
|
- Slight pickle speedups.
|
|
|
|
- Some slight speedups suggested by Sjoerd (more coming in 1.4 final).
|
|
|
|
- NeXT portability mods by Bill Bumgarner integrated.
|
|
|
|
- Modules regexmodule.c, bsddbmodule.c and xxmodule.c have been
|
|
converted to new naming style.
|
|
|
|
|
|
What's new in 1.4beta1 (since 1.3)?
|
|
-----------------------------------
|
|
|
|
- Added sys.platform and sys.exec_platform for Bill Janssen.
|
|
|
|
- Installation has been completely overhauled. "make install" now installs
|
|
everything, not just the python binary. Installation uses the install-sh
|
|
script (borrowed from X11) to install each file.
|
|
|
|
- New functions in the posix module: mkfifo, plock, remove (== unlink),
|
|
and ftruncate. More functions are also available under NT.
|
|
|
|
- New function in the fcntl module: flock.
|
|
|
|
- Shared library support for FreeBSD.
|
|
|
|
- The --with-readline option can now be used without a DIRECTORY argument,
|
|
for systems where libreadline.* is in one of the standard places. It is
|
|
also possible for it to be a shared library.
|
|
|
|
- The extension tkinter has been renamed to _tkinter, to avoid confusion
|
|
with Tkinter.py oncase insensitive file systems. It now supports Tk 4.1 as
|
|
well as 4.0.
|
|
|
|
- Author's change of address from CWI in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, to
|
|
CNRI in Reston, VA, USA.
|
|
|
|
- The math.hypot() function is now always available (if it isn't found in
|
|
the C math library, Python provides its own implementation).
|
|
|
|
- The latex documentation is now compatible with latex2e, thanks to David
|
|
Ascher.
|
|
|
|
- The expression x**y is now equivalent to pow(x, y).
|
|
|
|
- The indexing expression x[a, b, c] is now equivalent to x[(a, b, c)].
|
|
|
|
- Complex numbers are now supported. Imaginary constants are written with
|
|
a 'j' or 'J' prefix, general complex numbers can be formed by adding a real
|
|
part to an imaginary part, like 3+4j. Complex numbers are always stored in
|
|
floating point form, so this is equivalent to 3.0+4.0j. It is also
|
|
possible to create complex numbers with the new built-in function
|
|
complex(re, [im]). For the footprint-conscious, complex number support can
|
|
be disabled by defining the symbol WITHOUT_COMPLEX.
|
|
|
|
- New built-in function list() is the long-awaited counterpart of tuple().
|
|
|
|
- There's a new "cmath" module which provides the same functions as the
|
|
"math" library but with complex arguments and results. (There are very
|
|
good reasons why math.sqrt(-1) still raises an exception -- you have to use
|
|
cmath.sqrt(-1) to get 1j for an answer.)
|
|
|
|
- The Python.h header file (which is really the same as allobjects.h except
|
|
it disables support for old style names) now includes several more files,
|
|
so you have to have fewer #include statements in the average extension.
|
|
|
|
- The NDEBUG symbol is no longer used. Code that used to be dependent on
|
|
the presence of NDEBUG is now present on the absence of DEBUG. TRACE_REFS
|
|
and REF_DEBUG have been renamed to Py_TRACE_REFS and Py_REF_DEBUG,
|
|
respectively. At long last, the source actually compiles and links without
|
|
errors when this symbol is defined.
|
|
|
|
- Several symbols that didn't follow the new naming scheme have been
|
|
renamed (usually by adding to rename2.h) to use a Py or _Py prefix. There
|
|
are no external symbols left without a Py or _Py prefix, not even those
|
|
defined by sources that were incorporated from elsewhere (regexpr.c,
|
|
md5c.c). (Macros are a different story...)
|
|
|
|
- There are now typedefs for the structures defined in config.c and
|
|
frozen.c.
|
|
|
|
- New PYTHON_API_VERSION value and .pyc file magic number.
|
|
|
|
- New module Bastion. (XXX)
|
|
|
|
- Improved performance of StringIO module.
|
|
|
|
- UserList module now supports + and * operators.
|
|
|
|
- The binhex and binascii modules now actually work.
|
|
|
|
- The cgi module has been almost totally rewritten and documented.
|
|
It now supports file upload and a new data type to handle forms more
|
|
flexibly.
|
|
|
|
- The formatter module (for use with htmllib) has been overhauled (again).
|
|
|
|
- The ftplib module now supports passive mode and has doc strings.
|
|
|
|
- In (ideally) all places where binary files are read or written, the file
|
|
is now correctly opened in binary mode ('rb' or 'wb') so the code will work
|
|
on Mac or PC.
|
|
|
|
- Dummy versions of os.path.expandvars() and expanduser() are now provided
|
|
on non-Unix platforms.
|
|
|
|
- Module urllib now has two new functions url2pathname and pathname2url
|
|
which turn local filenames into "file:..." URLs using the same rules as
|
|
Netscape (why be different). it also supports urlretrieve() with a
|
|
pathname parameter, and honors the proxy environment variables (http_proxy
|
|
etc.). The URL parsing has been improved somewhat, too.
|
|
|
|
- Micro improvements to urlparse. Added urlparse.urldefrag() which
|
|
removes a trailing ``#fragment'' if any.
|
|
|
|
- The mailbox module now supports MH style message delimiters as well.
|
|
|
|
- The mhlib module contains some new functionality: setcontext() to set the
|
|
current folder and parsesequence() to parse a sequence as commonly passed
|
|
to MH commands (e.g. 1-10 or last:5).
|
|
|
|
- New module mimify for conversion to and from MIME format of email
|
|
messages.
|
|
|
|
- Module ni now automatically installs itself when first imported -- this
|
|
is against the normal rule that modules should define classes and functions
|
|
but not invoke them, but appears more useful in the case that two
|
|
different, independent modules want to use ni's features.
|
|
|
|
- Some small performance enhancements in module pickle.
|
|
|
|
- Small interface change to the profile.run*() family of functions -- more
|
|
sensible handling of return values.
|
|
|
|
- The officially registered Mac creator for Python files is 'Pyth'. This
|
|
replaces 'PYTH' which was used before but never registered.
|
|
|
|
- Added regsub.capwords(). (XXX)
|
|
|
|
- Added string.capwords(), string.capitalize() and string.translate().
|
|
(XXX)
|
|
|
|
- Fixed an interface bug in the rexec module: it was impossible to pass a
|
|
hooks instance to the RExec class. rexec now also supports the dynamic
|
|
loading of modules from shared libraries. Some other interfaces have been
|
|
added too.
|
|
|
|
- Module rfc822 now caches the headers in a dictionary for more efficient
|
|
lookup.
|
|
|
|
- The sgmllib module now understands a limited number of SGML "shorthands"
|
|
like <A/.../ for <A>...</A>. (It's not clear that this was a good idea...)
|
|
|
|
- The tempfile module actually tries a number of different places to find a
|
|
usable temporary directory. (This was prompted by certain Linux
|
|
installations that appear to be missing a /usr/tmp directory.) [A bug in
|
|
the implementation that would ignore a pre-existing tmpdir global has been
|
|
fixed in beta3.]
|
|
|
|
- Much improved and enhanved FileDialog module for Tkinter.
|
|
|
|
- Many small changes to Tkinter, to bring it more in line with Tk 4.0 (as
|
|
well as Tk 4.1).
|
|
|
|
- New socket interfaces include ntohs(), ntohl(), htons(), htonl(), and
|
|
s.dup(). Sockets now work correctly on Windows. On Windows, the built-in
|
|
extension is called _socket and a wrapper module win/socket.py provides
|
|
"makefile()" and "dup()" functionality. On Windows, the select module
|
|
works only with socket objects.
|
|
|
|
- Bugs in bsddb module fixed (e.g. missing default argument values).
|
|
|
|
- The curses extension now includes <ncurses.h> when available.
|
|
|
|
- The gdbm module now supports opening databases in "fast" mode by
|
|
specifying 'f' as the second character or the mode string.
|
|
|
|
- new variables sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix pass corresponding
|
|
configuration options / Makefile variables to the Python programmer.
|
|
|
|
- The ``new'' module now supports creating new user-defined classes as well
|
|
as instances thereof.
|
|
|
|
- The soundex module now sports get_soundex() to get the soundex value for an
|
|
arbitrary string (formerly it would only do soundex-based string
|
|
comparison) as well as doc strings.
|
|
|
|
- New object type "cobject" to safely wrap void pointers for passing them
|
|
between various extension modules.
|
|
|
|
- More efficient computation of float**smallint.
|
|
|
|
- The mysterious bug whereby "x.x" (two occurrences of the same
|
|
one-character name) typed from the commandline would sometimes fail
|
|
mysteriously.
|
|
|
|
- The initialization of the readline function can now be invoked by a C
|
|
extension through PyOS_ReadlineInit().
|
|
|
|
- There's now an externally visible pointer PyImport_FrozenModules which
|
|
can be changed by an embedding application.
|
|
|
|
- The argument parsing functions now support a new format character 'D' to
|
|
specify complex numbers.
|
|
|
|
- Various memory leaks plugged and bugs fixed.
|
|
|
|
- Improved support for posix threads (now that real implementations are
|
|
beginning to apepar). Still no fully functioning semaphores.
|
|
|
|
- Some various and sundry improvements and new entries in the Tools
|
|
directory.
|
|
|
|
|
|
=====================================
|
|
==> Release 1.3 (13 October 1995) <==
|
|
=====================================
|
|
|
|
Major change
|
|
============
|
|
|
|
Two words: Keyword Arguments. See the first section of Chapter 12 of
|
|
the Tutorial.
|
|
|
|
(The rest of this file is textually the same as the remaining sections
|
|
of that chapter.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to the WWW and Internet tools
|
|
=====================================
|
|
|
|
The "htmllib" module has been rewritten in an incompatible fashion.
|
|
The new version is considerably more complete (HTML 2.0 except forms,
|
|
but including all ISO-8859-1 entity definitions), and easy to use.
|
|
Small changes to "sgmllib" have also been made, to better match the
|
|
tokenization of HTML as recognized by other web tools.
|
|
|
|
A new module "formatter" has been added, for use with the new
|
|
"htmllib" module.
|
|
|
|
The "urllib"and "httplib" modules have been changed somewhat to allow
|
|
overriding unknown URL types and to support authentication. They now
|
|
use "mimetools.Message" instead of "rfc822.Message" to parse headers.
|
|
The "endrequest()" method has been removed from the HTTP class since
|
|
it breaks the interaction with some servers.
|
|
|
|
The "rfc822.Message" class has been changed to allow a flag to be
|
|
passed in that says that the file is unseekable.
|
|
|
|
The "ftplib" module has been fixed to be (hopefully) more robust on
|
|
Linux.
|
|
|
|
Several new operations that are optionally supported by servers have
|
|
been added to "nntplib": "xover", "xgtitle", "xpath" and "date".
|
|
|
|
Other Language Changes
|
|
======================
|
|
|
|
The "raise" statement now takes an optional argument which specifies
|
|
the traceback to be used when printing the exception's stack trace.
|
|
This must be a traceback object, such as found in "sys.exc_traceback".
|
|
When omitted or given as "None", the old behavior (to generate a stack
|
|
trace entry for the current stack frame) is used.
|
|
|
|
The tokenizer is now more tolerant of alien whitespace. Control-L in
|
|
the leading whitespace of a line resets the column number to zero,
|
|
while Control-R just before the end of the line is ignored.
|
|
|
|
Changes to Built-in Operations
|
|
==============================
|
|
|
|
For file objects, "f.read(0)" and "f.readline(0)" now return an empty
|
|
string rather than reading an unlimited number of bytes. For the
|
|
latter, omit the argument altogether or pass a negative value.
|
|
|
|
A new system variable, "sys.platform", has been added. It specifies
|
|
the current platform, e.g. "sunos5" or "linux1".
|
|
|
|
The built-in functions "input()" and "raw_input()" now use the GNU
|
|
readline library when it has been configured (formerly, only
|
|
interactive input to the interpreter itself was read using GNU
|
|
readline). The GNU readline library provides elaborate line editing
|
|
and history. The Python debugger ("pdb") is the first beneficiary of
|
|
this change.
|
|
|
|
Two new built-in functions, "globals()" and "locals()", provide access
|
|
to dictionaries containming current global and local variables,
|
|
respectively. (These augment rather than replace "vars()", which
|
|
returns the current local variables when called without an argument,
|
|
and a module's global variables when called with an argument of type
|
|
module.)
|
|
|
|
The built-in function "compile()" now takes a third possible value for
|
|
the kind of code to be compiled: specifying "'single'" generates code
|
|
for a single interactive statement, which prints the output of
|
|
expression statements that evaluate to something else than "None".
|
|
|
|
Library Changes
|
|
===============
|
|
|
|
There are new module "ni" and "ihooks" that support importing modules
|
|
with hierarchical names such as "A.B.C". This is enabled by writing
|
|
"import ni; ni.ni()" at the very top of the main program. These
|
|
modules are amply documented in the Python source.
|
|
|
|
The module "rexec" has been rewritten (incompatibly) to define a class
|
|
and to use "ihooks".
|
|
|
|
The "string.split()" and "string.splitfields()" functions are now the
|
|
same function (the presence or absence of the second argument
|
|
determines which operation is invoked); similar for "string.join()"
|
|
and "string.joinfields()".
|
|
|
|
The "Tkinter" module and its helper "Dialog" have been revamped to use
|
|
keyword arguments. Tk 4.0 is now the standard. A new module
|
|
"FileDialog" has been added which implements standard file selection
|
|
dialogs.
|
|
|
|
The optional built-in modules "dbm" and "gdbm" are more coordinated
|
|
--- their "open()" functions now take the same values for their "flag"
|
|
argument, and the "flag" and "mode" argument have default values (to
|
|
open the database for reading only, and to create the database with
|
|
mode "0666" minuse the umask, respectively). The memory leaks have
|
|
finally been fixed.
|
|
|
|
A new dbm-like module, "bsddb", has been added, which uses the BSD DB
|
|
package's hash method.
|
|
|
|
A portable (though slow) dbm-clone, implemented in Python, has been
|
|
added for systems where none of the above is provided. It is aptly
|
|
dubbed "dumbdbm".
|
|
|
|
The module "anydbm" provides a unified interface to "bsddb", "gdbm",
|
|
"dbm", and "dumbdbm", choosing the first one available.
|
|
|
|
A new extension module, "binascii", provides a variety of operations
|
|
for conversion of text-encoded binary data.
|
|
|
|
There are three new or rewritten companion modules implemented in
|
|
Python that can encode and decode the most common such formats: "uu"
|
|
(uuencode), "base64" and "binhex".
|
|
|
|
A module to handle the MIME encoding quoted-printable has also been
|
|
added: "quopri".
|
|
|
|
The parser module (which provides an interface to the Python parser's
|
|
abstract syntax trees) has been rewritten (incompatibly) by Fred
|
|
Drake. It now lets you change the parse tree and compile the result!
|
|
|
|
The \code{syslog} module has been upgraded and documented.
|
|
|
|
Other Changes
|
|
=============
|
|
|
|
The dynamic module loader recognizes the fact that different filenames
|
|
point to the same shared library and loads the library only once, so
|
|
you can have a single shared library that defines multiple modules.
|
|
(SunOS / SVR4 style shared libraries only.)
|
|
|
|
Jim Fulton's ``abstract object interface'' has been incorporated into
|
|
the run-time API. For more detailes, read the files
|
|
"Include/abstract.h" and "Objects/abstract.c".
|
|
|
|
The Macintosh version is much more robust now.
|
|
|
|
Numerous things I have forgotten or that are so obscure no-one will
|
|
notice them anyway :-)
|
|
|
|
|
|
===================================
|
|
==> Release 1.2 (13 April 1995) <==
|
|
===================================
|
|
|
|
- Changes to Misc/python-mode.el:
|
|
- Wrapping and indentation within triple quote strings should work
|
|
properly now.
|
|
- `Standard' bug reporting mechanism (use C-c C-b)
|
|
- py-mark-block was moved to C-c C-m
|
|
- C-c C-v shows you the python-mode version
|
|
- a basic python-font-lock-keywords has been added for Emacs 19
|
|
font-lock colorizations.
|
|
- proper interaction with pending-del and del-sel modes.
|
|
- New py-electric-colon (:) command for improved outdenting. Also
|
|
py-indent-line (TAB) should handle outdented lines better.
|
|
- New commands py-outdent-left (C-c C-l) and py-indent-right (C-c C-r)
|
|
|
|
- The Library Reference has been restructured, and many new and
|
|
existing modules are now documented, in particular the debugger and
|
|
the profiler, as well as the persistency and the WWW/Internet support
|
|
modules.
|
|
|
|
- All known bugs have been fixed. For example the pow(2,2,3L) bug on
|
|
Linux has been fixed. Also the re-entrancy problems with __del__ have
|
|
been fixed.
|
|
|
|
- All known memory leaks have been fixed.
|
|
|
|
- Phase 2 of the Great Renaming has been executed. The header files
|
|
now use the new names (PyObject instead of object, etc.). The linker
|
|
also sees the new names. Most source files still use the old names,
|
|
by virtue of the rename2.h header file. If you include Python.h, you
|
|
only see the new names. Dynamically linked modules have to be
|
|
recompiled. (Phase 3, fixing the rest of the sources, will be
|
|
executed gradually with the release later versions.)
|
|
|
|
- The hooks for implementing "safe-python" (better called "restricted
|
|
execution") are in place. Specifically, the import statement is
|
|
implemented by calling the built-in function __import__, and the
|
|
built-in names used in a particular scope are taken from the
|
|
dictionary __builtins__ in that scope's global dictionary. See also
|
|
the new (unsupported, undocumented) module rexec.py.
|
|
|
|
- The import statement now supports the syntax "import a.b.c" and
|
|
"from a.b.c import name". No officially supported implementation
|
|
exists, but one can be prototyped by replacing the built-in __import__
|
|
function. A proposal by Ken Manheimer is provided as newimp.py.
|
|
|
|
- All machinery used by the import statement (or the built-in
|
|
__import__ function) is now exposed through the new built-in module
|
|
"imp" (see the library reference manual). All dynamic loading
|
|
machinery is moved to the new file importdl.c.
|
|
|
|
- Persistent storage is supported through the use of the modules
|
|
"pickle" and "shelve" (implemented in Python). There's also a "copy"
|
|
module implementing deepcopy and normal (shallow) copy operations.
|
|
See the library reference manual.
|
|
|
|
- Documentation strings for many objects types are accessible through
|
|
the __doc__ attribute. Modules, classes and functions support special
|
|
syntax to initialize the __doc__ attribute: if the first statement
|
|
consists of just a string literal, that string literal becomes the
|
|
value of the __doc__ attribute. The default __doc__ attribute is
|
|
None. Documentation strings are also supported for built-in
|
|
functions, types and modules; however this feature hasn't been widely
|
|
used yet. See the 'new' module for an example. (Basically, the type
|
|
object's tp_doc field contains the doc string for the type, and the
|
|
4th member of the methodlist structure contains the doc string for the
|
|
method.)
|
|
|
|
- The __coerce__ and __cmp__ methods for user-defined classes once
|
|
again work as expected. As an example, there's a new standard class
|
|
Complex in the library.
|
|
|
|
- The functions posix.popen() and posix.fdopen() now have an optional
|
|
third argument to specify the buffer size, and default their second
|
|
(mode) argument to 'r' -- in analogy to the builtin open() function.
|
|
The same applies to posixfile.open() and the socket method makefile().
|
|
|
|
- The thread.exit_thread() function now raises SystemExit so that
|
|
'finally' clauses are honored and a memory leak is plugged.
|
|
|
|
- Improved X11 and Motif support, by Sjoerd Mullender. This extension
|
|
is being maintained and distributed separately.
|
|
|
|
- Improved support for the Apple Macintosh, in part by Jack Jansen,
|
|
e.g. interfaces to (a few) resource mananger functions, get/set file
|
|
type and creator, gestalt, sound manager, speech manager, MacTCP, comm
|
|
toolbox, and the think C console library. This is being maintained
|
|
and distributed separately.
|
|
|
|
- Improved version for Windows NT, by Mark Hammond. This is being
|
|
maintained and distributed separately.
|
|
|
|
- Used autoconf 2.0 to generate the configure script. Adapted
|
|
configure.in to use the new features in autoconf 2.0.
|
|
|
|
- It now builds on the NeXT without intervention, even on the 3.3
|
|
Sparc pre-release.
|
|
|
|
- Characters passed to isspace() and friends are masked to nonnegative
|
|
values.
|
|
|
|
- Correctly compute pow(-3.0, 3).
|
|
|
|
- Fix portability problems with getopt (configure now checks for a
|
|
non-GNU getopt).
|
|
|
|
- Don't add frozenmain.o to libPython.a.
|
|
|
|
- Exceptions can now be classes. ALl built-in exceptions are still
|
|
string objects, but this will change in the future.
|
|
|
|
- The socket module exports a long list of socket related symbols.
|
|
(More built-in modules will export their symbolic constants instead of
|
|
relying on a separately generated Python module.)
|
|
|
|
- When a module object is deleted, it clears out its own dictionary.
|
|
This fixes a circularity in the references between functions and
|
|
their global dictionary.
|
|
|
|
- Changed the error handling by [new]getargs() e.g. for "O&".
|
|
|
|
- Dynamic loading of modules using shared libraries is supported for
|
|
several new platforms.
|
|
|
|
- Support "O&", "[...]" and "{...}" in mkvalue().
|
|
|
|
- Extension to findmethod(): findmethodinchain() (where a chain is a
|
|
linked list of methodlist arrays). The calling interface for
|
|
findmethod() has changed: it now gets a pointer to the (static!)
|
|
methodlist structure rather than just to the function name -- this
|
|
saves copying flags etc. into the (short-lived) method object.
|
|
|
|
- The callable() function is now public.
|
|
|
|
- Object types can define a few new operations by setting function
|
|
pointers in the type object structure: tp_call defines how an object
|
|
is called, and tp_str defines how an object's str() is computed.
|
|
|
|
|
|
===================================
|
|
==> Release 1.1.1 (10 Nov 1994) <==
|
|
===================================
|
|
|
|
This is a pure bugfix release again. See the ChangeLog file for details.
|
|
|
|
One exception: a few new features were added to tkinter.
|
|
|
|
|
|
=================================
|
|
==> Release 1.1 (11 Oct 1994) <==
|
|
=================================
|
|
|
|
This release adds several new features, improved configuration and
|
|
portability, and fixes more bugs than I can list here (including some
|
|
memory leaks).
|
|
|
|
The source compiles and runs out of the box on more platforms than
|
|
ever -- including Windows NT. Makefiles or projects for a variety of
|
|
non-UNIX platforms are provided.
|
|
|
|
APOLOGY: some new features are badly documented or not at all. I had
|
|
the choice -- postpone the new release indefinitely, or release it
|
|
now, with working code but some undocumented areas. The problem with
|
|
postponing the release is that people continue to suffer from existing
|
|
bugs, and send me patches based on the previous release -- which I
|
|
can't apply directly because my own source has changed. Also, some
|
|
new modules (like signal) have been ready for release for quite some
|
|
time, and people are anxiously waiting for them. In the case of
|
|
signal, the interface is simple enough to figure out without
|
|
documentation (if you're anxious enough :-). In this case it was not
|
|
simple to release the module on its own, since it relies on many small
|
|
patches elsewhere in the source.
|
|
|
|
For most new Python modules, the source code contains comments that
|
|
explain how to use them. Documentation for the Tk interface, written
|
|
by Matt Conway, is available as tkinter-doc.tar.gz from the Python
|
|
home and mirror ftp sites (see Misc/FAQ for ftp addresses). For the
|
|
new operator overloading facilities, have a look at Demo/classes:
|
|
Complex.py and Rat.py show how to implement a numeric type without and
|
|
with __coerce__ method. Also have a look at the end of the Tutorial
|
|
document (Doc/tut.tex). If you're still confused: use the newsgroup
|
|
or mailing list.
|
|
|
|
|
|
New language features:
|
|
|
|
- More flexible operator overloading for user-defined classes
|
|
(INCOMPATIBLE WITH PREVIOUS VERSIONS!) See end of tutorial.
|
|
|
|
- Classes can define methods named __getattr__, __setattr__ and
|
|
__delattr__ to trap attribute accesses. See end of tutorial.
|
|
|
|
- Classes can define method __call__ so instances can be called
|
|
directly. See end of tutorial.
|
|
|
|
|
|
New support facilities:
|
|
|
|
- The Makefiles (for the base interpreter as well as for extensions)
|
|
now support creating dynamically loadable modules if the platform
|
|
supports shared libraries.
|
|
|
|
- Passing the interpreter a .pyc file as script argument will execute
|
|
the code in that file. (On the Mac such files can be double-clicked!)
|
|
|
|
- New Freeze script, to create independently distributable "binaries"
|
|
of Python programs -- look in Demo/freeze
|
|
|
|
- Improved h2py script (in Demo/scripts) follows #includes and
|
|
supports macros with one argument
|
|
|
|
- New module compileall generates .pyc files for all modules in a
|
|
directory (tree) without also executing them
|
|
|
|
- Threads should work on more platforms
|
|
|
|
|
|
New built-in modules:
|
|
|
|
- tkinter (support for Tcl's Tk widget set) is now part of the base
|
|
distribution
|
|
|
|
- signal allows catching or ignoring UNIX signals (unfortunately still
|
|
undocumented -- any taker?)
|
|
|
|
- termios provides portable access to POSIX tty settings
|
|
|
|
- curses provides an interface to the System V curses library
|
|
|
|
- syslog provides an interface to the (BSD?) syslog daemon
|
|
|
|
- 'new' provides interfaces to create new built-in object types
|
|
(e.g. modules and functions)
|
|
|
|
- sybase provides an interface to SYBASE database
|
|
|
|
|
|
New/obsolete built-in methods:
|
|
|
|
- callable(x) tests whether x can be called
|
|
|
|
- sockets now have a setblocking() method
|
|
|
|
- sockets no longer have an allowbroadcast() method
|
|
|
|
- socket methods send() and sendto() return byte count
|
|
|
|
|
|
New standard library modules:
|
|
|
|
- types.py defines standard names for built-in types, e.g. StringType
|
|
|
|
- urlparse.py parses URLs according to the latest Internet draft
|
|
|
|
- uu.py does uuencode/uudecode (not the fastest in the world, but
|
|
quicker than installing uuencode on a non-UNIX machine :-)
|
|
|
|
- New, faster and more powerful profile module.py
|
|
|
|
- mhlib.py provides interface to MH folders and messages
|
|
|
|
|
|
New facilities for extension writers (unfortunately still
|
|
undocumented):
|
|
|
|
- newgetargs() supports optional arguments and improved error messages
|
|
|
|
- O!, O& O? formats for getargs allow more versatile type checking of
|
|
non-standard types
|
|
|
|
- can register pending asynchronous callback, to be called the next
|
|
time the Python VM begins a new instruction (Py_AddPendingCall)
|
|
|
|
- can register cleanup routines to be called when Python exits
|
|
(Py_AtExit)
|
|
|
|
- makesetup script understands C++ files in Setup file (use file.C
|
|
or file.cc)
|
|
|
|
- Make variable OPT is passed on to sub-Makefiles
|
|
|
|
- An init<module>() routine may signal an error by not entering
|
|
the module in the module table and raising an exception instead
|
|
|
|
- For long module names, instead of foobarbletchmodule.c you can
|
|
use foobarbletch.c
|
|
|
|
- getintvalue() and getfloatvalue() try to convert any object
|
|
instead of requiring an "intobject" or "floatobject"
|
|
|
|
- All the [new]getargs() formats that retrieve an integer value
|
|
will now also work if a float is passed
|
|
|
|
- C function listtuple() converts list to tuple, fast
|
|
|
|
- You should now call sigcheck() instead of intrcheck();
|
|
sigcheck() also sets an exception when it returns nonzero
|
|
|
|
|
|
====================================
|
|
==> Release 1.0.3 (14 July 1994) <==
|
|
====================================
|
|
|
|
This release consists entirely of bug fixes to the C sources; see the
|
|
head of ../ChangeLog for a complete list. Most important bugs fixed:
|
|
|
|
- Sometimes the format operator (string%expr) would drop the last
|
|
character of the format string
|
|
|
|
- Tokenizer looped when last line did not end in \n
|
|
|
|
- Bug when triple-quoted string ended in quote plus newline
|
|
|
|
- Typo in socketmodule (listen) (== instead of =)
|
|
|
|
- typing vars() at the >>> prompt would cause recursive output
|
|
|
|
|
|
==================================
|
|
==> Release 1.0.2 (4 May 1994) <==
|
|
==================================
|
|
|
|
Overview of the most visible changes. Bug fixes are not listed. See
|
|
also ChangeLog.
|
|
|
|
Tokens
|
|
------
|
|
|
|
* String literals follow Standard C rules: they may be continued on
|
|
the next line using a backslash; adjacent literals are concatenated
|
|
at compile time.
|
|
|
|
* A new kind of string literals, surrounded by triple quotes (""" or
|
|
'''), can be continued on the next line without a backslash.
|
|
|
|
Syntax
|
|
------
|
|
|
|
* Function arguments may have a default value, e.g. def f(a, b=1);
|
|
defaults are evaluated at function definition time. This also applies
|
|
to lambda.
|
|
|
|
* The try-except statement has an optional else clause, which is
|
|
executed when no exception occurs in the try clause.
|
|
|
|
Interpreter
|
|
-----------
|
|
|
|
* The result of a statement-level expression is no longer printed,
|
|
except_ for expressions entered interactively. Consequently, the -k
|
|
command line option is gone.
|
|
|
|
* The result of the last printed interactive expression is assigned to
|
|
the variable '_'.
|
|
|
|
* Access to implicit global variables has been speeded up by removing
|
|
an always-failing dictionary lookup in the dictionary of local
|
|
variables (mod suggested by Steve Makewski and Tim Peters).
|
|
|
|
* There is a new command line option, -u, to force stdout and stderr
|
|
to be unbuffered.
|
|
|
|
* Incorporated Steve Majewski's mods to import.c for dynamic loading
|
|
under AIX.
|
|
|
|
* Fewer chances of dumping core when trying to reload or re-import
|
|
static built-in, dynamically loaded built-in, or frozen modules.
|
|
|
|
* Loops over sequences now don't ask for the sequence's length when
|
|
they start, but try to access items 0, 1, 2, and so on until they hit
|
|
an IndexError. This makes it possible to create classes that generate
|
|
infinite or indefinite sequences a la Steve Majewski. This affects
|
|
for loops, the (not) in operator, and the built-in functions filter(),
|
|
map(), max(), min(), reduce().
|
|
|
|
Changed Built-in operations
|
|
---------------------------
|
|
|
|
* The '%' operator on strings (printf-style formatting) supports a new
|
|
feature (adapted from a patch by Donald Beaudry) to allow
|
|
'%(<key>)<format>' % {...} to take values from a dictionary by name
|
|
instead of from a tuple by position (see also the new function
|
|
vars()).
|
|
|
|
* The '%s' formatting operator is changed to accept any type and
|
|
convert it to a string using str().
|
|
|
|
* Dictionaries with more than 20,000 entries can now be created
|
|
(thanks to Steve Kirsch).
|
|
|
|
New Built-in Functions
|
|
----------------------
|
|
|
|
* vars() returns a dictionary containing the local variables; vars(m)
|
|
returns a dictionary containing the variables of module m. Note:
|
|
dir(x) is now equivalent to vars(x).keys().
|
|
|
|
Changed Built-in Functions
|
|
--------------------------
|
|
|
|
* open() has an optional third argument to specify the buffer size: 0
|
|
for unbuffered, 1 for line buffered, >1 for explicit buffer size, <0
|
|
for default.
|
|
|
|
* open()'s second argument is now optional; it defaults to "r".
|
|
|
|
* apply() now checks that its second argument is indeed a tuple.
|
|
|
|
New Built-in Modules
|
|
--------------------
|
|
|
|
Changed Built-in Modules
|
|
------------------------
|
|
|
|
The thread module no longer supports exit_prog().
|
|
|
|
New Python Modules
|
|
------------------
|
|
|
|
* Module addpack contains a standard interface to modify sys.path to
|
|
find optional packages (groups of related modules).
|
|
|
|
* Module urllib contains a number of functions to access
|
|
World-Wide-Web files specified by their URL.
|
|
|
|
* Module httplib implements the client side of the HTTP protocol used
|
|
by World-Wide-Web servers.
|
|
|
|
* Module gopherlib implements the client side of the Gopher protocol.
|
|
|
|
* Module mailbox (by Jack Jansen) contains a parser for UNIX and MMDF
|
|
style mailbox files.
|
|
|
|
* Module random contains various random distributions, e.g. gauss().
|
|
|
|
* Module lockfile locks and unlocks open files using fcntl (inspired
|
|
by a similar module by Andy Bensky).
|
|
|
|
* Module ntpath (by Jaap Vermeulen) implements path operations for
|
|
Windows/NT.
|
|
|
|
* Module test_thread (in Lib/test) contains a small test set for the
|
|
thread module.
|
|
|
|
Changed Python Modules
|
|
----------------------
|
|
|
|
* The string module's expandvars() function is now documented and is
|
|
implemented in Python (using regular expressions) instead of forking
|
|
off a shell process.
|
|
|
|
* Module rfc822 now supports accessing the header fields using the
|
|
mapping/dictionary interface, e.g. h['subject'].
|
|
|
|
* Module pdb now makes it possible to set a break on a function
|
|
(syntax: break <expression>, where <expression> yields a function
|
|
object).
|
|
|
|
Changed Demos
|
|
-------------
|
|
|
|
* The Demo/scripts/freeze.py script is working again (thanks to Jaap
|
|
Vermeulen).
|
|
|
|
New Demos
|
|
---------
|
|
|
|
* Demo/threads/Generator.py is a proposed interface for restartable
|
|
functions a la Tim Peters.
|
|
|
|
* Demo/scripts/newslist.py, by Quentin Stafford-Fraser, generates a
|
|
directory full of HTML pages which between them contain links to all
|
|
the newsgroups available on your server.
|
|
|
|
* Demo/dns contains a DNS (Domain Name Server) client.
|
|
|
|
* Demo/lutz contains miscellaneous demos by Mark Lutz (e.g. psh.py, a
|
|
nice enhanced Python shell!!!).
|
|
|
|
* Demo/turing contains a Turing machine by Amrit Prem.
|
|
|
|
Documentation
|
|
-------------
|
|
|
|
* Documented new language features mentioned above (but not all new
|
|
modules).
|
|
|
|
* Added a chapter to the Tutorial describing recent additions to
|
|
Python.
|
|
|
|
* Clarified some sentences in the reference manual,
|
|
e.g. break/continue, local/global scope, slice assignment.
|
|
|
|
Source Structure
|
|
----------------
|
|
|
|
* Moved Include/tokenizer.h to Parser/tokenizer.h.
|
|
|
|
* Added Python/getopt.c for systems that don't have it.
|
|
|
|
Emacs mode
|
|
----------
|
|
|
|
* Indentation of continuated lines is done more intelligently;
|
|
consequently the variable py-continuation-offset is gone.
|
|
|
|
========================================
|
|
==> Release 1.0.1 (15 February 1994) <==
|
|
========================================
|
|
|
|
* Many portability fixes should make it painless to build Python on
|
|
several new platforms, e.g. NeXT, SEQUENT, WATCOM, DOS, and Windows.
|
|
|
|
* Fixed test for <stdarg.h> -- this broke on some platforms.
|
|
|
|
* Fixed test for shared library dynalic loading -- this broke on SunOS
|
|
4.x using the GNU loader.
|
|
|
|
* Changed order and number of SVR4 networking libraries (it is now
|
|
-lsocket -linet -lnsl, if these libraries exist).
|
|
|
|
* Installing the build intermediate stages with "make libainstall" now
|
|
also installs config.c.in, Setup and makesetup, which are used by the
|
|
new Extensions mechanism.
|
|
|
|
* Improved README file contains more hints and new troubleshooting
|
|
section.
|
|
|
|
* The built-in module strop now defines fast versions of three more
|
|
functions of the standard string module: atoi(), atol() and atof().
|
|
The strop versions of atoi() and atol() support an optional second
|
|
argument to specify the base (default 10). NOTE: you don't have to
|
|
explicitly import strop to use the faster versions -- the string
|
|
module contains code to let versions from stop override the default
|
|
versions.
|
|
|
|
* There is now a working Lib/dospath.py for those who use Python under
|
|
DOS (or Windows). Thanks, Jaap!
|
|
|
|
* There is now a working Modules/dosmodule.c for DOS (or Windows)
|
|
system calls.
|
|
|
|
* Lib.os.py has been reorganized (making it ready for more operating
|
|
systems).
|
|
|
|
* Lib/ospath.py is now obsolete (use os.path instead).
|
|
|
|
* Many fixes to the tutorial to make it match Python 1.0. Thanks,
|
|
Tim!
|
|
|
|
* Fixed Doc/Makefile, Doc/README and various scripts there.
|
|
|
|
* Added missing description of fdopen to Doc/libposix.tex.
|
|
|
|
* Made cleanup() global, for the benefit of embedded applications.
|
|
|
|
* Added parsing of addresses and dates to Lib/rfc822.py.
|
|
|
|
* Small fixes to Lib/aifc.py, Lib/sunau.py, Lib/tzparse.py to make
|
|
them usable at all.
|
|
|
|
* New module Lib/wave.py reads RIFF (*.wav) audio files.
|
|
|
|
* Module Lib/filewin.py moved to Lib/stdwin/filewin.py where it
|
|
belongs.
|
|
|
|
* New options and comments for Modules/makesetup (used by new
|
|
Extension mechanism).
|
|
|
|
* Misc/HYPE contains text of announcement of 1.0.0 in comp.lang.misc
|
|
and elsewhere.
|
|
|
|
* Fixed coredump in filter(None, 'abcdefg').
|
|
|
|
|
|
=======================================
|
|
==> Release 1.0.0 (26 January 1994) <==
|
|
=======================================
|
|
|
|
As is traditional, so many things have changed that I can't pretend to
|
|
be complete in these release notes, but I'll try anyway :-)
|
|
|
|
Note that the very last section is labeled "remaining bugs".
|
|
|
|
|
|
Source organization and build process
|
|
-------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
* The sources have finally been split: instead of a single src
|
|
subdirectory there are now separate directories Include, Parser,
|
|
Grammar, Objects, Python and Modules. Other directories also start
|
|
with a capital letter: Misc, Doc, Lib, Demo.
|
|
|
|
* A few extensions (notably Amoeba and X support) have been moved to a
|
|
separate subtree Extensions, which is no longer in the core
|
|
distribution, but separately ftp'able as extensions.tar.Z. (The
|
|
distribution contains a placeholder Ext-dummy with a description of
|
|
the Extensions subtree as well as the most recent versions of the
|
|
scripts used there.)
|
|
|
|
* A few large specialized demos (SGI video and www) have been
|
|
moved to a separate subdirectory Demo2, which is no longer in the core
|
|
distribution, but separately ftp'able as demo2.tar.Z.
|
|
|
|
* Parts of the standard library have been moved to subdirectories:
|
|
there are now standard subdirectories stdwin, test, sgi and sun4.
|
|
|
|
* The configuration process has radically changed: I now use GNU
|
|
autoconf. This makes it much easier to build on new Unix flavors, as
|
|
well as fully supporting VPATH (if your Make has it). The scripts
|
|
Configure.py and Addmodule.sh are no longer needed. Many source files
|
|
have been adapted in order to work with the symbols that the configure
|
|
script generated by autoconf defines (or not); the resulting source is
|
|
much more portable to different C compilers and operating systems,
|
|
even non Unix systems (a Mac port was done in an afternoon). See the
|
|
toplevel README file for a description of the new build process.
|
|
|
|
* GNU readline (a slightly newer version) is now a subdirectory of the
|
|
Python toplevel. It is still not automatically configured (being
|
|
totally autoconf-unaware :-). One problem has been solved: typing
|
|
Control-C to a readline prompt will now work. The distribution no
|
|
longer contains a "super-level" directory (above the python toplevel
|
|
directory), and dl, dl-dld and GNU dld are no longer part of the
|
|
Python distribution (you can still ftp them from
|
|
ftp.cwi.nl:/pub/dynload).
|
|
|
|
* The DOS functions have been taken out of posixmodule.c and moved
|
|
into a separate file dosmodule.c.
|
|
|
|
* There's now a separate file version.c which contains nothing but
|
|
the version number.
|
|
|
|
* The actual main program is now contained in config.c (unless NO_MAIN
|
|
is defined); pythonmain.c now contains a function realmain() which is
|
|
called from config.c's main().
|
|
|
|
* All files needed to use the built-in module md5 are now contained in
|
|
the distribution. The module has been cleaned up considerably.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Documentation
|
|
-------------
|
|
|
|
* The library manual has been split into many more small latex files,
|
|
so it is easier to edit Doc/lib.tex file to create a custom library
|
|
manual, describing only those modules supported on your system. (This
|
|
is not automated though.)
|
|
|
|
* A fourth manual has been added, titled "Extending and Embedding the
|
|
Python Interpreter" (Doc/ext.tex), which collects information about
|
|
the interpreter which was previously spread over several files in the
|
|
misc subdirectory.
|
|
|
|
* The entire documentation is now also available on-line for those who
|
|
have a WWW browser (e.g. NCSA Mosaic). Point your browser to the URL
|
|
"http://www.cwi.nl/~guido/Python.html".
|
|
|
|
|
|
Syntax
|
|
------
|
|
|
|
* Strings may now be enclosed in double quotes as well as in single
|
|
quotes. There is no difference in interpretation. The repr() of
|
|
string objects will use double quotes if the string contains a single
|
|
quote and no double quotes. Thanks to Amrit Prem for these changes!
|
|
|
|
* There is a new keyword 'exec'. This replaces the exec() built-in
|
|
function. If a function contains an exec statement, local variable
|
|
optimization is not performed for that particular function, thus
|
|
making assignment to local variables in exec statements less
|
|
confusing. (As a consequence, os.exec and python.exec have been
|
|
renamed to execv.)
|
|
|
|
* There is a new keyword 'lambda'. An expression of the form
|
|
|
|
lambda <parameters> : <expression>
|
|
|
|
yields an anonymous function. This is really only syntactic sugar;
|
|
you can just as well define a local function using
|
|
|
|
def some_temporary_name(<parameters>): return <expression>
|
|
|
|
Lambda expressions are particularly useful in combination with map(),
|
|
filter() and reduce(), described below. Thanks to Amrit Prem for
|
|
submitting this code (as well as map(), filter(), reduce() and
|
|
xrange())!
|
|
|
|
|
|
Built-in functions
|
|
------------------
|
|
|
|
* The built-in module containing the built-in functions is called
|
|
__builtin__ instead of builtin.
|
|
|
|
* New built-in functions map(), filter() and reduce() perform standard
|
|
functional programming operations (though not lazily):
|
|
|
|
- map(f, seq) returns a new sequence whose items are the items from
|
|
seq with f() applied to them.
|
|
|
|
- filter(f, seq) returns a subsequence of seq consisting of those
|
|
items for which f() is true.
|
|
|
|
- reduce(f, seq, initial) returns a value computed as follows:
|
|
acc = initial
|
|
for item in seq: acc = f(acc, item)
|
|
return acc
|
|
|
|
* New function xrange() creates a "range object". Its arguments are
|
|
the same as those of range(), and when used in a for loop a range
|
|
objects also behaves identical. The advantage of xrange() over
|
|
range() is that its representation (if the range contains many
|
|
elements) is much more compact than that of range(). The disadvantage
|
|
is that the result cannot be used to initialize a list object or for
|
|
the "Python idiom" [RED, GREEN, BLUE] = range(3). On some modern
|
|
architectures, benchmarks have shown that "for i in range(...): ..."
|
|
actually executes *faster* than "for i in xrange(...): ...", but on
|
|
memory starved machines like PCs running DOS range(100000) may be just
|
|
too big to be represented at all...
|
|
|
|
* Built-in function exec() has been replaced by the exec statement --
|
|
see above.
|
|
|
|
|
|
The interpreter
|
|
---------------
|
|
|
|
* Syntax errors are now not printed to stderr by the parser, but
|
|
rather the offending line and other relevant information are packed up
|
|
in the SyntaxError exception argument. When the main loop catches a
|
|
SyntaxError exception it will print the error in the same format as
|
|
previously, but at the proper position in the stack traceback.
|
|
|
|
* You can now set a maximum to the number of traceback entries
|
|
printed by assigning to sys.tracebacklimit. The default is 1000.
|
|
|
|
* The version number in .pyc files has changed yet again.
|
|
|
|
* It is now possible to have a .pyc file without a corresponding .py
|
|
file. (Warning: this may break existing installations if you have an
|
|
old .pyc file lingering around somewhere on your module search path
|
|
without a corresponding .py file, when there is a .py file for a
|
|
module of the same name further down the path -- the new interpreter
|
|
will find the first .pyc file and complain about it, while the old
|
|
interpreter would ignore it and use the .py file further down.)
|
|
|
|
* The list sys.builtin_module_names is now sorted and also contains
|
|
the names of a few hardwired built-in modules (sys, __main__ and
|
|
__builtin__).
|
|
|
|
* A module can now find its own name by accessing the global variable
|
|
__name__. Assigning to this variable essentially renames the module
|
|
(it should also be stored under a different key in sys.modules).
|
|
A neat hack follows from this: a module that wants to execute a main
|
|
program when called as a script no longer needs to compare
|
|
sys.argv[0]; it can simply do "if __name__ == '__main__': main()".
|
|
|
|
* When an object is printed by the print statement, its implementation
|
|
of str() is used. This means that classes can define __str__(self) to
|
|
direct how their instances are printed. This is different from
|
|
__repr__(self), which should define an unambigous string
|
|
representation of the instance. (If __str__() is not defined, it
|
|
defaults to __repr__().)
|
|
|
|
* Functions and code objects can now be compared meaningfully.
|
|
|
|
* On systems supporting SunOS or SVR4 style shared libraries, dynamic
|
|
loading of modules using shared libraries is automatically configured.
|
|
Thanks to Bill Jansen and Denis Severson for contributing this change!
|
|
|
|
|
|
Built-in objects
|
|
----------------
|
|
|
|
* File objects have acquired a new method writelines() which is the
|
|
reverse of readlines(). (It does not actually write lines, just a
|
|
list of strings, but the symmetry makes the choice of name OK.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
Built-in modules
|
|
----------------
|
|
|
|
* Socket objects no longer support the avail() method. Use the select
|
|
module instead, or use this function to replace it:
|
|
|
|
def avail(f):
|
|
import select
|
|
return f in select.select([f], [], [], 0)[0]
|
|
|
|
* Initialization of stdwin is done differently. It actually modifies
|
|
sys.argv (taking out the options the X version of stdwin recognizes)
|
|
the first time it is imported.
|
|
|
|
* A new built-in module parser provides a rudimentary interface to the
|
|
python parser. Corresponding standard library modules token and symbol
|
|
defines the numeric values of tokens and non-terminal symbols.
|
|
|
|
* The posix module has aquired new functions setuid(), setgid(),
|
|
execve(), and exec() has been renamed to execv().
|
|
|
|
* The array module is extended with 8-byte object swaps, the 'i'
|
|
format character, and a reverse() method. The read() and write()
|
|
methods are renamed to fromfile() and tofile().
|
|
|
|
* The rotor module has freed of portability bugs. This introduces a
|
|
backward compatibility problem: strings encoded with the old rotor
|
|
module can't be decoded by the new version.
|
|
|
|
* For select.select(), a timeout (4th) argument of None means the same
|
|
as leaving the timeout argument out.
|
|
|
|
* Module strop (and hence standard library module string) has aquired
|
|
a new function: rindex(). Thanks to Amrit Prem!
|
|
|
|
* Module regex defines a new function symcomp() which uses an extended
|
|
regular expression syntax: parenthesized subexpressions may be labeled
|
|
using the form "\(<labelname>...\)", and the group() method can return
|
|
sub-expressions by name. Thanks to Tracy Tims for these changes!
|
|
|
|
* Multiple threads are now supported on Solaris 2. Thanks to Sjoerd
|
|
Mullender!
|
|
|
|
|
|
Standard library modules
|
|
------------------------
|
|
|
|
* The library is now split in several subdirectories: all stuff using
|
|
stdwin is in Lib/stdwin, all SGI specific (or SGI Indigo or GL) stuff
|
|
is in Lib/sgi, all Sun Sparc specific stuff is in Lib/sun4, and all
|
|
test modules are in Lib/test. The default module search path will
|
|
include all relevant subdirectories by default.
|
|
|
|
* Module os now knows about trying to import dos. It defines
|
|
functions execl(), execle(), execlp() and execvp().
|
|
|
|
* New module dospath (should be attacked by a DOS hacker though).
|
|
|
|
* All modules defining classes now define __init__() constructors
|
|
instead of init() methods. THIS IS AN INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE!
|
|
|
|
* Some minor changes and bugfixes module ftplib (mostly Steve
|
|
Majewski's suggestions); the debug() method is renamed to
|
|
set_debuglevel().
|
|
|
|
* Some new test modules (not run automatically by testall though):
|
|
test_audioop, test_md5, test_rgbimg, test_select.
|
|
|
|
* Module string now defines rindex() and rfind() in analogy of index()
|
|
and find(). It also defines atof() and atol() (and corresponding
|
|
exceptions) in analogy to atoi().
|
|
|
|
* Added help() functions to modules profile and pdb.
|
|
|
|
* The wdb debugger (now in Lib/stdwin) now shows class or instance
|
|
variables on a double click. Thanks to Sjoerd Mullender!
|
|
|
|
* The (undocumented) module lambda has gone -- you couldn't import it
|
|
any more, and it was basically more a demo than a library module...
|
|
|
|
|
|
Multimedia extensions
|
|
---------------------
|
|
|
|
* The optional built-in modules audioop and imageop are now standard
|
|
parts of the interpreter. Thanks to Sjoerd Mullender and Jack Jansen
|
|
for contributing this code!
|
|
|
|
* There's a new operation in audioop: minmax().
|
|
|
|
* There's a new built-in module called rgbimg which supports portable
|
|
efficient reading of SGI RCG image files. Thanks also to Paul
|
|
Haeberli for the original code! (Who will contribute a GIF reader?)
|
|
|
|
* The module aifc is gone -- you should now always use aifc, which has
|
|
received a facelift.
|
|
|
|
* There's a new module sunau., for reading Sun (and NeXT) audio files.
|
|
|
|
* There's a new module audiodev which provides a uniform interface to
|
|
(SGI Indigo and Sun Sparc) audio hardware.
|
|
|
|
* There's a new module sndhdr which recognizes various sound files by
|
|
looking in their header and checking for various magic words.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Optimizations
|
|
-------------
|
|
|
|
* Most optimizations below can be configured by compile-time flags.
|
|
Thanks to Sjoerd Mullender for submitting these optimizations!
|
|
|
|
* Small integers (default -1..99) are shared -- i.e. if two different
|
|
functions compute the same value it is possible (but not
|
|
guaranteed!!!) that they return the same *object*. Python programs
|
|
can detect this but should *never* rely on it.
|
|
|
|
* Empty tuples (which all compare equal) are shared in the same
|
|
manner.
|
|
|
|
* Tuples of size up to 20 (default) are put in separate free lists
|
|
when deallocated.
|
|
|
|
* There is a compile-time option to cache a string's hash function,
|
|
but this appeared to have a negligeable effect, and as it costs 4
|
|
bytes per string it is disabled by default.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Embedding Python
|
|
----------------
|
|
|
|
* The initialization interface has been simplified somewhat. You now
|
|
only call "initall()" to initialize the interpreter.
|
|
|
|
* The previously announced renaming of externally visible identifiers
|
|
has not been carried out. It will happen in a later release. Sorry.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Miscellaneous bugs that have been fixed
|
|
---------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
* All known portability bugs.
|
|
|
|
* Version 0.9.9 dumped core in <listobject>.sort() which has been
|
|
fixed. Thanks to Jaap Vermeulen for fixing this and posting the fix
|
|
on the mailing list while I was away!
|
|
|
|
* Core dump on a format string ending in '%', e.g. in the expression
|
|
'%' % None.
|
|
|
|
* The array module yielded a bogus result for concatenation (a+b would
|
|
yield a+a).
|
|
|
|
* Some serious memory leaks in strop.split() and strop.splitfields().
|
|
|
|
* Several problems with the nis module.
|
|
|
|
* Subtle problem when copying a class method from another class
|
|
through assignment (the method could not be called).
|
|
|
|
|
|
Remaining bugs
|
|
--------------
|
|
|
|
* One problem with 64-bit machines remains -- since .pyc files are
|
|
portable and use only 4 bytes to represent an integer object, 64-bit
|
|
integer literals are silently truncated when written into a .pyc file.
|
|
Work-around: use eval('123456789101112').
|
|
|
|
* The freeze script doesn't work any more. A new and more portable
|
|
one can probably be cooked up using tricks from Extensions/mkext.py.
|
|
|
|
* The dos support hasn't been tested yet. (Really Soon Now we should
|
|
have a PC with a working C compiler!)
|
|
|
|
|
|
===================================
|
|
==> Release 0.9.9 (29 Jul 1993) <==
|
|
===================================
|
|
|
|
I *believe* these are the main user-visible changes in this release,
|
|
but there may be others. SGI users may scan the {src,lib}/ChangeLog
|
|
files for improvements of some SGI specific modules, e.g. aifc and
|
|
cl. Developers of extension modules should also read src/ChangeLog.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Naming of C symbols used by the Python interpreter
|
|
--------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
* This is the last release using the current naming conventions. New
|
|
naming conventions are explained in the file misc/NAMING.
|
|
Summarizing, all externally visible symbols get (at least) a "Py"
|
|
prefix, and most functions are renamed to the standard form
|
|
PyModule_FunctionName.
|
|
|
|
* Writers of extensions are urged to start using the new naming
|
|
conventions. The next release will use the new naming conventions
|
|
throughout (it will also have a different source directory
|
|
structure).
|
|
|
|
* As a result of the preliminary work for the great renaming, many
|
|
functions that were accidentally global have been made static.
|
|
|
|
|
|
BETA X11 support
|
|
----------------
|
|
|
|
* There are now modules interfacing to the X11 Toolkit Intrinsics, the
|
|
Athena widgets, and the Motif 1.1 widget set. These are not yet
|
|
documented except through the examples and README file in the demo/x11
|
|
directory. It is expected that this interface will be replaced by a
|
|
more powerful and correct one in the future, which may or may not be
|
|
backward compatible. In other words, this part of the code is at most
|
|
BETA level software! (Note: the rest of Python is rock solid as ever!)
|
|
|
|
* I understand that the above may be a bit of a disappointment,
|
|
however my current schedule does not allow me to change this situation
|
|
before putting the release out of the door. By releasing it
|
|
undocumented and buggy, at least some of the (working!) demo programs,
|
|
like itr (my Internet Talk Radio browser) become available to a larger
|
|
audience.
|
|
|
|
* There are also modules interfacing to SGI's "Glx" widget (a GL
|
|
window wrapped in a widget) and to NCSA's "HTML" widget (which can
|
|
format HyperText Markup Language, the document format used by the
|
|
World Wide Web).
|
|
|
|
* I've experienced some problems when building the X11 support. In
|
|
particular, the Xm and Xaw widget sets don't go together, and it
|
|
appears that using X11R5 is better than using X11R4. Also the threads
|
|
module and its link time options may spoil things. My own strategy is
|
|
to build two Python binaries: one for use with X11 and one without
|
|
it, which can contain a richer set of built-in modules. Don't even
|
|
*think* of loading the X11 modules dynamically...
|
|
|
|
|
|
Environmental changes
|
|
---------------------
|
|
|
|
* Compiled files (*.pyc files) created by this Python version are
|
|
incompatible with those created by the previous version. Both
|
|
versions detect this and silently create a correct version, but it
|
|
means that it is not a good idea to use the same library directory for
|
|
an old and a new interpreter, since they will start to "fight" over
|
|
the *.pyc files...
|
|
|
|
* When a stack trace is printed, the exception is printed last instead
|
|
of first. This means that if the beginning of the stack trace
|
|
scrolled out of your window you can still see what exception caused
|
|
it.
|
|
|
|
* Sometimes interrupting a Python operation does not work because it
|
|
hangs in a blocking system call. You can now kill the interpreter by
|
|
interrupting it three times. The second time you interrupt it, a
|
|
message will be printed telling you that the third interrupt will kill
|
|
the interpreter. The "sys.exitfunc" feature still makes limited
|
|
clean-up possible in this case.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to the command line interface
|
|
-------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
* The python usage message is now much more informative.
|
|
|
|
* New option -i enters interactive mode after executing a script --
|
|
useful for debugging.
|
|
|
|
* New option -k raises an exception when an expression statement
|
|
yields a value other than None.
|
|
|
|
* For each option there is now also a corresponding environment
|
|
variable.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Using Python as an embedded language
|
|
------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
* The distribution now contains (some) documentation on the use of
|
|
Python as an "embedded language" in other applications, as well as a
|
|
simple example. See the file misc/EMBEDDING and the directory embed/.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Speed improvements
|
|
------------------
|
|
|
|
* Function local variables are now generally stored in an array and
|
|
accessed using an integer indexing operation, instead of through a
|
|
dictionary lookup. (This compensates the somewhat slower dictionary
|
|
lookup caused by the generalization of the dictionary module.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to the syntax
|
|
---------------------
|
|
|
|
* Continuation lines can now *sometimes* be written without a
|
|
backslash: if the continuation is contained within nesting (), [] or
|
|
{} brackets the \ may be omitted. There's a much improved
|
|
python-mode.el in the misc directory which knows about this as well.
|
|
|
|
* You can no longer use an empty set of parentheses to define a class
|
|
without base classes. That is, you no longer write this:
|
|
|
|
class Foo(): # syntax error
|
|
...
|
|
|
|
You must write this instead:
|
|
|
|
class Foo:
|
|
...
|
|
|
|
This was already the preferred syntax in release 0.9.8 but many
|
|
people seemed not to have picked it up. There's a Python script that
|
|
fixes old code: demo/scripts/classfix.py.
|
|
|
|
* There's a new reserved word: "access". The syntax and semantics are
|
|
still subject of of research and debate (as well as undocumented), but
|
|
the parser knows about the keyword so you must not use it as a
|
|
variable, function, or attribute name.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to the semantics of the language proper
|
|
-----------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
* The following compatibility hack is removed: if a function was
|
|
defined with two or more arguments, and called with a single argument
|
|
that was a tuple with just as many arguments, the items of this tuple
|
|
would be used as the arguments. This is no longer supported.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to the semantics of classes and instances
|
|
-------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
* Class variables are now also accessible as instance variables for
|
|
reading (assignment creates an instance variable which overrides the
|
|
class variable of the same name though).
|
|
|
|
* If a class attribute is a user-defined function, a new kind of
|
|
object is returned: an "unbound method". This contains a pointer to
|
|
the class and can only be called with a first argument which is a
|
|
member of that class (or a derived class).
|
|
|
|
* If a class defines a method __init__(self, arg1, ...) then this
|
|
method is called when a class instance is created by the classname()
|
|
construct. Arguments passed to classname() are passed to the
|
|
__init__() method. The __init__() methods of base classes are not
|
|
automatically called; the derived __init__() method must call these if
|
|
necessary (this was done so the derived __init__() method can choose
|
|
the call order and arguments for the base __init__() methods).
|
|
|
|
* If a class defines a method __del__(self) then this method is called
|
|
when an instance of the class is about to be destroyed. This makes it
|
|
possible to implement clean-up of external resources attached to the
|
|
instance. As with __init__(), the __del__() methods of base classes
|
|
are not automatically called. If __del__ manages to store a reference
|
|
to the object somewhere, its destruction is postponed; when the object
|
|
is again about to be destroyed its __del__() method will be called
|
|
again.
|
|
|
|
* Classes may define a method __hash__(self) to allow their instances
|
|
to be used as dictionary keys. This must return a 32-bit integer.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Minor improvements
|
|
------------------
|
|
|
|
* Function and class objects now know their name (the name given in
|
|
the 'def' or 'class' statement that created them).
|
|
|
|
* Class instances now know their class name.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Additions to built-in operations
|
|
--------------------------------
|
|
|
|
* The % operator with a string left argument implements formatting
|
|
similar to sprintf() in C. The right argument is either a single
|
|
value or a tuple of values. All features of Standard C sprintf() are
|
|
supported except %p.
|
|
|
|
* Dictionaries now support almost any key type, instead of just
|
|
strings. (The key type must be an immutable type or must be a class
|
|
instance where the class defines a method __hash__(), in order to
|
|
avoid losing track of keys whose value may change.)
|
|
|
|
* Built-in methods are now compared properly: when comparing x.meth1
|
|
and y.meth2, if x is equal to y and the methods are defined by the
|
|
same function, x.meth1 compares equal to y.meth2.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Additions to built-in functions
|
|
-------------------------------
|
|
|
|
* str(x) returns a string version of its argument. If the argument is
|
|
a string it is returned unchanged, otherwise it returns `x`.
|
|
|
|
* repr(x) returns the same as `x`. (Some users found it easier to
|
|
have this as a function.)
|
|
|
|
* round(x) returns the floating point number x rounded to an whole
|
|
number, represented as a floating point number. round(x, n) returns x
|
|
rounded to n digits.
|
|
|
|
* hasattr(x, name) returns true when x has an attribute with the given
|
|
name.
|
|
|
|
* hash(x) returns a hash code (32-bit integer) of an arbitrary
|
|
immutable object's value.
|
|
|
|
* id(x) returns a unique identifier (32-bit integer) of an arbitrary
|
|
object.
|
|
|
|
* compile() compiles a string to a Python code object.
|
|
|
|
* exec() and eval() now support execution of code objects.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to the documented part of the library (standard modules)
|
|
----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
* os.path.normpath() (a.k.a. posixpath.normpath()) has been fixed so
|
|
the border case '/foo/..' returns '/' instead of ''.
|
|
|
|
* A new function string.find() is added with similar semantics to
|
|
string.index(); however when it does not find the given substring it
|
|
returns -1 instead of raising string.index_error.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to built-in modules
|
|
---------------------------
|
|
|
|
* New optional module 'array' implements operations on sequences of
|
|
integers or floating point numbers of a particular size. This is
|
|
useful to manipulate large numerical arrays or to read and write
|
|
binary files consisting of numerical data.
|
|
|
|
* Regular expression objects created by module regex now support a new
|
|
method named group(), which returns one or more \(...\) groups by number.
|
|
The number of groups is increased from 10 to 100.
|
|
|
|
* Function compile() in module regex now supports an optional mapping
|
|
argument; a variable casefold is added to the module which can be used
|
|
as a standard uppercase to lowercase mapping.
|
|
|
|
* Module time now supports many routines that are defined in the
|
|
Standard C time interface (<time.h>): gmtime(), localtime(),
|
|
asctime(), ctime(), mktime(), as well as these variables (taken from
|
|
System V): timezone, altzone, daylight and tzname. (The corresponding
|
|
functions in the undocumented module calendar have been removed; the
|
|
undocumented and unfinished module tzparse is now obsolete and will
|
|
disappear in a future release.)
|
|
|
|
* Module strop (the fast built-in version of standard module string)
|
|
now uses C's definition of whitespace instead of fixing it to space,
|
|
tab and newline; in practice this usually means that vertical tab,
|
|
form feed and return are now also considered whitespace. It exports
|
|
the string of characters that are considered whitespace as well as the
|
|
characters that are considered lowercase or uppercase.
|
|
|
|
* Module sys now defines the variable builtin_module_names, a list of
|
|
names of modules built into the current interpreter (including not
|
|
yet imported, but excluding two special modules that always have to be
|
|
defined -- sys and builtin).
|
|
|
|
* Objects created by module sunaudiodev now also support flush() and
|
|
close() methods.
|
|
|
|
* Socket objects created by module socket now support an optional
|
|
flags argument for their methods sendto() and recvfrom().
|
|
|
|
* Module marshal now supports dumping to and loading from strings,
|
|
through the functions dumps() and loads().
|
|
|
|
* Module stdwin now supports some new functionality. You may have to
|
|
ftp the latest version: ftp.cwi.nl:/pub/stdwin/stdwinforviews.tar.Z.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bugs fixed
|
|
----------
|
|
|
|
* Fixed comparison of negative long integers.
|
|
|
|
* The tokenizer no longer botches input lines longer than BUFSIZ.
|
|
|
|
* Fixed several severe memory leaks in module select.
|
|
|
|
* Fixed memory leaks in modules socket and sv.
|
|
|
|
* Fixed memory leak in divmod() for long integers.
|
|
|
|
* Problems with definition of floatsleep() on Suns fixed.
|
|
|
|
* Many portability bugs fixed (and undoubtedly new ones added :-).
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to the build procedure
|
|
------------------------------
|
|
|
|
* The Makefile supports some new targets: "make default" and "make
|
|
all". Both are by normally equivalent to "make python".
|
|
|
|
* The Makefile no longer uses $> since it's not supported by all
|
|
versions of Make.
|
|
|
|
* The header files now all contain #ifdef constructs designed to make
|
|
it safe to include the same header file twice, as well as support for
|
|
inclusion from C++ programs (automatic extern "C" { ... } added).
|
|
|
|
|
|
Freezing Python scripts
|
|
-----------------------
|
|
|
|
* There is now some support for "freezing" a Python script as a
|
|
stand-alone executable binary file. See the script
|
|
demo/scripts/freeze.py. It will require some site-specific tailoring
|
|
of the script to get this working, but is quite worthwhile if you write
|
|
Python code for other who may not have built and installed Python.
|
|
|
|
|
|
MS-DOS
|
|
------
|
|
|
|
* A new MS-DOS port has been done, using MSC 6.0 (I believe). Thanks,
|
|
Marcel van der Peijl! This requires fewer compatibility hacks in
|
|
posixmodule.c. The executable is not yet available but will be soon
|
|
(check the mailing list).
|
|
|
|
* The default PYTHONPATH has changed.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes for developers of extension modules
|
|
-------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
* Read src/ChangeLog for full details.
|
|
|
|
|
|
SGI specific changes
|
|
--------------------
|
|
|
|
* Read src/ChangeLog for full details.
|
|
|
|
|
|
==================================
|
|
==> Release 0.9.8 (9 Jan 1993) <==
|
|
==================================
|
|
|
|
I claim no completeness here, but I've tried my best to scan the log
|
|
files throughout my source tree for interesting bits of news. A more
|
|
complete account of the changes is to be found in the various
|
|
ChangeLog files. See also "News for release 0.9.7beta" below if you're
|
|
still using release 0.9.6, and the file HISTORY if you have an even
|
|
older release.
|
|
|
|
--Guido
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to the language proper
|
|
------------------------------
|
|
|
|
There's only one big change: the conformance checking for function
|
|
argument lists (of user-defined functions only) is stricter. Earlier,
|
|
you could get away with the following:
|
|
|
|
(a) define a function of one argument and call it with any
|
|
number of arguments; if the actual argument count wasn't
|
|
one, the function would receive a tuple containing the
|
|
arguments arguments (an empty tuple if there were none).
|
|
|
|
(b) define a function of two arguments, and call it with more
|
|
than two arguments; if there were more than two arguments,
|
|
the second argument would be passed as a tuple containing
|
|
the second and further actual arguments.
|
|
|
|
(Note that an argument (formal or actual) that is a tuple is counted as
|
|
one; these rules don't apply inside such tuples, only at the top level
|
|
of the argument list.)
|
|
|
|
Case (a) was needed to accommodate variable-length argument lists;
|
|
there is now an explicit "varargs" feature (precede the last argument
|
|
with a '*'). Case (b) was needed for compatibility with old class
|
|
definitions: up to release 0.9.4 a method with more than one argument
|
|
had to be declared as "def meth(self, (arg1, arg2, ...)): ...".
|
|
Version 0.9.6 provide better ways to handle both casees, bot provided
|
|
backward compatibility; version 0.9.8 retracts the compatibility hacks
|
|
since they also cause confusing behavior if a function is called with
|
|
the wrong number of arguments.
|
|
|
|
There's a script that helps converting classes that still rely on (b),
|
|
provided their methods' first argument is called "self":
|
|
demo/scripts/methfix.py.
|
|
|
|
If this change breaks lots of code you have developed locally, try
|
|
#defining COMPAT_HACKS in ceval.c.
|
|
|
|
(There's a third compatibility hack, which is the reverse of (a): if a
|
|
function is defined with two or more arguments, and called with a
|
|
single argument that is a tuple with just as many arguments, the items
|
|
of this tuple will be used as the arguments. Although this can (and
|
|
should!) be done using the built-in function apply() instead, it isn't
|
|
withdrawn yet.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
One minor change: comparing instance methods works like expected, so
|
|
that if x is an instance of a user-defined class and has a method m,
|
|
then (x.m==x.m) yields 1.
|
|
|
|
|
|
The following was already present in 0.9.7beta, but not explicitly
|
|
mentioned in the NEWS file: user-defined classes can now define types
|
|
that behave in almost allrespects like numbers. See
|
|
demo/classes/Rat.py for a simple example.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to the build process
|
|
----------------------------
|
|
|
|
The Configure.py script and the Makefile has been made somewhat more
|
|
bullet-proof, after reports of (minor) trouble on certain platforms.
|
|
|
|
There is now a script to patch Makefile and config.c to add a new
|
|
optional built-in module: Addmodule.sh. Read the script before using!
|
|
|
|
Useing Addmodule.sh, all optional modules can now be configured at
|
|
compile time using Configure.py, so there are no modules left that
|
|
require dynamic loading.
|
|
|
|
The Makefile has been fixed to make it easier to use with the VPATH
|
|
feature of some Make versions (e.g. SunOS).
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes affecting portability
|
|
-----------------------------
|
|
|
|
Several minor portability problems have been solved, e.g. "malloc.h"
|
|
has been renamed to "mymalloc.h", "strdup.c" is no longer used, and
|
|
the system now tolerates malloc(0) returning 0.
|
|
|
|
For dynamic loading on the SGI, Jack Jansen's dl 1.6 is now
|
|
distributed with Python. This solves several minor problems, in
|
|
particular scripts invoked using #! can now use dynamic loading.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to the interpreter interface
|
|
------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
On popular demand, there's finally a "profile" feature for interactive
|
|
use of the interpreter. If the environment variable $PYTHONSTARTUP is
|
|
set to the name of an existing file, Python statements in this file
|
|
are executed when the interpreter is started in interactive mode.
|
|
|
|
There is a new clean-up mechanism, complementing try...finally: if you
|
|
assign a function object to sys.exitfunc, it will be called when
|
|
Python exits or receives a SIGTERM or SIGHUP signal.
|
|
|
|
The interpreter is now generally assumed to live in
|
|
/usr/local/bin/python (as opposed to /usr/local/python). The script
|
|
demo/scripts/fixps.py will update old scripts in place (you can easily
|
|
modify it to do other similar changes).
|
|
|
|
Most I/O that uses sys.stdin/stdout/stderr will now use any object
|
|
assigned to those names as long as the object supports readline() or
|
|
write() methods.
|
|
|
|
The parser stack has been increased to 500 to accommodate more
|
|
complicated expressions (7 levels used to be the practical maximum,
|
|
it's now about 38).
|
|
|
|
The limit on the size of the *run-time* stack has completely been
|
|
removed -- this means that tuple or list displays can contain any
|
|
number of elements (formerly more than 50 would crash the
|
|
interpreter).
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to existing built-in functions and methods
|
|
--------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
The built-in functions int(), long(), float(), oct() and hex() now
|
|
also apply to class instalces that define corresponding methods
|
|
(__int__ etc.).
|
|
|
|
|
|
New built-in functions
|
|
----------------------
|
|
|
|
The new functions str() and repr() convert any object to a string.
|
|
The function repr(x) is in all respects equivalent to `x` -- some
|
|
people prefer a function for this. The function str(x) does the same
|
|
except if x is already a string -- then it returns x unchanged
|
|
(repr(x) adds quotes and escapes "funny" characters as octal escapes).
|
|
|
|
The new function cmp(x, y) returns -1 if x<y, 0 if x==y, 1 if x>y.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to general built-in modules
|
|
-----------------------------------
|
|
|
|
The time module's functions are more general: time() returns a
|
|
floating point number and sleep() accepts one. Their accuracies
|
|
depends on the precision of the system clock. Millisleep is no longer
|
|
needed (although it still exists for now), but millitimer is still
|
|
needed since on some systems wall clock time is only available with
|
|
seconds precision, while a source of more precise time exists that
|
|
isn't synchronized with the wall clock. (On UNIX systems that support
|
|
the BSD gettimeofday() function, time.time() is as time.millitimer().)
|
|
|
|
The string representation of a file object now includes an address:
|
|
'<file 'filename', mode 'r' at #######>' where ###### is a hex number
|
|
(the object's address) to make it unique.
|
|
|
|
New functions added to posix: nice(), setpgrp(), and if your system
|
|
supports them: setsid(), setpgid(), tcgetpgrp(), tcsetpgrp().
|
|
|
|
Improvements to the socket module: socket objects have new methods
|
|
getpeername() and getsockname(), and the {get,set}sockopt methods can
|
|
now get/set any kind of option using strings built with the new struct
|
|
module. And there's a new function fromfd() which creates a socket
|
|
object given a file descriptor (useful for servers started by inetd,
|
|
which have a socket connected to stdin and stdout).
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to SGI-specific built-in modules
|
|
----------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
The FORMS library interface (fl) now requires FORMS 2.1a. Some new
|
|
functions have been added and some bugs have been fixed.
|
|
|
|
Additions to al (audio library interface): added getname(),
|
|
getdefault() and getminmax().
|
|
|
|
The gl modules doesn't call "foreground()" when initialized (this
|
|
caused some problems) like it dit in 0.9.7beta (but not before).
|
|
There's a new gl function 'gversion() which returns a version string.
|
|
|
|
The interface to sv (Indigo video interface) has totally changed.
|
|
(Sorry, still no documentation, but see the examples in
|
|
demo/sgi/{sv,video}.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to standard library modules
|
|
-----------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Most functions in module string are now much faster: they're actually
|
|
implemented in C. The module containing the C versions is called
|
|
"strop" but you should still import "string" since strop doesn't
|
|
provide all the interfaces defined in string (and strop may be renamed
|
|
to string when it is complete in a future release).
|
|
|
|
string.index() now accepts an optional third argument giving an index
|
|
where to start searching in the first argument, so you can find second
|
|
and further occurrences (this is similar to the regular expression
|
|
functions in regex).
|
|
|
|
The definition of what string.splitfields(anything, '') should return
|
|
is changed for the last time: it returns a singleton list containing
|
|
its whole first argument unchanged. This is compatible with
|
|
regsub.split() which also ignores empty delimiter matches.
|
|
|
|
posixpath, macpath: added dirname() and normpath() (and basename() to
|
|
macpath).
|
|
|
|
The mainloop module (for use with stdwin) can now demultiplex input
|
|
from other sources, as long as they can be polled with select().
|
|
|
|
|
|
New built-in modules
|
|
--------------------
|
|
|
|
Module struct defines functions to pack/unpack values to/from strings
|
|
representing binary values in native byte order.
|
|
|
|
Module strop implements C versions of many functions from string (see
|
|
above).
|
|
|
|
Optional module fcntl defines interfaces to fcntl() and ioctl() --
|
|
UNIX only. (Not yet properly documented -- see however src/fcntl.doc.)
|
|
|
|
Optional module mpz defines an interface to an altaernative long
|
|
integer implementation, the GNU MPZ library.
|
|
|
|
Optional module md5 uses the GNU MPZ library to calculate MD5
|
|
signatures of strings.
|
|
|
|
There are also optional new modules specific to SGI machines: imageop
|
|
defines some simple operations to images represented as strings; sv
|
|
interfaces to the Indigo video board; cl interfaces to the (yet
|
|
unreleased) compression library.
|
|
|
|
|
|
New standard library modules
|
|
----------------------------
|
|
|
|
(Unfortunately the following modules are not all documented; read the
|
|
sources to find out more about them!)
|
|
|
|
autotest: run testall without showing any output unless it differs
|
|
from the expected output
|
|
|
|
bisect: use bisection to insert or find an item in a sorted list
|
|
|
|
colorsys: defines conversions between various color systems (e.g. RGB
|
|
<-> YUV)
|
|
|
|
nntplib: a client interface to NNTP servers
|
|
|
|
pipes: utility to construct pipeline from templates, e.g. for
|
|
conversion from one file format to another using several utilities.
|
|
|
|
regsub: contains three functions that are more or less compatible with
|
|
awk functions of the same name: sub() and gsub() do string
|
|
substitution, split() splits a string using a regular expression to
|
|
define how separators are define.
|
|
|
|
test_types: test operations on the built-in types of Python
|
|
|
|
toaiff: convert various audio file formats to AIFF format
|
|
|
|
tzparse: parse the TZ environment parameter (this may be less general
|
|
than it could be, let me know if you fix it).
|
|
|
|
(Note that the obsolete module "path" no longer exists.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
New SGI-specific library modules
|
|
--------------------------------
|
|
|
|
CL: constants for use with the built-in compression library interface (cl)
|
|
|
|
Queue: a multi-producer, multi-consumer queue class implemented for
|
|
use with the built-in thread module
|
|
|
|
SOCKET: constants for use with built-in module socket, e.g. to set/get
|
|
socket options. This is SGI-specific because the constants to be
|
|
passed are system-dependent. You can generate a version for your own
|
|
system by running the script demo/scripts/h2py.py with
|
|
/usr/include/sys/socket.h as input.
|
|
|
|
cddb: interface to the database used the the CD player
|
|
|
|
torgb: convert various image file types to rgb format (requires pbmplus)
|
|
|
|
|
|
New demos
|
|
---------
|
|
|
|
There's an experimental interface to define Sun RPC clients and
|
|
servers in demo/rpc.
|
|
|
|
There's a collection of interfaces to WWW, WAIS and Gopher (both
|
|
Python classes and program providing a user interface) in demo/www.
|
|
This includes a program texi2html.py which converts texinfo files to
|
|
HTML files (the format used hy WWW).
|
|
|
|
The ibrowse demo has moved from demo/stdwin/ibrowse to demo/ibrowse.
|
|
|
|
For SGI systems, there's a whole collection of programs and classes
|
|
that make use of the Indigo video board in demo/sgi/{sv,video}. This
|
|
represents a significant amount of work that we're giving away!
|
|
|
|
There are demos "rsa" and "md5test" that exercise the mpz and md5
|
|
modules, respectively. The rsa demo is a complete implementation of
|
|
the RSA public-key cryptosystem!
|
|
|
|
A bunch of games and examples submitted by Stoffel Erasmus have been
|
|
included in demo/stoffel.
|
|
|
|
There are miscellaneous new files in some existing demo
|
|
subdirectories: classes/bitvec.py, scripts/{fixps,methfix}.py,
|
|
sgi/al/cmpaf.py, sockets/{mcast,gopher}.py.
|
|
|
|
There are also many minor changes to existing files, but I'm too lazy
|
|
to run a diff and note the differences -- you can do this yourself if
|
|
you save the old distribution's demos. One highlight: the
|
|
stdwin/python.py demo is much improved!
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to the documentation
|
|
----------------------------
|
|
|
|
The LaTeX source for the library uses different macros to enable it to
|
|
be converted to texinfo, and from there to INFO or HTML format so it
|
|
can be browsed as a hypertext. The net result is that you can now
|
|
read the Python library documentation in Emacs info mode!
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to the source code that affect C extension writers
|
|
----------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
The function strdup() no longer exists (it was used only in one places
|
|
and is somewhat of a a portability problem sice some systems have the
|
|
same function in their C library.
|
|
|
|
The functions NEW() and RENEW() allocate one spare byte to guard
|
|
against a NULL return from malloc(0) being taken for an error, but
|
|
this should not be relied upon.
|
|
|
|
|
|
=========================
|
|
==> Release 0.9.7beta <==
|
|
=========================
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to the language proper
|
|
------------------------------
|
|
|
|
User-defined classes can now implement operations invoked through
|
|
special syntax, such as x[i] or `x` by defining methods named
|
|
__getitem__(self, i) or __repr__(self), etc.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to the build process
|
|
----------------------------
|
|
|
|
Instead of extensive manual editing of the Makefile to select
|
|
compile-time options, you can now run a Configure.py script.
|
|
The Makefile as distributed builds a minimal interpreter sufficient to
|
|
run Configure.py. See also misc/BUILD
|
|
|
|
The Makefile now includes more "utility" targets, e.g. install and
|
|
tags/TAGS
|
|
|
|
Using the provided strtod.c and strtol.c are now separate options, as
|
|
on the Sun the provided strtod.c dumps core :-(
|
|
|
|
The regex module is now an option chosen by the Makefile, since some
|
|
(old) C compilers choke on regexpr.c
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes affecting portability
|
|
-----------------------------
|
|
|
|
You need STDWIN version 0.9.7 (released 30 June 1992) for the stdwin
|
|
interface
|
|
|
|
Dynamic loading is now supported for Sun (and other non-COFF systems)
|
|
throug dld-3.2.3, as well as for SGI (a new version of Jack Jansen's
|
|
DL is out, 1.4)
|
|
|
|
The system-dependent code for the use of the select() system call is
|
|
moved to one file: myselect.h
|
|
|
|
Thanks to Jaap Vermeulen, the code should now port cleanly to the
|
|
SEQUENT
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to the interpreter interface
|
|
------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
The interpretation of $PYTHONPATH in the environment is different: it
|
|
is inserted in front of the default path instead of overriding it
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to existing built-in functions and methods
|
|
--------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
List objects now support an optional argument to their sort() method,
|
|
which is a comparison function similar to qsort(3) in C
|
|
|
|
File objects now have a method fileno(), used by the new select module
|
|
(see below)
|
|
|
|
|
|
New built-in function
|
|
---------------------
|
|
|
|
coerce(x, y): take two numbers and return a tuple containing them
|
|
both converted to a common type
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to built-in modules
|
|
---------------------------
|
|
|
|
sys: fixed core dumps in settrace() and setprofile()
|
|
|
|
socket: added socket methods setsockopt() and getsockopt(); and
|
|
fileno(), used by the new select module (see below)
|
|
|
|
stdwin: added fileno() == connectionnumber(), in support of new module
|
|
select (see below)
|
|
|
|
posix: added get{eg,eu,g,u}id(); waitpid() is now a separate function.
|
|
|
|
gl: added qgetfd()
|
|
|
|
fl: added several new functions, fixed several obscure bugs, adapted
|
|
to FORMS 2.1
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to standard modules
|
|
---------------------------
|
|
|
|
posixpath: changed implementation of ismount()
|
|
|
|
string: atoi() no longer mistakes leading zero for octal number
|
|
|
|
...
|
|
|
|
|
|
New built-in modules
|
|
--------------------
|
|
|
|
Modules marked "dynamic only" are not configured at compile time but
|
|
can be loaded dynamically. You need to turn on the DL or DLD option in
|
|
the Makefile for support dynamic loading of modules (this requires
|
|
external code).
|
|
|
|
select: interfaces to the BSD select() system call
|
|
|
|
dbm: interfaces to the (new) dbm library (dynamic only)
|
|
|
|
nis: interfaces to some NIS functions (aka yellow pages)
|
|
|
|
thread: limited form of multiple threads (sgi only)
|
|
|
|
audioop: operations useful for audio programs, e.g. u-LAW and ADPCM
|
|
coding (dynamic only)
|
|
|
|
cd: interface to Indigo SCSI CDROM player audio library (sgi only)
|
|
|
|
jpeg: read files in JPEG format (dynamic only, sgi only; needs
|
|
external code)
|
|
|
|
imgfile: read SGI image files (dynamic only, sgi only)
|
|
|
|
sunaudiodev: interface to sun's /dev/audio (dynamic only, sun only)
|
|
|
|
sv: interface to Indigo video library (sgi only)
|
|
|
|
pc: a minimal set of MS-DOS interfaces (MS-DOS only)
|
|
|
|
rotor: encryption, by Lance Ellinghouse (dynamic only)
|
|
|
|
|
|
New standard modules
|
|
--------------------
|
|
|
|
Not all these modules are documented. Read the source:
|
|
lib/<modulename>.py. Sometimes a file lib/<modulename>.doc contains
|
|
additional documentation.
|
|
|
|
imghdr: recognizes image file headers
|
|
|
|
sndhdr: recognizes sound file headers
|
|
|
|
profile: print run-time statistics of Python code
|
|
|
|
readcd, cdplayer: companion modules for built-in module cd (sgi only)
|
|
|
|
emacs: interface to Emacs using py-connect.el (see below).
|
|
|
|
SOCKET: symbolic constant definitions for socket options
|
|
|
|
SUNAUDIODEV: symbolic constant definitions for sunaudiodef (sun only)
|
|
|
|
SV: symbolic constat definitions for sv (sgi only)
|
|
|
|
CD: symbolic constat definitions for cd (sgi only)
|
|
|
|
|
|
New demos
|
|
---------
|
|
|
|
scripts/pp.py: execute Python as a filter with a Perl-like command
|
|
line interface
|
|
|
|
classes/: examples using the new class features
|
|
|
|
threads/: examples using the new thread module
|
|
|
|
sgi/cd/: examples using the new cd module
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to the documentation
|
|
----------------------------
|
|
|
|
The last-minute syntax changes of release 0.9.6 are now reflected
|
|
everywhere in the manuals
|
|
|
|
The reference manual has a new section (3.2) on implementing new kinds
|
|
of numbers, sequences or mappings with user classes
|
|
|
|
Classes are now treated extensively in the tutorial (chapter 9)
|
|
|
|
Slightly restructured the system-dependent chapters of the library
|
|
manual
|
|
|
|
The file misc/EXTENDING incorporates documentation for mkvalue() and
|
|
a new section on error handling
|
|
|
|
The files misc/CLASSES and misc/ERRORS are no longer necessary
|
|
|
|
The doc/Makefile now creates PostScript files automatically
|
|
|
|
|
|
Miscellaneous changes
|
|
---------------------
|
|
|
|
Incorporated Tim Peters' changes to python-mode.el, it's now version
|
|
1.06
|
|
|
|
A python/Emacs bridge (provided by Terrence M. Brannon) lets a Python
|
|
program running in an Emacs buffer execute Emacs lisp code. The
|
|
necessary Python code is in lib/emacs.py. The Emacs code is
|
|
misc/py-connect.el (it needs some external Emacs lisp code)
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes to the source code that affect C extension writers
|
|
----------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
New service function mkvalue() to construct a Python object from C
|
|
values according to a "format" string a la getargs()
|
|
|
|
Most functions from pythonmain.c moved to new pythonrun.c which is
|
|
in libpython.a. This should make embedded versions of Python easier
|
|
|
|
ceval.h is split in eval.h (which needs compile.h and only declares
|
|
eval_code) and ceval.h (which doesn't need compile.hand declares the
|
|
rest)
|
|
|
|
ceval.h defines macros BGN_SAVE / END_SAVE for use with threads (to
|
|
improve the parallellism of multi-threaded programs by letting other
|
|
Python code run when a blocking system call or something similar is
|
|
made)
|
|
|
|
In structmember.[ch], new member types BYTE, CHAR and unsigned
|
|
variants have been added
|
|
|
|
New file xxmodule.c is a template for new extension modules.
|
|
|
|
|
|
==================================
|
|
==> RELEASE 0.9.6 (6 Apr 1992) <==
|
|
==================================
|
|
|
|
Misc news in 0.9.6:
|
|
- Restructured the misc subdirectory
|
|
- Reference manual completed, library manual much extended (with indexes!)
|
|
- the GNU Readline library is now distributed standard with Python
|
|
- the script "../demo/scripts/classfix.py" fixes Python modules using old
|
|
class syntax
|
|
- Emacs python-mode.el (was python.el) vastly improved (thanks, Tim!)
|
|
- Because of the GNU copyleft business I am not using the GNU regular
|
|
expression implementation but a free re-implementation by Tatu Ylonen
|
|
that recently appeared in comp.sources.misc (Bravo, Tatu!)
|
|
|
|
New features in 0.9.6:
|
|
- stricter try stmt syntax: cannot mix except and finally clauses on 1 try
|
|
- New module 'os' supplants modules 'mac' and 'posix' for most cases;
|
|
module 'path' is replaced by 'os.path'
|
|
- os.path.split() return value differs from that of old path.split()
|
|
- sys.exc_type, sys.exc_value, sys.exc_traceback are set to the exception
|
|
currently being handled
|
|
- sys.last_type, sys.last_value, sys.last_traceback remember last unhandled
|
|
exception
|
|
- New function string.expandtabs() expands tabs in a string
|
|
- Added times() interface to posix (user & sys time of process & children)
|
|
- Added uname() interface to posix (returns OS type, hostname, etc.)
|
|
- New built-in function execfile() is like exec() but from a file
|
|
- Functions exec() and eval() are less picky about whitespace/newlines
|
|
- New built-in functions getattr() and setattr() access arbitrary attributes
|
|
- More generic argument handling in built-in functions (see "./EXTENDING")
|
|
- Dynamic loading of modules written in C or C++ (see "./DYNLOAD")
|
|
- Division and modulo for long and plain integers with negative operands
|
|
have changed; a/b is now floor(float(a)/float(b)) and a%b is defined
|
|
as a-(a/b)*b. So now the outcome of divmod(a,b) is the same as
|
|
(a/b, a%b) for integers. For floats, % is also changed, but of course
|
|
/ is unchanged, and divmod(x,y) does not yield (x/y, x%y)...
|
|
- A function with explicit variable-length argument list can be declared
|
|
like this: def f(*args): ...; or even like this: def f(a, b, *rest): ...
|
|
- Code tracing and profiling features have been added, and two source
|
|
code debuggers are provided in the library (pdb.py, tty-oriented,
|
|
and wdb, window-oriented); you can now step through Python programs!
|
|
See sys.settrace() and sys.setprofile(), and "../lib/pdb.doc"
|
|
- '==' is now the only equality operator; "../demo/scripts/eqfix.py" is
|
|
a script that fixes old Python modules
|
|
- Plain integer right shift now uses sign extension
|
|
- Long integer shift/mask operations now simulate 2's complement
|
|
to give more useful results for negative operands
|
|
- Changed/added range checks for long/plain integer shifts
|
|
- Options found after "-c command" are now passed to the command in sys.argv
|
|
(note subtle incompatiblity with "python -c command -- -options"!)
|
|
- Module stdwin is better protected against touching objects after they've
|
|
been closed; menus can now also be closed explicitly
|
|
- Stdwin now uses its own exception (stdwin.error)
|
|
|
|
New features in 0.9.5 (released as Macintosh application only, 2 Jan 1992):
|
|
- dictionary objects can now be compared properly; e.g., {}=={} is true
|
|
- new exception SystemExit causes termination if not caught;
|
|
it is raised by sys.exit() so that 'finally' clauses can clean up,
|
|
and it may even be caught. It does work interactively!
|
|
- new module "regex" implements GNU Emacs style regular expressions;
|
|
module "regexp" is rewritten in Python for backward compatibility
|
|
- formal parameter lists may contain trailing commas
|
|
|
|
Bugs fixed in 0.9.6:
|
|
- assigning to or deleting a list item with a negative index dumped core
|
|
- divmod(-10L,5L) returned (-3L, 5L) instead of (-2L, 0L)
|
|
|
|
Bugs fixed in 0.9.5:
|
|
- masking operations involving negative long integers gave wrong results
|
|
|
|
|
|
===================================
|
|
==> RELEASE 0.9.4 (24 Dec 1991) <==
|
|
===================================
|
|
|
|
- new function argument handling (see below)
|
|
- built-in apply(func, args) means func(args[0], args[1], ...)
|
|
- new, more refined exceptions
|
|
- new exception string values (NameError = 'NameError' etc.)
|
|
- better checking for math exceptions
|
|
- for sequences (string/tuple/list), x[-i] is now equivalent to x[len(x)-i]
|
|
- fixed list assignment bug: "a[1:1] = a" now works correctly
|
|
- new class syntax, without extraneous parentheses
|
|
- new 'global' statement to assign global variables from within a function
|
|
|
|
|
|
New class syntax
|
|
----------------
|
|
|
|
You can now declare a base class as follows:
|
|
|
|
class B: # Was: class B():
|
|
def some_method(self): ...
|
|
...
|
|
|
|
and a derived class thusly:
|
|
|
|
class D(B): # Was: class D() = B():
|
|
def another_method(self, arg): ...
|
|
|
|
Multiple inheritance looks like this:
|
|
|
|
class M(B, D): # Was: class M() = B(), D():
|
|
def this_or_that_method(self, arg): ...
|
|
|
|
The old syntax is still accepted by Python 0.9.4, but will disappear
|
|
in Python 1.0 (to be posted to comp.sources).
|
|
|
|
|
|
New 'global' statement
|
|
----------------------
|
|
|
|
Every now and then you have a global variable in a module that you
|
|
want to change from within a function in that module -- say, a count
|
|
of calls to a function, or an option flag, etc. Until now this was
|
|
not directly possible. While several kludges are known that
|
|
circumvent the problem, and often the need for a global variable can
|
|
be avoided by rewriting the module as a class, this does not always
|
|
lead to clearer code.
|
|
|
|
The 'global' statement solves this dilemma. Its occurrence in a
|
|
function body means that, for the duration of that function, the
|
|
names listed there refer to global variables. For instance:
|
|
|
|
total = 0.0
|
|
count = 0
|
|
|
|
def add_to_total(amount):
|
|
global total, count
|
|
total = total + amount
|
|
count = count + 1
|
|
|
|
'global' must be repeated in each function where it is needed. The
|
|
names listed in a 'global' statement must not be used in the function
|
|
before the statement is reached.
|
|
|
|
Remember that you don't need to use 'global' if you only want to *use*
|
|
a global variable in a function; nor do you need ot for assignments to
|
|
parts of global variables (e.g., list or dictionary items or
|
|
attributes of class instances). This has not changed; in fact
|
|
assignment to part of a global variable was the standard workaround.
|
|
|
|
|
|
New exceptions
|
|
--------------
|
|
|
|
Several new exceptions have been defined, to distinguish more clearly
|
|
between different types of errors.
|
|
|
|
name meaning was
|
|
|
|
AttributeError reference to non-existing attribute NameError
|
|
IOError unexpected I/O error RuntimeError
|
|
ImportError import of non-existing module or name NameError
|
|
IndexError invalid string, tuple or list index RuntimeError
|
|
KeyError key not in dictionary RuntimeError
|
|
OverflowError numeric overflow RuntimeError
|
|
SyntaxError invalid syntax RuntimeError
|
|
ValueError invalid argument value RuntimeError
|
|
ZeroDivisionError division by zero RuntimeError
|
|
|
|
The string value of each exception is now its name -- this makes it
|
|
easier to experimentally find out which operations raise which
|
|
exceptions; e.g.:
|
|
|
|
>>> KeyboardInterrupt
|
|
'KeyboardInterrupt'
|
|
>>>
|
|
|
|
|
|
New argument passing semantics
|
|
------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Off-line discussions with Steve Majewski and Daniel LaLiberte have
|
|
convinced me that Python's parameter mechanism could be changed in a
|
|
way that made both of them happy (I hope), kept me happy, fixed a
|
|
number of outstanding problems, and, given some backward compatibility
|
|
provisions, would only break a very small amount of existing code --
|
|
probably all mine anyway. In fact I suspect that most Python users
|
|
will hardly notice the difference. And yet it has cost me at least
|
|
one sleepless night to decide to make the change...
|
|
|
|
Philosophically, the change is quite radical (to me, anyway): a
|
|
function is no longer called with either zero or one argument, which
|
|
is a tuple if there appear to be more arguments. Every function now
|
|
has an argument list containing 0, 1 or more arguments. This list is
|
|
always implemented as a tuple, and it is a (run-time) error if a
|
|
function is called with a different number of arguments than expected.
|
|
|
|
What's the difference? you may ask. The answer is, very little unless
|
|
you want to write variadic functions -- functions that may be called
|
|
with a variable number of arguments. Formerly, you could write a
|
|
function that accepted one or more arguments with little trouble, but
|
|
writing a function that could be called with either 0 or 1 argument
|
|
(or more) was next to impossible. This is now a piece of cake: you
|
|
can simply declare an argument that receives the entire argument
|
|
tuple, and check its length -- it will be of size 0 if there are no
|
|
arguments.
|
|
|
|
Another anomaly of the old system was the way multi-argument methods
|
|
(in classes) had to be declared, e.g.:
|
|
|
|
class Point():
|
|
def init(self, (x, y, color)): ...
|
|
def setcolor(self, color): ...
|
|
dev moveto(self, (x, y)): ...
|
|
def draw(self): ...
|
|
|
|
Using the new scheme there is no need to enclose the method arguments
|
|
in an extra set of parentheses, so the above class could become:
|
|
|
|
class Point:
|
|
def init(self, x, y, color): ...
|
|
def setcolor(self, color): ...
|
|
dev moveto(self, x, y): ...
|
|
def draw(self): ...
|
|
|
|
That is, the equivalence rule between methods and functions has
|
|
changed so that now p.moveto(x,y) is equivalent to Point.moveto(p,x,y)
|
|
while formerly it was equivalent to Point.moveto(p,(x,y)).
|
|
|
|
A special backward compatibility rule makes that the old version also
|
|
still works: whenever a function with exactly two arguments (at the top
|
|
level) is called with more than two arguments, the second and further
|
|
arguments are packed into a tuple and passed as the second argument.
|
|
This rule is invoked independently of whether the function is actually a
|
|
method, so there is a slight chance that some erroneous calls of
|
|
functions expecting two arguments with more than that number of
|
|
arguments go undetected at first -- when the function tries to use the
|
|
second argument it may find it is a tuple instead of what was expected.
|
|
Note that this rule will be removed from future versions of the
|
|
language; it is a backward compatibility provision *only*.
|
|
|
|
Two other rules and a new built-in function handle conversion between
|
|
tuples and argument lists:
|
|
|
|
Rule (a): when a function with more than one argument is called with a
|
|
single argument that is a tuple of the right size, the tuple's items
|
|
are used as arguments.
|
|
|
|
Rule (b): when a function with exactly one argument receives no
|
|
arguments or more than one, that one argument will receive a tuple
|
|
containing the arguments (the tuple will be empty if there were no
|
|
arguments).
|
|
|
|
|
|
A new built-in function, apply(), was added to support functions that
|
|
need to call other functions with a constructed argument list. The call
|
|
|
|
apply(function, tuple)
|
|
|
|
is equivalent to
|
|
|
|
function(tuple[0], tuple[1], ..., tuple[len(tuple)-1])
|
|
|
|
|
|
While no new argument syntax was added in this phase, it would now be
|
|
quite sensible to add explicit syntax to Python for default argument
|
|
values (as in C++ or Modula-3), or a "rest" argument to receive the
|
|
remaining arguments of a variable-length argument list.
|
|
|
|
|
|
========================================================
|
|
==> Release 0.9.3 (never made available outside CWI) <==
|
|
========================================================
|
|
|
|
- string sys.version shows current version (also printed on interactive entry)
|
|
- more detailed exceptions, e.g., IOError, ZeroDivisionError, etc.
|
|
- 'global' statement to declare module-global variables assigned in functions.
|
|
- new class declaration syntax: class C(Base1, Base2, ...): suite
|
|
(the old syntax is still accepted -- be sure to convert your classes now!)
|
|
- C shifting and masking operators: << >> ~ & ^ | (for ints and longs).
|
|
- C comparison operators: == != (the old = and <> remain valid).
|
|
- floating point numbers may now start with a period (e.g., .14).
|
|
- definition of integer division tightened (always truncates towards zero).
|
|
- new builtins hex(x), oct(x) return hex/octal string from (long) integer.
|
|
- new list method l.count(x) returns the number of occurrences of x in l.
|
|
- new SGI module: al (Indigo and 4D/35 audio library).
|
|
- the FORMS interface (modules fl and FL) now uses FORMS 2.0
|
|
- module gl: added lrect{read,write}, rectzoom and pixmode;
|
|
added (non-GL) functions (un)packrect.
|
|
- new socket method: s.allowbroadcast(flag).
|
|
- many objects support __dict__, __methods__ or __members__.
|
|
- dir() lists anything that has __dict__.
|
|
- class attributes are no longer read-only.
|
|
- classes support __bases__, instances support __class__ (and __dict__).
|
|
- divmod() now also works for floats.
|
|
- fixed obscure bug in eval('1 ').
|
|
|
|
|
|
===================================
|
|
==> Release 0.9.2 (Autumn 1991) <==
|
|
===================================
|
|
|
|
Highlights
|
|
----------
|
|
|
|
- tutorial now (almost) complete; library reference reorganized
|
|
- new syntax: continue statement; semicolons; dictionary constructors;
|
|
restrictions on blank lines in source files removed
|
|
- dramatically improved module load time through precompiled modules
|
|
- arbitrary precision integers: compute 2 to the power 1000 and more...
|
|
- arithmetic operators now accept mixed type operands, e.g., 3.14/4
|
|
- more operations on list: remove, index, reverse; repetition
|
|
- improved/new file operations: readlines, seek, tell, flush, ...
|
|
- process management added to the posix module: fork/exec/wait/kill etc.
|
|
- BSD socket operations (with example servers and clients!)
|
|
- many new STDWIN features (color, fonts, polygons, ...)
|
|
- new SGI modules: font manager and FORMS library interface
|
|
|
|
|
|
Extended list of changes in 0.9.2
|
|
---------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Here is a summary of the most important user-visible changes in 0.9.2,
|
|
in somewhat arbitrary order. Changes in later versions are listed in
|
|
the "highlights" section above.
|
|
|
|
|
|
1. Changes to the interpreter proper
|
|
|
|
- Simple statements can now be separated by semicolons.
|
|
If you write "if t: s1; s2", both s1 and s2 are executed
|
|
conditionally.
|
|
- The 'continue' statement was added, with semantics as in C.
|
|
- Dictionary displays are now allowed on input: {key: value, ...}.
|
|
- Blank lines and lines bearing only a comment no longer need to
|
|
be indented properly. (A completely empty line still ends a multi-
|
|
line statement interactively.)
|
|
- Mixed arithmetic is supported, 1 compares equal to 1.0, etc.
|
|
- Option "-c command" to execute statements from the command line
|
|
- Compiled versions of modules are cached in ".pyc" files, giving a
|
|
dramatic improvement of start-up time
|
|
- Other, smaller speed improvements, e.g., extracting characters from
|
|
strings, looking up single-character keys, and looking up global
|
|
variables
|
|
- Interrupting a print operation raises KeyboardInterrupt instead of
|
|
only cancelling the print operation
|
|
- Fixed various portability problems (it now passes gcc with only
|
|
warnings -- more Standard C compatibility will be provided in later
|
|
versions)
|
|
- Source is prepared for porting to MS-DOS
|
|
- Numeric constants are now checked for overflow (this requires
|
|
standard-conforming strtol() and strtod() functions; a correct
|
|
strtol() implementation is provided, but the strtod() provided
|
|
relies on atof() for everything, including error checking
|
|
|
|
|
|
2. Changes to the built-in types, functions and modules
|
|
|
|
- New module socket: interface to BSD socket primitives
|
|
- New modules pwd and grp: access the UNIX password and group databases
|
|
- (SGI only:) New module "fm" interfaces to the SGI IRIX Font Manager
|
|
- (SGI only:) New module "fl" interfaces to Mark Overmars' FORMS library
|
|
- New numeric type: long integer, for unlimited precision
|
|
- integer constants suffixed with 'L' or 'l' are long integers
|
|
- new built-in function long(x) converts int or float to long
|
|
- int() and float() now also convert from long integers
|
|
- New built-in function:
|
|
- pow(x, y) returns x to the power y
|
|
- New operation and methods for lists:
|
|
- l*n returns a new list consisting of n concatenated copies of l
|
|
- l.remove(x) removes the first occurrence of the value x from l
|
|
- l.index(x) returns the index of the first occurrence of x in l
|
|
- l.reverse() reverses l in place
|
|
- New operation for tuples:
|
|
- t*n returns a tuple consisting of n concatenated copies of t
|
|
- Improved file handling:
|
|
- f.readline() no longer restricts the line length, is faster,
|
|
and isn't confused by null bytes; same for raw_input()
|
|
- f.read() without arguments reads the entire (rest of the) file
|
|
- mixing of print and sys.stdout.write() has different effect
|
|
- New methods for files:
|
|
- f.readlines() returns a list containing the lines of the file,
|
|
as read with f.readline()
|
|
- f.flush(), f.tell(), f.seek() call their stdio counterparts
|
|
- f.isatty() tests for "tty-ness"
|
|
- New posix functions:
|
|
- _exit(), exec(), fork(), getpid(), getppid(), kill(), wait()
|
|
- popen() returns a file object connected to a pipe
|
|
- utime() replaces utimes() (the latter is not a POSIX name)
|
|
- New stdwin features, including:
|
|
- font handling
|
|
- color drawing
|
|
- scroll bars made optional
|
|
- polygons
|
|
- filled and xor shapes
|
|
- text editing objects now have a 'settext' method
|
|
|
|
|
|
3. Changes to the standard library
|
|
|
|
- Name change: the functions path.cat and macpath.cat are now called
|
|
path.join and macpath.join
|
|
- Added new modules: formatter, mutex, persist, sched, mainloop
|
|
- Added some modules and functionality to the "widget set" (which is
|
|
still under development, so please bear with me):
|
|
DirList, FormSplit, TextEdit, WindowSched
|
|
- Fixed module testall to work non-interactively
|
|
- Module string:
|
|
- added functions join() and joinfields()
|
|
- fixed center() to work correct and make it "transitive"
|
|
- Obsolete modules were removed: util, minmax
|
|
- Some modules were moved to the demo directory
|
|
|
|
|
|
4. Changes to the demonstration programs
|
|
|
|
- Added new useful scipts: byteyears, eptags, fact, from, lfact,
|
|
objgraph, pdeps, pi, primes, ptags, which
|
|
- Added a bunch of socket demos
|
|
- Doubled the speed of ptags
|
|
- Added new stdwin demos: microedit, miniedit
|
|
- Added a windowing interface to the Python interpreter: python (most
|
|
useful on the Mac)
|
|
- Added a browser for Emacs info files: demo/stdwin/ibrowse
|
|
(yes, I plan to put all STDWIN and Python documentation in texinfo
|
|
form in the future)
|
|
|
|
|
|
5. Other changes to the distribution
|
|
|
|
- An Emacs Lisp file "python.el" is provided to facilitate editing
|
|
Python programs in GNU Emacs (slightly improved since posted to
|
|
gnu.emacs.sources)
|
|
- Some info on writing an extension in C is provided
|
|
- Some info on building Python on non-UNIX platforms is provided
|
|
|
|
|
|
=====================================
|
|
==> Release 0.9.1 (February 1991) <==
|
|
=====================================
|
|
|
|
- Micro changes only
|
|
- Added file "patchlevel.h"
|
|
|
|
|
|
=====================================
|
|
==> Release 0.9.0 (February 1991) <==
|
|
=====================================
|
|
|
|
Original posting to alt.sources.
|