RELEASED: Python 2.2b1 is out!

[Barry A. Warsaw]

We've released Python 2.2b1, the first beta release of Python 2.2, for
your ebullience, ecdysis, and embarcation.  As this is the first beta
release, we are now in feature freeze for Python 2.2.

    http://www.python.org/2.2/

Give it a good try, and report what breaks to the bug tracker:

  http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?group_id=5470

New features in this release include:

- New-style classes are now always dynamic, except for built-in and
  extension types

- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed

- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError

- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offers a C API.

- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj)

- isinstance() now accepts more objects as its first and second
  arguments

- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
  available.  The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
  now return "pseudo-sequences" whose elements can be accessed by name
  or index.  The time module's localtime(), gmtime() and strptime()
  are pseudo-sequences too.

- Many improvements to the profiler

As usual, Andrew Kuchling is writing a gentle introduction to the most
important changes (currently excluding type/class unification), titled
"What's New in Python 2.2":

  http://www.amk.ca/python/2.2/

There is an introduction to the type/class unification at:

  http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html

Thanks to everybody who contributed to this release, including all the
alpha testers!

brought-to-you-by-the-letter-"E"-ly y'rs,
-Barry