forked from python/cpython
-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
/
HISTORY
3283 lines (2292 loc) · 121 KB
/
HISTORY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722
723
724
725
726
727
728
729
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751
752
753
754
755
756
757
758
759
760
761
762
763
764
765
766
767
768
769
770
771
772
773
774
775
776
777
778
779
780
781
782
783
784
785
786
787
788
789
790
791
792
793
794
795
796
797
798
799
800
801
802
803
804
805
806
807
808
809
810
811
812
813
814
815
816
817
818
819
820
821
822
823
824
825
826
827
828
829
830
831
832
833
834
835
836
837
838
839
840
841
842
843
844
845
846
847
848
849
850
851
852
853
854
855
856
857
858
859
860
861
862
863
864
865
866
867
868
869
870
871
872
873
874
875
876
877
878
879
880
881
882
883
884
885
886
887
888
889
890
891
892
893
894
895
896
897
898
899
900
901
902
903
904
905
906
907
908
909
910
911
912
913
914
915
916
917
918
919
920
921
922
923
924
925
926
927
928
929
930
931
932
933
934
935
936
937
938
939
940
941
942
943
944
945
946
947
948
949
950
951
952
953
954
955
956
957
958
959
960
961
962
963
964
965
966
967
968
969
970
971
972
973
974
975
976
977
978
979
980
981
982
983
984
985
986
987
988
989
990
991
992
993
994
995
996
997
998
999
1000
Python history
--------------
This file contains the release messages for previous Python releases
(slightly edited to adapt them to the format of this file). As you
read on you go back to the dark ages of Python's history.
=====================================
==> 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.)