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.

======================================================================

=======================================

==> Release 1.6 (September 5, 2000) <==

=======================================

What's new in release 1.6?

==========================

Below is a list of all relevant changes since release 1.5.2.

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.

We've added a new fundamental datatype, the Unicode string, a new

build-in function unicode(), an numerous C APIs to deal with Unicode

and encodings. See the file Misc/unicode.txt for details, or

http://starship.python.net/crew/lemburg/unicode-proposal.txt.

Two other big changes, related to the Unicode support, are the

addition of string methods and (yet another) new regular expression

engine.

- String methods mean that you can now say s.lower() etc. instead of

importing the string module and saying string.lower(s) etc. One

peculiarity is that the equivalent of string.join(sequence,

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

backwards compatible with the old engine, and is in fact invoked

using the same interface (the "re" module). You can explicitly

invoke the old engine by import pre, or the SRE engine by importing

sre. SRE is faster than pre, and supports Unicode (which was the

main reason to put effort in yet another new regular expression

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

hundreds of lines of code between the reference and the assignment to

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

applies when making a derivative work available "to others" instead of

just "to the public"; the version and date are updated. The new

license has a new handle.

- Added the Tools/compiler package. This is a project led by Jeremy

Hylton to write the Python bytecode generator in Python.

- The function math.rint() is removed.

- In Python.h, "#define _GNU_SOURCE 1" was added.

- Version 0.9.1 of Greg Ward's distutils is included (instead of

version 0.9).

- A new version of SRE is included. It is more stable, and more

compatible with the old RE module. Non-matching ranges are indicated

by -1, not None. (The documentation said None, but the PRE

implementation used -1; changing to None would break existing code.)

- The winreg module has been renamed to _winreg. (There are plans for

a higher-level API called winreg, but this has not yet materialized in

a form that is acceptable to the experts.)

- The _locale module is enabled by default.

- Fixed the configuration line for the _curses module.

- A few crashes have been fixed, notably <file>.writelines() with a

list containing non-string objects would crash, and there were

situations where a lost SyntaxError could dump core.

- The <list>.extend() method now accepts an arbitrary sequence

argument.

- If __str__() or __repr__() returns a Unicode object, this is

converted to an 8-bit string.

- Unicode string comparisons is no longer aware of UTF-16

encoding peculiarities; it's a straight 16-bit compare.

- The Windows installer now installs the LICENSE file and no longer

registers the Python DLL version in the registry (this is no longer

needed). It now uses Tcl/Tk 8.3.2.

- A few portability problems have been fixed, in particular a

compilation error involving socklen_t.

- The PC configuration is slightly friendlier to non-Microsoft

compilers.

======================================================================

======================================

==> Release 1.5.2 (April 13, 1999) <==

======================================

From 1.5.2c1 to 1.5.2 (final)

=============================

Tue Apr 13 15:44:49 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* PCbuild/python15.wse: Bump version to 1.5.2 (final)

* PCbuild/python15.dsp: Added shamodule.c

* PC/config.c: Added sha module!

* README, Include/patchlevel.h: Prepare for final release.

* Misc/ACKS:

More (Cameron Laird is honorary; the others are 1.5.2c1 testers).

* Python/thread_solaris.h:

While I can't really test this thoroughly, Pat Knight and the Solaris

man pages suggest that the proper thing to do is to add THR_NEW_LWP to

the flags on thr_create(), and that there really isn't a downside, so

I'll do that.

* Misc/ACKS:

Bunch of new names who helped iron out the last wrinkles of 1.5.2.

* PC/python_nt.rc:

Bump the myusterious M$ version number from 1,5,2,1 to 1,5,2,3.

(I can't even display this on NT, maybe Win/98 can?)

* Lib/pstats.py:

Fix mysterious references to jprofile that were in the source since

its creation. I'm assuming these were once valid references to "Jim

Roskind's profile"...

* Lib/Attic/threading_api.py:

Removed; since long subsumed in Doc/lib/libthreading.tex

* Modules/socketmodule.c:

Put back __osf__ support for gethostbyname_r(); the real bug was that

it was being used even without threads. This of course might be an

all-platform problem so now we only use the _r variant when we are

using threads.

Mon Apr 12 22:51:20 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Modules/cPickle.c:

Fix accidentally reversed NULL test in load_mark(). Suggested by

Tamito Kajiyama. (This caused a bug only on platforms where malloc(0)

returns NULL.)

* README:

Add note about popen2 problem on Linux noticed by Pablo Bleyer.

* README: Add note about -D_REENTRANT for HP-UX 10.20.

* Modules/Makefile.pre.in: 'clean' target should remove hassignal.

* PC/Attic/vc40.mak, PC/readme.txt:

Remove all VC++ info (except VC 1.5) from readme.txt;

remove the VC++ 4.0 project file; remove the unused _tkinter extern defs.

* README: Clarify PC build instructions (point to PCbuild).

* Modules/zlibmodule.c: Cast added by Jack Jansen (for Mac port).

* Lib/plat-sunos5/CDIO.py, Lib/plat-linux2/CDROM.py:

Forgot to add this file. CDROM device parameters.

* Lib/gzip.py: Two different changes.

1. Jack Jansen reports that on the Mac, the time may be negative, and

solves this by adding a write32u() function that writes an unsigned

long.

2. On 64-bit platforms the CRC comparison fails; I've fixed this by

casting both values to be compared to "unsigned long" i.e. modulo

0x100000000L.

Sat Apr 10 18:42:02 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* PC/Attic/_tkinter.def: No longer needed.

* Misc/ACKS: Correct missed character in Andrew Dalke's name.

* README: Add DEC Ultrix notes (from Donn Cave's email).

* configure: The usual

* configure.in:

Quote a bunch of shell variables used in test, related to long-long.

* Objects/fileobject.c, Modules/shamodule.c, Modules/regexpr.c:

casts for picky compilers.

* Modules/socketmodule.c:

3-arg gethostbyname_r doesn't really work on OSF/1.

* PC/vc15_w31/_.c, PC/vc15_lib/_.c, Tools/pynche/__init__.py:

Avoid totally empty files.

Fri Apr 9 14:56:35 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Tools/scripts/fixps.py: Use re instead of regex.

Don't rewrite the file in place.

(Reported by Andy Dustman.)

* Lib/netrc.py, Lib/shlex.py: Get rid of #! line

Thu Apr 8 23:13:37 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* PCbuild/python15.wse: Use the Tcl 8.0.5 installer.

Add a variable %_TCL_% that makes it easier to switch to a different version.

======================================================================

From 1.5.2b2 to 1.5.2c1

=======================

Thu Apr 8 23:13:37 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* PCbuild/python15.wse:

Release 1.5.2c1. Add IDLE and Uninstall to program group.

Don't distribute zlib.dll. Tweak some comments.

* PCbuild/zlib.dsp: Now using static zlib 1.1.3

* Lib/dos-8x3/userdict.py, Lib/dos-8x3/userlist.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_zli.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_use.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_pop.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_pic.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_ntp.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_gzi.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_fcn.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_cpi.py, Lib/dos-8x3/test_bsd.py, Lib/dos-8x3/posixfil.py, Lib/dos-8x3/mimetype.py, Lib/dos-8x3/nturl2pa.py, Lib/dos-8x3/compilea.py, Lib/dos-8x3/exceptio.py, Lib/dos-8x3/basehttp.py:

The usual

* Include/patchlevel.h: Release 1.5.2c1

* README: Release 1.5.2c1.

* Misc/NEWS: News for the 1.5.2c1 release.

* Lib/test/test_strftime.py:

On Windows, we suddenly find, strftime() may return "" for an

unsupported format string. (I guess this is because the logic for

deciding whether to reallocate the buffer or not has been improved.)

This caused the test code to crash on result[0]. Fix this by assuming

an empty result also means the format is not supported.

* Demo/tkinter/matt/window-creation-w-location.py:

This demo imported some private code from Matt. Make it cripple along.

* Lib/lib-tk/Tkinter.py:

Delete an accidentally checked-in feature that actually broke more

than was worth it: when deleting a canvas item, it would try to

automatically delete the bindings for that item. Since there's

nothing that says you can't reuse the tag and still have the bindings,

this is not correct. Also, it broke at least one demo

(Demo/tkinter/matt/rubber-band-box-demo-1.py).

* Python/thread_wince.h: Win/CE thread support by Mark Hammond.

Wed Apr 7 20:23:17 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Modules/zlibmodule.c:

Patch by Andrew Kuchling to unflush() (flush() for deflating).

Without this, if inflate() returned Z_BUF_ERROR asking for more output

space, we would report the error; now, we increase the buffer size and

try again, just as for Z_OK.

* Lib/test/test_gzip.py: Use binary mode for all gzip files we open.

* Tools/idle/ChangeLog: New change log.

* Tools/idle/README.txt, Tools/idle/NEWS.txt: New version.

* Python/pythonrun.c:

Alas, get rid of the Win specific hack to ask the user to press Return

before exiting when an error happened. This didn't work right when

Python is invoked from a daemon.

* Tools/idle/idlever.py: Version bump awaiting impending new release.

(Not much has changed :-( )

* Lib/lib-tk/Tkinter.py:

lower, tkraise/lift hide Misc.lower, Misc.tkraise/lift,

so the preferred name for them is tag_lower, tag_raise

(similar to tag_bind, and similar to the Text widget);

unfortunately can't delete the old ones yet (maybe in 1.6)

* Python/thread.c, Python/strtod.c, Python/mystrtoul.c, Python/import.c, Python/ceval.c:

Changes by Mark Hammond for Windows CE. Mostly of the form

#ifdef DONT_HAVE_header_H ... #endif around #include <header.h>.

* Python/bltinmodule.c:

Remove unused variable from complex_from_string() code.

* Include/patchlevel.h:

Add the possibility of a gamma release (release candidate).

Add '+' to string version number to indicate we're beyond b2 now.

* Modules/posixmodule.c: Add extern decl for fsync() for SunOS 4.x.

* Lib/smtplib.py: Changes by Per Cederquist and The Dragon.

Per writes:

"""

The application where Signum Support uses smtplib needs to be able to

report good error messages to the user when sending email fails. To

help in diagnosing problems it is useful to be able to report the

entire message sent by the server, not only the SMTP error code of the

offending command.

A lot of the functions in sendmail.py unfortunately discards the

message, leaving only the code. The enclosed patch fixes that

problem.

The enclosed patch also introduces a base class for exceptions that

include an SMTP error code and error message, and make the code and

message available on separate attributes, so that surrounding code can

deal with them in whatever way it sees fit. I've also added some

documentation to the exception classes.

The constructor will now raise an exception if it cannot connect to

the SMTP server.

The data() method will raise an SMTPDataError if it doesn't receive

the expected 354 code in the middle of the exchange.

According to section 5.2.10 of RFC 1123 a smtp client must accept "any

text, including no text at all" after the error code. If the response

of a HELO command contains no text self.helo_resp will be set to the

empty string (""). The patch fixes the test in the sendmail() method

so that helo_resp is tested against None; if it has the empty string

as value the sendmail() method would invoke the helo() method again.

The code no longer accepts a -1 reply from the ehlo() method in

sendmail().

[Text about removing SMTPRecipientsRefused deleted --GvR]

"""

and also:

"""

smtplib.py appends an extra blank line to the outgoing mail if the

`msg' argument to the sendmail method already contains a trailing

newline. This patch should fix the problem.

"""

The Dragon writes:

"""

Mostly I just re-added the SMTPRecipientsRefused exception

(the exeption object now has the appropriate info in it ) [Per had

removed this in his patch --GvR] and tweaked the behavior of the

sendmail method whence it throws the newly added SMTPHeloException (it

was closing the connection, which it shouldn't. whatever catches the

exception should do that. )

I pondered the change of the return values to tuples all around,

and after some thinking I decided that regularizing the return values was

too much of the Right Thing (tm) to not do.

My one concern is that code expecting an integer & getting a tuple

may fail silently.

(i.e. if it's doing :

x.somemethod() >= 400:

expecting an integer, the expression will always be true if it gets a

tuple instead. )

However, most smtplib code I've seen only really uses the

sendmail() method, so this wouldn't bother it. Usually code I've seen

that calls the other methods usually only calls helo() and ehlo() for

doing ESMTP, a feature which was not in the smtplib included with 1.5.1,

and thus I would think not much code uses it yet.

"""

Tue Apr 6 19:38:18 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Lib/test/test_ntpath.py:

Fix the tests now that splitdrive() no longer treats UNC paths special.

(Some tests converted to splitunc() tests.)

* Lib/ntpath.py:

Withdraw the UNC support from splitdrive(). Instead, a new function

splitunc() parses UNC paths. The contributor of the UNC parsing in

splitdrive() doesn't like it, but I haven't heard a good reason to

keep it, and it causes some problems. (I think there's a

philosophical problem -- to me, the split*() functions are purely

syntactical, and the fact that \\foo is not a valid path doesn't mean

that it shouldn't be considered an absolute path.)

Also (quite separately, but strangely related to the philosophical

issue above) fix abspath() so that if win32api exists, it doesn't fail

when the path doesn't actually exist -- if GetFullPathName() fails,

fall back on the old strategy (join with getcwd() if neccessary, and

then use normpath()).

* configure.in, configure, config.h.in, acconfig.h:

For BeOS PowerPC. Chris Herborth.

Mon Apr 5 21:54:14 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Modules/timemodule.c:

Jonathan Giddy notes, and Chris Lawrence agrees, that some comments on

#else/#endif are wrong, and that #if HAVE_TM_ZONE should be #ifdef.

* Misc/ACKS:

Bunch of new contributors, including 9 who contributed to the Docs,

reported by Fred.

Mon Apr 5 18:37:59 1999 Fred Drake <[email protected]>

* Lib/gzip.py:

Oops, missed mode parameter to open().

* Lib/gzip.py:

Made the default mode 'rb' instead of 'r', for better cross-platform

support. (Based on comment on the documentation by Bernhard Reiter

<[email protected]>).

Fri Apr 2 22:18:25 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Tools/scripts/dutree.py:

For reasons I dare not explain, this script should always execute

main() when imported (in other words, it is not usable as a module).

Thu Apr 1 15:32:30 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Lib/test/test_cpickle.py: Jonathan Giddy write:

In test_cpickle.py, the module os got imported, but the line to remove

the temp file has gone missing.

Tue Mar 30 20:17:31 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Lib/BaseHTTPServer.py: Per Cederqvist writes:

If you send something like "PUT / HTTP/1.0" to something derived from

BaseHTTPServer that doesn't define do_PUT, you will get a response

that begins like this:

HTTP/1.0 501 Unsupported method ('do_PUT')

Server: SimpleHTTP/0.3 Python/1.5

Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 18:53:53 GMT

The server should complain about 'PUT' instead of 'do_PUT'. This

patch should fix the problem.

Mon Mar 29 20:33:21 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Lib/smtplib.py: Patch by Per Cederqvist, who writes:

"""

- It needlessly used the makefile() method for each response that is

read from the SMTP server.

- If the remote SMTP server closes the connection unexpectedly the

code raised an IndexError. It now raises an SMTPServerDisconnected

exception instead.

- The code now checks that all lines in a multiline response actually

contains an error code.

"""

The Dragon approves.

Mon Mar 29 20:25:40 1999 Fred Drake <[email protected]>

* Lib/compileall.py:

When run as a script, report failures in the exit code as well.

Patch largely based on changes by Andrew Dalke, as discussed in the

distutils-sig.

Mon Mar 29 20:23:41 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Lib/urllib.py:

Hack so that if a 302 or 301 redirect contains a relative URL, the

right thing "just happens" (basejoin() with old URL).

* Modules/cPickle.c:

Protection against picling to/from closed (real) file.

The problem was reported by Moshe Zadka.

* Lib/test/test_cpickle.py:

Test protection against picling to/from closed (real) file.

* Modules/timemodule.c: Chris Lawrence writes:

"""

The GNU folks, in their infinite wisdom, have decided not to implement

altzone in libc6; this would not be horrible, except that timezone

(which is implemented) includes the current DST setting (i.e. timezone

for Central is 18000 in summer and 21600 in winter). So Python's

timezone and altzone variables aren't set correctly during DST.

Here's a patch relative to 1.5.2b2 that (a) makes timezone and altzone

show the "right" thing on Linux (by using the tm_gmtoff stuff

available in BSD, which is how the GLIBC manual claims things should

be done) and (b) should cope with the southern hemisphere. In pursuit

of (b), I also took the liberty of renaming the "summer" and "winter"

variables to "july" and "jan". This patch should also make certain

time calculations on Linux actually work right (like the tz-aware

functions in the rfc822 module).

(It's hard to find DST that's currently being used in the southern

hemisphere; I tested using Africa/Windhoek.)

"""

* Lib/test/output/test_gzip:

Jonathan Giddy discovered this file was missing.

* Modules/shamodule.c:

Avoid warnings from AIX compiler. Reported by Vladimir (AIX is my

middlename) Marangozov, patch coded by Greg Stein.

* Tools/idle/ScriptBinding.py, Tools/idle/PyShell.py:

At Tim Peters' recommendation, add a dummy flush() method to PseudoFile.

Sun Mar 28 17:55:32 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Tools/scripts/ndiff.py: Tim Peters writes:

I should have waited overnight <wink/sigh>. Nothing wrong with the one I

sent, but I couldn't resist going on to add new -r1 / -r2 cmdline options

for recreating the original files from ndiff's output. That's attached, if

you're game! Us Windows guys don't usually have a sed sitting around

<wink>.

Sat Mar 27 13:34:01 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Tools/scripts/ndiff.py: Tim Peters writes:

Attached is a cleaned-up version of ndiff (added useful module

docstring, now echo'ed in case of cmd line mistake); added -q option

to suppress initial file identification lines; + other minor cleanups,

& a slightly faster match engine.

Fri Mar 26 22:36:00 1999 Fred Drake <[email protected]>

* Tools/scripts/dutree.py:

During display, if EPIPE is raised, it's probably because a pager was

killed. Discard the error in that case, but propogate it otherwise.

Fri Mar 26 16:20:45 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Lib/test/output/test_userlist, Lib/test/test_userlist.py:

Test suite for UserList.

* Lib/UserList.py: Use isinstance() where appropriate.

Reformatted with 4-space indent.

Fri Mar 26 16:11:40 1999 Barry Warsaw <[email protected]>

* Tools/pynche/PyncheWidget.py:

Helpwin.__init__(): The text widget should get focus.

* Tools/pynche/pyColorChooser.py:

Removed unnecessary import `from PyncheWidget import PyncheWidget'

Fri Mar 26 15:32:05 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Lib/test/output/test_userdict, Lib/test/test_userdict.py:

Test suite for UserDict

* Lib/UserDict.py: Improved a bunch of things.

The constructor now takes an optional dictionary.

Use isinstance() where appropriate.

Thu Mar 25 22:38:49 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Lib/test/output/test_pickle, Lib/test/output/test_cpickle, Lib/test/test_pickle.py, Lib/test/test_cpickle.py:

Basic regr tests for pickle/cPickle

* Lib/pickle.py:

Don't use "exec" in find_class(). It's slow, unnecessary, and (as AMK

points out) it doesn't work in JPython Applets.

Thu Mar 25 21:50:27 1999 Andrew Kuchling <[email protected]>

* Lib/test/test_gzip.py:

Added a simple test suite for gzip. It simply opens a temp file,

writes a chunk of compressed data, closes it, writes another chunk, and

reads the contents back to verify that they are the same.

* Lib/gzip.py:

Based on a suggestion from [email protected], make a trivial change to

allow using the 'a' flag as a mode for opening a GzipFile. gzip

files, surprisingly enough, can be concatenated and then decompressed;

the effect is to concatenate the two chunks of data.

If we support it on writing, it should also be supported on reading.

This *wasn't* trivial, and required rearranging the code in the

reading path, particularly the _read() method.

Raise IOError instead of RuntimeError in two cases, 'Not a gzipped file'

and 'Unknown compression method'

Thu Mar 25 21:25:01 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Lib/test/test_b1.py:

Add tests for float() and complex() with string args (Nick/Stephanie

Lockwood).

Thu Mar 25 21:21:08 1999 Andrew Kuchling <[email protected]>

* Modules/zlibmodule.c:

Add an .unused_data attribute to decompressor objects. If .unused_data

is not an empty string, this means that you have arrived at the

end of the stream of compressed data, and the contents of .unused_data are

whatever follows the compressed stream.

Thu Mar 25 21:16:07 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Python/bltinmodule.c:

Patch by Nick and Stephanie Lockwood to implement complex() with a string

argument. This closes TODO item 2.19.

Wed Mar 24 19:09:00 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Tools/webchecker/wcnew.py: Added Samuel Bayer's new webchecker.

Unfortunately his code breaks wcgui.py in a way that's not easy

to fix. I expect that this is a temporary situation --

eventually Sam's changes will be merged back in.

(The changes add a -t option to specify exceptions to the -x

option, and explicit checking for #foo style fragment ids.)

* Objects/dictobject.c:

Vladimir Marangozov contributed updated comments.

* Objects/bufferobject.c: Folded long lines.

* Lib/test/output/test_sha, Lib/test/test_sha.py:

Added Jeremy's test code for the sha module.

* Modules/shamodule.c, Modules/Setup.in:

Added Greg Stein and Andrew Kuchling's sha module.

Fix comments about zlib version and URL.

* Lib/test/test_bsddb.py: Remove the temp file when we're done.

* Include/pythread.h: Conform to standard boilerplate.

* configure.in, configure, BeOS/linkmodule, BeOS/ar-fake:

Chris Herborth: the new compiler in R4.1 needs some new options to work...

* Modules/socketmodule.c:

Implement two suggestions by Jonathan Giddy: (1) in AIX, clear the

data struct before calling gethostby{name,addr}_r(); (2) ignore the

3/5/6 args determinations made by the configure script and switch on

platform identifiers instead:

AIX, OSF have 3 args

Sun, SGI have 5 args

Linux has 6 args

On all other platforms, undef HAVE_GETHOSTBYNAME_R altogether.

* Modules/socketmodule.c:

Vladimir Marangozov implements the AIX 3-arg gethostbyname_r code.

* Lib/mailbox.py:

Add readlines() to _Subfile class. Not clear who would need it, but

Chris Lawrence sent me a broken version; this one is a tad simpler and

more conforming to the standard.

Tue Mar 23 23:05:34 1999 Jeremy Hylton <[email protected]>

* Lib/gzip.py: use struct instead of bit-manipulate in Python

Tue Mar 23 19:00:55 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Modules/Makefile.pre.in:

Add $(EXE) to various occurrences of python so it will work on Cygwin

with egcs (after setting EXE=.exe). Patch by Norman Vine.

* configure, configure.in:

Ack! It never defined HAVE_GETHOSTBYNAME_R so that code was never tested!

Mon Mar 22 22:25:39 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Include/thread.h:

Adding thread.h -- unused but for b/w compatibility.

As requested by Bill Janssen.

* configure.in, configure:

Add code to test for all sorts of gethostbyname_r variants,

donated by David Arnold.

* config.h.in, acconfig.h:

Add symbols for gethostbyname_r variants (sigh).

* Modules/socketmodule.c: Clean up pass for the previous patches.

- Use HAVE_GETHOSTBYNAME_R_6_ARG instead of testing for Linux and

glibc2.

- If gethostbyname takes 3 args, undefine HAVE_GETHOSTBYNAME_R --

don't know what code should be used.

- New symbol USE_GETHOSTBYNAME_LOCK defined iff the lock should be used.

- Modify the gethostbyaddr() code to also hold on to the lock until

after it is safe to release, overlapping with the Python lock.

(Note: I think that it could in theory be possible that Python code

executed while gethostbyname_lock is held could attempt to reacquire

the lock -- e.g. in a signal handler or destructor. I will simply say

"don't do that then.")

* Modules/socketmodule.c: Jonathan Giddy writes:

Here's a patch to fix the race condition, which wasn't fixed by Rob's

patch. It holds the gethostbyname lock until the results are copied out,

which means that this lock and the Python global lock are held at the same

time. This shouldn't be a problem as long as the gethostbyname lock is

always acquired when the global lock is not held.

Mon Mar 22 19:25:30 1999 Andrew Kuchling <[email protected]>

* Modules/zlibmodule.c:

Fixed the flush() method of compression objects; the test for

the end of loop was incorrect, and failed when the flushmode != Z_FINISH.

Logic cleaned up and commented.

* Lib/test/test_zlib.py:

Added simple test for the flush() method of compression objects, trying the

different flush values Z_NO_FLUSH, Z_SYNC_FLUSH, Z_FULL_FLUSH.

Mon Mar 22 15:28:08 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Lib/shlex.py:

Bug reported by Tobias Thelen: missing "self." in assignment target.

Fri Mar 19 21:50:11 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Modules/arraymodule.c:

Use an unsigned cast to avoid a warning in VC++.

* Lib/dospath.py, Lib/ntpath.py:

New code for split() by Tim Peters, behaves more like posixpath.split().

* Objects/floatobject.c:

Fix a problem with Vladimir's PyFloat_Fini code: clear the free list; if

a block cannot be freed, add its free items back to the free list.

This is necessary to avoid leaking when Python is reinitialized later.

* Objects/intobject.c:

Fix a problem with Vladimir's PyInt_Fini code: clear the free list; if

a block cannot be freed, add its free items back to the free list, and

add its valid ints back to the small_ints array if they are in range.

This is necessary to avoid leaking when Python is reinitialized later.

* Lib/types.py:

Added BufferType, the type returned by the new builtin buffer(). Greg Stein.

* Python/bltinmodule.c:

New builtin buffer() creates a derived read-only buffer from any

object that supports the buffer interface (e.g. strings, arrays).

* Objects/bufferobject.c:

Added check for negative offset for PyBuffer_FromObject and check for

negative size for PyBuffer_FromMemory. Greg Stein.

Thu Mar 18 15:10:44 1999 Guido van Rossum <[email protected]>

* Lib/urlparse.py: Sjoerd Mullender writes:

If a filename on Windows starts with \\, it is converted to a URL

which starts with ////. If this URL is passed to urlparse.urlparse

you get a path that starts with // (and an empty netloc). If you pass

the result back to urlparse.urlunparse, you get a URL that starts with

//, which is parsed differently by urlparse.urlparse. The fix is to

add the (empty) netloc with accompanying slashes if the path in

urlunparse starts with //. Do this for all schemes that use a netloc.

* Lib/nturl2path.py: Sjoerd Mullender writes:

Pathnames of files on other hosts in the same domain