@@ -1085,11 +1085,17 @@ \section{Other Language Changes}
10851085\item Built-in types now support the extended slicing syntax,
10861086as described in section~\ref {section-slices } of this document.
10871087
1088+ \item A new built-in function, \function {sum(\var {iterable}, \var {start}=0)},
1089+ adds up the numeric items in the iterable object and returns their sum.
1090+ \function {sum()} only accepts numbers, meaning that you can't use it
1091+ to concatenate a bunch of strings, for example. (Contributed by Alex
1092+ Martelli.)
1093+
10881094\item Dictionaries have a new method, \method {pop(\var {key}\optional {,
10891095\var {default}})}, that returns the value corresponding to \var {key}
10901096and removes that key/value pair from the dictionary. If the requested
1091- key isn't present in the dictionary, \var {default} is returned if
1092- it's specified and \exception {KeyError} raised if it isn't.
1097+ key isn't present in the dictionary, \var {default} is returned if it's
1098+ specified and \exception {KeyError} raised if it isn't.
10931099
10941100\begin {verbatim }
10951101>>> d = {1:2}
@@ -1397,6 +1403,9 @@ \section{New, Improved, and Deprecated Modules}
13971403them to override the settings in Python's configuration (contributed
13981404by Robert Weber).
13991405
1406+ \item The new \function {gc.get_referents(\var {object})} function returns a
1407+ list of all the objects referenced by \var {object}.
1408+
14001409\item The \module {getopt} module gained a new function,
14011410\function {gnu_getopt()}, that supports the same arguments as the existing
14021411\function {getopt()} function but uses GNU-style scanning mode.
@@ -1524,6 +1533,12 @@ \section{New, Improved, and Deprecated Modules}
15241533tidied and brought up to date in various ways. (Contributed by Greg
15251534Ward and Nicholas FitzRoy-Dale.)
15261535
1536+ \item The new \module {platform} module contains a number of functions
1537+ that try to determine various properties of the platform you're
1538+ running on. There are functions for getting the architecture, CPU
1539+ type, the Windows OS version, and even the Linux distribution version.
1540+ (Contributed by Marc-Andr\' e Lemburg.)
1541+
15271542\item The parser objects provided by the \module {pyexpat} module
15281543can now optionally buffer character data, resulting in fewer calls to
15291544your character data handler and therefore faster performance. Setting
@@ -1576,7 +1591,7 @@ \section{New, Improved, and Deprecated Modules}
15761591
15771592(Sticking with Python 2.2 or 2.1 will not make your applications any
15781593safer because there are known bugs in the \module {rexec} module in
1579- those versions. I repeat, if you're using \module {rexec}, stop using
1594+ those versions. To repeat: if you're using \module {rexec}, stop using
15801595it immediately.)
15811596
15821597\item The \module {rotor} module has been deprecated because the
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