\documentclass{howto}

\title{What's New in Python 2.0}

\author{A.M. Kuchling and Moshe Zadka}

\authoraddress{\email{[email protected]}, \email{[email protected]} }

\begin{document}

\item \code{ord(\var{u})}, where \var{u} is a 1-character regular or Unicode string, returns the number of the character as an integer.

string. \code{encoding} is a string naming the encoding to use.

The \code{errors} parameter specifies the treatment of characters that

are invalid for the current encoding; passing \code{'strict'} as the

The following code would then read UTF-8 input from the file:

\begin{verbatim}

\end{verbatim}

\section{Augmented Assignment}

Augmented assignment operators, another long-requested feature, have

The full list of supported assignment operators is \code{+=},

\code{-=}, \code{*=}, \code{/=}, \code{\%=}, \code{**=}, \code{\&=},

\section{String Methods}

Until now string-manipulation functionality was in the \module{string}

module written in C. The addition of Unicode posed a difficulty for

the \module{strop} module, because the functions would all need to be

rewritten in order to accept either 8-bit or Unicode strings. For

\end{verbatim}

The \keyword{print} statement can now have its output directed to a

Previously you'd either have to use the \method{write()} method of the

file-like object, which lacks the convenience and simplicity of

it's much easier to write this:

\begin{verbatim}

added. \function{zip()} returns a list of tuples where each tuple

contains the i-th element from each of the argument sequences. The

difference between \function{zip()} and \code{map(None, \var{seq1},

The \function{int()} and \function{long()} functions now accept an

optional ``base'' parameter when the first argument is a string.

\var{serial})} For example, in a hypothetical 2.0.1beta1,

\code{sys.version_info} would be \code{(2, 0, 1, 'beta', 1)}.

\var{level} is a string such as \code{"alpha"}, \code{"beta"}, or

Dictionaries have an odd new method, \method{setdefault(\var{key},

\var{default})}, which behaves similarly to the existing

because the documentation actually used the erroneous multiple

argument form, many people wrote code which would break with the

stricter checking. GvR backed out the changes in the face of public

fixed and the multiple argument form is simply marked as deprecated;

it \emph{will} be tightened up again in a future Python version.

\function{repr()} still includes it. The 'L' annoyed many people who

wanted to print long integers that looked just like regular integers,

since they had to go out of their way to chop off the character. This

Taking the \function{repr()} of a float now uses a different

formatting precision than \function{str()}. \function{repr()} uses

\code{\%.17g} format string for C's \function{sprintf()}, while

\function{str()} uses \code{\%.12g} as before. The effect is that

\function{repr()} may occasionally show more decimal places than

For example, the number 8.1 can't be represented exactly in binary, so

\code{repr(8.1)} is \code{'8.0999999999999996'}, while str(8.1) is

\code{'8.1'}.

Before Python 2.0, installing modules was a tedious affair -- there

was no way to figure out automatically where Python is installed, or

what compiler options to use for extension modules. Software authors

configuration files, which only really work on Unix and leave Windows

and MacOS unsupported. Software users faced wildly differing

installation instructions