ANN: pandas v0.18.0 Final released

[Jeff Reback]

Hi,

This is a major release from 0.17.1 and includes a small number of API
changes,
several new features, enhancements, and performance improvements along with
a
large number of bug fixes. We recommend that all users upgrade to this
version.

This was a release of 3.5 months with 381 commits by 100 authors
encompassing 465 issues and 290 pull-requests.

*What is it:*

*pandas* is a Python package providing fast, flexible, and expressive data
structures designed to make working with “relational” or “labeled” data both
easy and intuitive. It aims to be the fundamental high-level building block
for
doing practical, real world data analysis in Python. Additionally, it has
the
broader goal of becoming the most powerful and flexible open source data
analysis / manipulation tool available in any language.

*Highlights*:

   - pandas >= 0.18.0 will no longer support compatibility with Python
   version 2.6 GH7718 <https://github.com/pydata/pandas/issues/7718> or
   version 3.3 GH11273 <https://github.com/pydata/pandas/issues/11273>
   - Moving and expanding window functions are now methods on Series and
   DataFrame similar to .groupby like objects, see here
   <http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.18.0/whatsnew.html#whatsnew-0180-enhancements-moments>
   .
   - Adding support for a RangeIndex as a specialized form of the
Int64Index for
   memory savings, see here
   <http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.18.0/whatsnew.html#whatsnew-0180-enhancements-rangeindex>
   .
   - API breaking .resample changes to make it more .groupby like, see here
   <http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.18.0/whatsnew.html#whatsnew-0180-breaking-resample>
   - Removal of support for positional indexing with floats, which was
   deprecated since 0.14.0. This will now raise a TypeError, see here
   <http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.18.0/whatsnew.html#whatsnew-0180-float-indexers>
   - The .to_xarray() function has been added for compatibility with the xarray
   package <http://xarray.pydata.org/en/stable/> see here
   <http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.18.0/whatsnew.html#whatsnew-0180-enhancements-xarray>
   .
   - The read_sas() function has been enhanced to read sas7bdat files, see
   here
   <http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.18.0/whatsnew.html#whatsnew-0180-enhancements-sas>
   - Addition of the .str.extractall() method
   <http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.18.0/whatsnew.html#whatsnew-0180-enhancements-extractall>,
   and API changes to the the .str.extract() method
   <http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.18.0/whatsnew.html#whatsnew-0180-enhancements-extract>,
   and the .str.cat() method
   <http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.18.0/whatsnew.html#whatsnew-0180-enhancements-strcat>
   - pd.test() top-level nose test runner is available GH4327
   <https://github.com/pydata/pandas/issues/4327>

See the Whatsnew
<http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.18.0/whatsnew.html> for
much more information and the full Documentation
<http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.18.0/> link.

*How to get it:*

Source tarballs, windows wheels, and macosx wheels are available on PyPI
<https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pandas>

Installation via conda is:

   - conda install pandas

windows wheels are courtesy of Christoph Gohlke and are built on Numpy 1.10
macosx wheels are courtesy of Matthew Brett.

*Issues:*

Please report any issues on our issue tracker
<https://github.com/pydata/pandas/issues>:

Jeff

*Thanks to all of the contributors*


   - ARF
   - Alex Alekseyev
   - Andrew McPherson
   - Andrew Rosenfeld
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   - Anton I. Sipos
   - Ben
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   - Jeff Reback
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