[Python-checkins] CVS: python/dist/src/Misc NEWS,1.51.4.3,1.51.4.4
Guido van Rossum
python-dev@python.org
Sun, 3 Sep 2000 20:49:54 -0700
Update of /cvsroot/python/python/dist/src/Misc
In directory slayer.i.sourceforge.net:/tmp/cvs-serv31998
Modified Files:
Tag: cnri-16-start
NEWS
Log Message:
Reorganized a bit and finished based on what was on the website.
Index: NEWS
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/python/python/dist/src/Misc/NEWS,v
retrieving revision 1.51.4.3
retrieving revision 1.51.4.4
diff -C2 -r1.51.4.3 -r1.51.4.4
*** NEWS 2000/09/04 03:22:45 1.51.4.3
--- NEWS 2000/09/04 03:49:51 1.51.4.4
***************
*** 1,28 ****
! What's new in this release?
! ===========================
Below is a list of all relevant changes since release 1.5.2. Older
! changes are in the file HISTORY. The most recent changes are listed
! first.
- A note on attributions: while I have sprinkled some names throughout
- here, I'm grateful to many more people who remain unnamed. You may
- find your name in the ACKS file. If you believe you deserve more
- credit, let me know and I'll add you to the list!
-
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)
======================================================================
- Changes from 1.5.2 to 1.6
- -------------------------
! For this overview of changes, I have borrowed from the document
! "What's New in Python 2.0" by Andrew Kuchling and Moshe Zadka:
http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/python/writing/new-python/.
! There are lots of new modules and lots of bugs have been fixed. To
! find out about new modules, check out the library manual, which has
! been enhanced significantly.
Probably the most pervasive change is the addition of Unicode support.
--- 1,58 ----
! What's new in release 1.6?
! ==========================
Below is a list of all relevant changes since release 1.5.2. Older
! changes are in the file HISTORY.
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)
======================================================================
+
+ Source Incompatibilities
+ ------------------------
+
+ Several small incompatible library changes may trip you up:
+
+ - The append() method for lists can no longer be invoked with more
+ than one argument. This used to append a single tuple made out of
+ all arguments, but was undocumented. To append a tuple, use
+ e.g. l.append((a, b, c)).
+
+ - The connect(), connect_ex() and bind() methods for sockets require
+ exactly one argument. Previously, you could call s.connect(host,
+ port), but this was undocumented. You must now write
+ s.connect((host, port)).
+
+ - The str() and repr() functions are now different more often. For
+ long integers, str() no longer appends a 'L'. Thus, str(1L) == '1',
+ which used to be '1L'; repr(1L) is unchanged and still returns '1L'.
+ For floats, repr() now gives 17 digits of precision, to ensure no
+ precision is lost (on all current hardware).
+
+ - The -X option is gone. Built-in exceptions are now always
+ classes. Many more library modules also have been converted to
+ class-based exceptions.
! Binary Incompatibilities
! ------------------------
!
! - Third party extensions built for Python 1.5.x cannot be used with
! Python 1.6; these extensions will have to be rebuilt for Python 1.6.
!
! - On Windows, attempting to import a third party extension built for
! Python 1.5.x results in an immediate crash; there's not much we can do
! about this. Check your PYTHONPATH environment variable!
!
!
! Overview of Changes since 1.5.2
! -------------------------------
!
! For this overview, I have borrowed from the document "What's New in
! Python 2.0" by Andrew Kuchling and Moshe Zadka:
http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/python/writing/new-python/.
! There are lots of new modules and lots of bugs have been fixed. A
! list of all new modules is included below.
Probably the most pervasive change is the addition of Unicode support.
***************
*** 41,45 ****
delimiter) is delimiter.join(sequence). Use " ".join(sequence) for
the effect of string.join(sequence); to make this more readable, try
! space=" " first.
- The new regular expression engine, SRE by Fredrik Lundh, is fully
--- 71,76 ----
delimiter) is delimiter.join(sequence). Use " ".join(sequence) for
the effect of string.join(sequence); to make this more readable, try
! space=" " first. Note that the maxsplit argument defaults in
! split() and replace() have changed from 0 to -1.
- The new regular expression engine, SRE by Fredrik Lundh, is fully
***************
*** 51,102 ****
engine -- this is at least the fourth!).
- Several small incompatible library changes may trip you up:
! - The append() method for lists can no longer be invoked with more
! than one argument. This used to append a single tuple made out of
! all arguments, but was undocumented. To append a tuple, use
! e.g. l.append((a, b, c)).
! - The connect(), connect_ex() and bind() methods for sockets require
! exactly one argument. Previously, you could call s.connect(host,
! port), but this was undocumented. You must now write
! s.connect((host, port)).
! - The str() and repr() functions are now different more often. For
! long integers, str() no longer appends a 'L'. Thus, str(1L) == '1',
! which used to be '1L'; repr(1L) is unchanged and still returns '1L'.
! For floats, repr() now gives 17 digits of precision, to ensure no
! precision is lost (on all current hardware).
! - The -X option is gone. Built-in exceptions are now always
! classes. Many more library modules also have been converted to
! class-based exceptions.
! Other changes that won't break code but are nice to know about:
! - Greg Ward's "distutils" package is included: this will make
installing, building and distributing third party packages much
simpler.
! - There's now special syntax that you can use instead of the apply()
function. f(*args, **kwds) is equivalent to apply(f, args, kwds).
You can also use variations f(a1, a2, *args, **kwds) and you can leave
one or the other out: f(*args), f(**kwds).
! - The built-ins int() and long() take an optional second argument to
indicate the conversion base -- of course only if the first argument
is a string. This makes string.atoi() and string.atol() obsolete.
(string.atof() was already obsolete).
! - When a local variable is known to the compiler but undefined when
used, a new exception UnboundLocalError is raised. This is a class
derived from NameError so code catching NameError should still work.
The purpose is to provide better diagnostics in the following example:
-
x = 1
def f():
print x
x = x+1
-
This used to raise a NameError on the print statement, which confused
even experienced Python programmers (especially if there are several
--- 82,122 ----
engine -- this is at least the fourth!).
! Other Changes
! -------------
! Other changes that won't break code but are nice to know about:
! Deleting objects is now safe even for deeply nested data structures.
! Long/int unifications: long integers can be used in seek() calls, as
! slice indexes.
! String formatting (s % args) has a new formatting option, '%r', which
! acts like '%s' but inserts repr(arg) instead of str(arg). (Not yet in
! alpha 1.)
! Greg Ward's "distutils" package is included: this will make
installing, building and distributing third party packages much
simpler.
! There's now special syntax that you can use instead of the apply()
function. f(*args, **kwds) is equivalent to apply(f, args, kwds).
You can also use variations f(a1, a2, *args, **kwds) and you can leave
one or the other out: f(*args), f(**kwds).
! The built-ins int() and long() take an optional second argument to
indicate the conversion base -- of course only if the first argument
is a string. This makes string.atoi() and string.atol() obsolete.
(string.atof() was already obsolete).
! When a local variable is known to the compiler but undefined when
used, a new exception UnboundLocalError is raised. This is a class
derived from NameError so code catching NameError should still work.
The purpose is to provide better diagnostics in the following example:
x = 1
def f():
print x
x = x+1
This used to raise a NameError on the print statement, which confused
even experienced Python programmers (especially if there are several
***************
*** 104,115 ****
x :-).
! - You can now override the 'in' operator by defining a __contains__
method. Note that it has its arguments backwards: x in a causes
a.__contains__(x) to be called. That's why the name isn't __in__.
- Changes from 1.6b1 to 1.6
- -------------------------
- Slight changes to the CNRI license. A copyright notice has been
added; the requirement to indicate the nature of modifications now
--- 124,254 ----
x :-).
! You can now override the 'in' operator by defining a __contains__
method. Note that it has its arguments backwards: x in a causes
a.__contains__(x) to be called. That's why the name isn't __in__.
+ The exception AttributeError will have a more friendly error message,
+ e.g.: <code>'Spam' instance has no attribute 'eggs'</code>. This may
+ <b>break code</b> that expects the message to be exactly the attribute
+ name.
+
+
+ New Modules in 1.6
+ ------------------
+
+ UserString - base class for deriving from the string type.
+
+ distutils - tools for distributing Python modules.
+
+ robotparser - parse a robots.txt file, for writing web spiders.
+ (Moved from Tools/webchecker/.)
+
+ linuxaudiodev - audio for Linux.
+
+ mmap - treat a file as a memory buffer. (Windows and Unix.)
+
+ sre - regular expressions (fast, supports unicode). Currently, this
+ code is very rough. Eventually, the re module will be reimplemented
+ using sre (without changes to the re API).
+
+ filecmp - supersedes the old cmp.py and dircmp.py modules.
+
+ tabnanny - check Python sources for tab-width dependance. (Moved from
+ Tools/scripts/.)
+
+ urllib2 - new and improved but incompatible version of urllib (still
+ experimental).
+
+ zipfile - read and write zip archives.
+
+ codecs - support for Unicode encoders/decoders.
+
+ unicodedata - provides access to the Unicode 3.0 database.
+
+ _winreg - Windows registry access.
+
+ encodings - package which provides a large set of standard codecs --
+ currently only for the new Unicode support. It has a drop-in extension
+ mechanism which allows you to add new codecs by simply copying them
+ into the encodings package directory. Asian codec support will
+ probably be made available as separate distribution package built upon
+ this technique and the new distutils package.
+
+
+ Changed Modules
+ ---------------
+
+ readline, ConfigParser, cgi, calendar, posix, readline, xmllib, aifc,
+ chunk, wave, random, shelve, nntplib - minor enhancements.
+
+ socket, httplib, urllib - optional OpenSSL support (Unix only).
+
+ _tkinter - support for 8.0 up to 8.3. Support for versions older than
+ 8.0 has been dropped.
+
+ string - most of this module is deprecated now that strings have
+ methods. This no longer uses the built-in strop module, but takes
+ advantage of the new string methods to provide transparent support for
+ both Unicode and ordinary strings.
+ Changes on Windows
+ ------------------
+
+ The installer no longer runs a separate Tcl/Tk installer; instead, it
+ installs the needed Tcl/Tk files directly in the Python directory. If
+ you already have a Tcl/Tk installation, this wastes some disk space
+ (about 4 Megs) but avoids problems with conflincting Tcl/Tk
+ installations, and makes it much easier for Python to ensure that
+ Tcl/Tk can find all its files. Note: the alpha installers don't
+ include the documentation.
+
+ The Windows installer now installs by default in \Python16\ on the
+ default volume, instead of \Program Files\Python-1.6\.
+
+
+ Changed Tools
+ -------------
+
+ IDLE - complete overhaul. See the <a href="../idle/">IDLE home
+ page</a> for more information. (Python 1.6 alpha 1 will come with
+ IDLE 0.6.)
+
+ Tools/i18n/pygettext.py - Python equivalent of xgettext(1). A message
+ text extraction tool used for internationalizing applications written
+ in Python.
+
+
+ Obsolete Modules
+ ----------------
+
+ stdwin and everything that uses it. (Get Python 1.5.2 if you need
+ it. :-)
+
+ soundex. (Skip Montanaro has a version in Python but it won't be
+ included in the Python release.)
+
+ cmp, cmpcache, dircmp. (Replaced by filecmp.)
+
+ dump. (Use pickle.)
+
+ find. (Easily coded using os.walk().)
+
+ grep. (Not very useful as a library module.)
+
+ packmail. (No longer has any use.)
+
+ poly, zmod. (These were poor examples at best.)
+
+ strop. (No longer needed by the string module.)
+
+ util. (This functionality was long ago built in elsewhere).
+
+ whatsound. (Use sndhdr.)
+
+
+ Detailed Changes from 1.6b1 to 1.6
+ ----------------------------------
+
- Slight changes to the CNRI license. A copyright notice has been
added; the requirement to indicate the nature of modifications now
***************
*** 163,166 ****
--- 302,306 ----
- The PC configuration is slightly friendlier to non-Microsoft
compilers.
+
======================================================================