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- Python history
- --------------
-
- This file contains the release messages for previous Python releases
- (slightly edited to adapt them to the format of this file). As you
- read on you go back to the dark ages of Python's history.
-
- ===================================
- ==> Release 0.9.9 (29 Jul 1993) <==
- ===================================
-
- I *believe* these are the main user-visible changes in this release,
- but there may be others. SGI users may scan the {src,lib}/ChangeLog
- files for improvements of some SGI specific modules, e.g. aifc and
- cl. Developers of extension modules should also read src/ChangeLog.
-
-
- Naming of C symbols used by the Python interpreter
- --------------------------------------------------
-
- * This is the last release using the current naming conventions. New
- naming conventions are explained in the file misc/NAMING.
- Summarizing, all externally visible symbols get (at least) a "Py"
- prefix, and most functions are renamed to the standard form
- PyModule_FunctionName.
-
- * Writers of extensions are urged to start using the new naming
- conventions. The next release will use the new naming conventions
- throughout (it will also have a different source directory
- structure).
-
- * As a result of the preliminary work for the great renaming, many
- functions that were accidentally global have been made static.
-
-
- BETA X11 support
- ----------------
-
- * There are now modules interfacing to the X11 Toolkit Intrinsics, the
- Athena widgets, and the Motif 1.1 widget set. These are not yet
- documented except through the examples and README file in the demo/x11
- directory. It is expected that this interface will be replaced by a
- more powerful and correct one in the future, which may or may not be
- backward compatible. In other words, this part of the code is at most
- BETA level software! (Note: the rest of Python is rock solid as ever!)
-
- * I understand that the above may be a bit of a disappointment,
- however my current schedule does not allow me to change this situation
- before putting the release out of the door. By releasing it
- undocumented and buggy, at least some of the (working!) demo programs,
- like itr (my Internet Talk Radio browser) become available to a larger
- audience.
-
- * There are also modules interfacing to SGI's "Glx" widget (a GL
- window wrapped in a widget) and to NCSA's "HTML" widget (which can
- format HyperText Markup Language, the document format used by the
- World Wide Web).
-
- * I've experienced some problems when building the X11 support. In
- particular, the Xm and Xaw widget sets don't go together, and it
- appears that using X11R5 is better than using X11R4. Also the threads
- module and its link time options may spoil things. My own strategy is
- to build two Python binaries: one for use with X11 and one without
- it, which can contain a richer set of built-in modules. Don't even
- *think* of loading the X11 modules dynamically...
-
-
- Environmental changes
- ---------------------
-
- * Compiled files (*.pyc files) created by this Python version are
- incompatible with those created by the previous version. Both
- versions detect this and silently create a correct version, but it
- means that it is not a good idea to use the same library directory for
- an old and a new interpreter, since they will start to "fight" over
- the *.pyc files...
-
- * When a stack trace is printed, the exception is printed last instead
- of first. This means that if the beginning of the stack trace
- scrolled out of your window you can still see what exception caused
- it.
-
- * Sometimes interrupting a Python operation does not work because it
- hangs in a blocking system call. You can now kill the interpreter by
- interrupting it three times. The second time you interrupt it, a
- message will be printed telling you that the third interrupt will kill
- the interpreter. The "sys.exitfunc" feature still makes limited
- clean-up possible in this case.
-
-
- Changes to the command line interface
- -------------------------------------
-
- * The python usage message is now much more informative.
-
- * New option -i enters interactive mode after executing a script --
- useful for debugging.
-
- * New option -k raises an exception when an expression statement
- yields a value other than None.
-
- * For each option there is now also a corresponding environment
- variable.
-
-
- Using Python as an embedded language
- ------------------------------------
-
- * The distribution now contains (some) documentation on the use of
- Python as an "embedded language" in other applications, as well as a
- simple example. See the file misc/EMBEDDING and the directory embed/.
-
-
- Speed improvements
- ------------------
-
- * Function local variables are now generally stored in an array and
- accessed using an integer indexing operation, instead of through a
- dictionary lookup. (This compensates the somewhat slower dictionary
- lookup caused by the generalization of the dictionary module.)
-
-
- Changes to the syntax
- ---------------------
-
- * Continuation lines can now *sometimes* be written without a
- backslash: if the continuation is contained within nesting (), [] or
- {} brackets the \ may be omitted. There's a much improved
- python-mode.el in the misc directory which knows about this as well.
-
- * You can no longer use an empty set of parentheses to define a class
- without base classes. That is, you no longer write this:
-
- class Foo(): # syntax error
- ...
-
- You must write this instead:
-
- class Foo:
- ...
-
- This was already the preferred syntax in release 0.9.8 but many
- people seemed not to have picked it up. There's a Python script that
- fixes old code: demo/scripts/classfix.py.
-
- * There's a new reserved word: "access". The syntax and semantics are
- still subject of of research and debate (as well as undocumented), but
- the parser knows about the keyword so you must not use it as a
- variable, function, or attribute name.
-
-
- Changes to the semantics of the language proper
- -----------------------------------------------
-
- * The following compatibility hack is removed: if a function was
- defined with two or more arguments, and called with a single argument
- that was a tuple with just as many arguments, the items of this tuple
- would be used as the arguments. This is no longer supported.
-
-
- Changes to the semantics of classes and instances
- -------------------------------------------------
-
- * Class variables are now also accessible as instance variables for
- reading (assignment creates an instance variable which overrides the
- class variable of the same name though).
-
- * If a class attribute is a user-defined function, a new kind of
- object is returned: an "unbound method". This contains a pointer to
- the class and can only be called with a first argument which is a
- member of that class (or a derived class).
-
- * If a class defines a method __init__(self, arg1, ...) then this
- method is called when a class instance is created by the classname()
- construct. Arguments passed to classname() are passed to the
- __init__() method. The __init__() methods of base classes are not
- automatically called; the derived __init__() method must call these if
- necessary (this was done so the derived __init__() method can choose
- the call order and arguments for the base __init__() methods).
-
- * If a class defines a method __del__(self) then this method is called
- when an instance of the class is about to be destroyed. This makes it
- possible to implement clean-up of external resources attached to the
- instance. As with __init__(), the __del__() methods of base classes
- are not automatically called. If __del__ manages to store a reference
- to the object somewhere, its destruction is postponed; when the object
- is again about to be destroyed its __del__() method will be called
- again.
-
- * Classes may define a method __hash__(self) to allow their instances
- to be used as dictionary keys. This must return a 32-bit integer.
-
-
- Minor improvements
- ------------------
-
- * Function and class objects now know their name (the name given in
- the 'def' or 'class' statement that created them).
-
- * Class instances now know their class name.
-
-
- Additions to built-in operations
- --------------------------------
-
- * The % operator with a string left argument implements formatting
- similar to sprintf() in C. The right argument is either a single
- value or a tuple of values. All features of Standard C sprintf() are
- supported except %p.
-
- * Dictionaries now support almost any key type, instead of just
- strings. (The key type must be an immutable type or must be a class
- instance where the class defines a method __hash__(), in order to
- avoid losing track of keys whose value may change.)
-
- * Built-in methods are now compared properly: when comparing x.meth1
- and y.meth2, if x is equal to y and the methods are defined by the
- same function, x.meth1 compares equal to y.meth2.
-
-
- Additions to built-in functions
- -------------------------------
-
- * str(x) returns a string version of its argument. If the argument is
- a string it is returned unchanged, otherwise it returns `x`.
-
- * repr(x) returns the same as `x`. (Some users found it easier to
- have this as a function.)
-
- * round(x) returns the floating point number x rounded to an whole
- number, represented as a floating point number. round(x, n) returns x
- rounded to n digits.
-
- * hasattr(x, name) returns true when x has an attribute with the given
- name.
-
- * hash(x) returns a hash code (32-bit integer) of an arbitrary
- immutable object's value.
-
- * id(x) returns a unique identifier (32-bit integer) of an arbitrary
- object.
-
- * compile() compiles a string to a Python code object.
-
- * exec() and eval() now support execution of code objects.
-
-
- Changes to the documented part of the library (standard modules)
- ----------------------------------------------------------------
-
- * os.path.normpath() (a.k.a. posixpath.normpath()) has been fixed so
- the border case '/foo/..' returns '/' instead of ''.
-
- * A new function string.find() is added with similar semantics to
- string.index(); however when it does not find the given substring it
- returns -1 instead of raising string.index_error.
-
-
- Changes to built-in modules
- ---------------------------
-
- * New optional module 'array' implements operations on sequences of
- integers or floating point numbers of a particular size. This is
- useful to manipulate large numerical arrays or to read and write
- binary files consisting of numerical data.
-
- * Regular expression objects created by module regex now support a new
- method named group(), which returns one or more \(...\) groups by number.
- The number of groups is increased from 10 to 100.
-
- * Function compile() in module regex now supports an optional mapping
- argument; a variable casefold is added to the module which can be used
- as a standard uppercase to lowercase mapping.
-
- * Module time now supports many routines that are defined in the
- Standard C time interface (<time.h>): gmtime(), localtime(),
- asctime(), ctime(), mktime(), as well as these variables (taken from
- System V): timezone, altzone, daylight and tzname. (The corresponding
- functions in the undocumented module calendar have been removed; the
- undocumented and unfinished module tzparse is now obsolete and will
- disappear in a future release.)
-
- * Module strop (the fast built-in version of standard module string)
- now uses C's definition of whitespace instead of fixing it to space,
- tab and newline; in practice this usually means that vertical tab,
- form feed and return are now also considered whitespace. It exports
- the string of characters that are considered whitespace as well as the
- characters that are considered lowercase or uppercase.
-
- * Module sys now defines the variable builtin_module_names, a list of
- names of modules built into the current interpreter (including not
- yet imported, but excluding two special modules that always have to be
- defined -- sys and builtin).
-
- * Objects created by module sunaudiodev now also support flush() and
- close() methods.
-
- * Socket objects created by module socket now support an optional
- flags argument for their methods sendto() and recvfrom().
-
- * Module marshal now supports dumping to and loading from strings,
- through the functions dumps() and loads().
-
- * Module stdwin now supports some new functionality. You may have to
- ftp the latest version: ftp.cwi.nl:/pub/stdwin/stdwinforviews.tar.Z.)
-
-
- Bugs fixed
- ----------
-
- * Fixed comparison of negative long integers.
-
- * The tokenizer no longer botches input lines longer than BUFSIZ.
-
- * Fixed several severe memory leaks in module select.
-
- * Fixed memory leaks in modules socket and sv.
-
- * Fixed memory leak in divmod() for long integers.
-
- * Problems with definition of floatsleep() on Suns fixed.
-
- * Many portability bugs fixed (and undoubtedly new ones added :-).
-
-
- Changes to the build procedure
- ------------------------------
-
- * The Makefile supports some new targets: "make default" and "make
- all". Both are by normally equivalent to "make python".
-
- * The Makefile no longer uses $> since it's not supported by all
- versions of Make.
-
- * The header files now all contain #ifdef constructs designed to make
- it safe to include the same header file twice, as well as support for
- inclusion from C++ programs (automatic extern "C" { ... } added).
-
-
- Freezing Python scripts
- -----------------------
-
- * There is now some support for "freezing" a Python script as a
- stand-alone executable binary file. See the script
- demo/scripts/freeze.py. It will require some site-specific tailoring
- of the script to get this working, but is quite worthwhile if you write
- Python code for other who may not have built and installed Python.
-
-
- MS-DOS
- ------
-
- * A new MS-DOS port has been done, using MSC 6.0 (I believe). Thanks,
- Marcel van der Peijl! This requires fewer compatibility hacks in
- posixmodule.c. The executable is not yet available but will be soon
- (check the mailing list).
-
- * The default PYTHONPATH has changed.
-
-
- Changes for developers of extension modules
- -------------------------------------------
-
- * Read src/ChangeLog for full details.
-
-
- SGI specific changes
- --------------------
-
- * Read src/ChangeLog for full details.
-
- ==================================
- ==> Release 0.9.8 (9 Jan 1993) <==
- ==================================
-
- I claim no completeness here, but I've tried my best to scan the log
- files throughout my source tree for interesting bits of news. A more
- complete account of the changes is to be found in the various
- ChangeLog files. See also "News for release 0.9.7beta" below if you're
- still using release 0.9.6, and the file HISTORY if you have an even
- older release.
-
- --Guido
-
-
- Changes to the language proper
- ------------------------------
-
- There's only one big change: the conformance checking for function
- argument lists (of user-defined functions only) is stricter. Earlier,
- you could get away with the following:
-
- (a) define a function of one argument and call it with any
- number of arguments; if the actual argument count wasn't
- one, the function would receive a tuple containing the
- arguments arguments (an empty tuple if there were none).
-
- (b) define a function of two arguments, and call it with more
- than two arguments; if there were more than two arguments,
- the second argument would be passed as a tuple containing
- the second and further actual arguments.
-
- (Note that an argument (formal or actual) that is a tuple is counted as
- one; these rules don't apply inside such tuples, only at the top level
- of the argument list.)
-
- Case (a) was needed to accommodate variable-length argument lists;
- there is now an explicit "varargs" feature (precede the last argument
- with a '*'). Case (b) was needed for compatibility with old class
- definitions: up to release 0.9.4 a method with more than one argument
- had to be declared as "def meth(self, (arg1, arg2, ...)): ...".
- Version 0.9.6 provide better ways to handle both casees, bot provided
- backward compatibility; version 0.9.8 retracts the compatibility hacks
- since they also cause confusing behavior if a function is called with
- the wrong number of arguments.
-
- There's a script that helps converting classes that still rely on (b),
- provided their methods' first argument is called "self":
- demo/scripts/methfix.py.
-
- If this change breaks lots of code you have developed locally, try
- #defining COMPAT_HACKS in ceval.c.
-
- (There's a third compatibility hack, which is the reverse of (a): if a
- function is defined with two or more arguments, and called with a
- single argument that is a tuple with just as many arguments, the items
- of this tuple will be used as the arguments. Although this can (and
- should!) be done using the built-in function apply() instead, it isn't
- withdrawn yet.)
-
-
- One minor change: comparing instance methods works like expected, so
- that if x is an instance of a user-defined class and has a method m,
- then (x.m==x.m) yields 1.
-
-
- The following was already present in 0.9.7beta, but not explicitly
- mentioned in the NEWS file: user-defined classes can now define types
- that behave in almost allrespects like numbers. See
- demo/classes/Rat.py for a simple example.
-
-
- Changes to the build process
- ----------------------------
-
- The Configure.py script and the Makefile has been made somewhat more
- bullet-proof, after reports of (minor) trouble on certain platforms.
-
- There is now a script to patch Makefile and config.c to add a new
- optional built-in module: Addmodule.sh. Read the script before using!
-
- Useing Addmodule.sh, all optional modules can now be configured at
- compile time using Configure.py, so there are no modules left that
- require dynamic loading.
-
- The Makefile has been fixed to make it easier to use with the VPATH
- feature of some Make versions (e.g. SunOS).
-
-
- Changes affecting portability
- -----------------------------
-
- Several minor portability problems have been solved, e.g. "malloc.h"
- has been renamed to "mymalloc.h", "strdup.c" is no longer used, and
- the system now tolerates malloc(0) returning 0.
-
- For dynamic loading on the SGI, Jack Jansen's dl 1.6 is now
- distributed with Python. This solves several minor problems, in
- particular scripts invoked using #! can now use dynamic loading.
-
-
- Changes to the interpreter interface
- ------------------------------------
-
- On popular demand, there's finally a "profile" feature for interactive
- use of the interpreter. If the environment variable $PYTHONSTARTUP is
- set to the name of an existing file, Python statements in this file
- are executed when the interpreter is started in interactive mode.
-
- There is a new clean-up mechanism, complementing try...finally: if you
- assign a function object to sys.exitfunc, it will be called when
- Python exits or receives a SIGTERM or SIGHUP signal.
-
- The interpreter is now generally assumed to live in
- /usr/local/bin/python (as opposed to /usr/local/python). The script
- demo/scripts/fixps.py will update old scripts in place (you can easily
- modify it to do other similar changes).
-
- Most I/O that uses sys.stdin/stdout/stderr will now use any object
- assigned to those names as long as the object supports readline() or
- write() methods.
-
- The parser stack has been increased to 500 to accommodate more
- complicated expressions (7 levels used to be the practical maximum,
- it's now about 38).
-
- The limit on the size of the *run-time* stack has completely been
- removed -- this means that tuple or list displays can contain any
- number of elements (formerly more than 50 would crash the
- interpreter).
-
-
- Changes to existing built-in functions and methods
- --------------------------------------------------
-
- The built-in functions int(), long(), float(), oct() and hex() now
- also apply to class instalces that define corresponding methods
- (__int__ etc.).
-
-
- New built-in functions
- ----------------------
-
- The new functions str() and repr() convert any object to a string.
- The function repr(x) is in all respects equivalent to `x` -- some
- people prefer a function for this. The function str(x) does the same
- except if x is already a string -- then it returns x unchanged
- (repr(x) adds quotes and escapes "funny" characters as octal escapes).
-
- The new function cmp(x, y) returns -1 if x<y, 0 if x==y, 1 if x>y.
-
-
- Changes to general built-in modules
- -----------------------------------
-
- The time module's functions are more general: time() returns a
- floating point number and sleep() accepts one. Their accuracies
- depends on the precision of the system clock. Millisleep is no longer
- needed (although it still exists for now), but millitimer is still
- needed since on some systems wall clock time is only available with
- seconds precision, while a source of more precise time exists that
- isn't synchronized with the wall clock. (On UNIX systems that support
- the BSD gettimeofday() function, time.time() is as time.millitimer().)
-
- The string representation of a file object now includes an address:
- '<file 'filename', mode 'r' at #######>' where ###### is a hex number
- (the object's address) to make it unique.
-
- New functions added to posix: nice(), setpgrp(), and if your system
- supports them: setsid(), setpgid(), tcgetpgrp(), tcsetpgrp().
-
- Improvements to the socket module: socket objects have new methods
- getpeername() and getsockname(), and the {get,set}sockopt methods can
- now get/set any kind of option using strings built with the new struct
- module. And there's a new function fromfd() which creates a socket
- object given a file descriptor (useful for servers started by inetd,
- which have a socket connected to stdin and stdout).
-
-
- Changes to SGI-specific built-in modules
- ----------------------------------------
-
- The FORMS library interface (fl) now requires FORMS 2.1a. Some new
- functions have been added and some bugs have been fixed.
-
- Additions to al (audio library interface): added getname(),
- getdefault() and getminmax().
-
- The gl modules doesn't call "foreground()" when initialized (this
- caused some problems) like it dit in 0.9.7beta (but not before).
- There's a new gl function 'gversion() which returns a version string.
-
- The interface to sv (Indigo video interface) has totally changed.
- (Sorry, still no documentation, but see the examples in
- demo/sgi/{sv,video}.)
-
-
- Changes to standard library modules
- -----------------------------------
-
- Most functions in module string are now much faster: they're actually
- implemented in C. The module containing the C versions is called
- "strop" but you should still import "string" since strop doesn't
- provide all the interfaces defined in string (and strop may be renamed
- to string when it is complete in a future release).
-
- string.index() now accepts an optional third argument giving an index
- where to start searching in the first argument, so you can find second
- and further occurrences (this is similar to the regular expression
- functions in regex).
-
- The definition of what string.splitfields(anything, '') should return
- is changed for the last time: it returns a singleton list containing
- its whole first argument unchanged. This is compatible with
- regsub.split() which also ignores empty delimiter matches.
-
- posixpath, macpath: added dirname() and normpath() (and basename() to
- macpath).
-
- The mainloop module (for use with stdwin) can now demultiplex input
- from other sources, as long as they can be polled with select().
-
-
- New built-in modules
- --------------------
-
- Module struct defines functions to pack/unpack values to/from strings
- representing binary values in native byte order.
-
- Module strop implements C versions of many functions from string (see
- above).
-
- Optional module fcntl defines interfaces to fcntl() and ioctl() --
- UNIX only. (Not yet properly documented -- see however src/fcntl.doc.)
-
- Optional module mpz defines an interface to an altaernative long
- integer implementation, the GNU MPZ library.
-
- Optional module md5 uses the GNU MPZ library to calculate MD5
- signatures of strings.
-
- There are also optional new modules specific to SGI machines: imageop
- defines some simple operations to images represented as strings; sv
- interfaces to the Indigo video board; cl interfaces to the (yet
- unreleased) compression library.
-
-
- New standard library modules
- ----------------------------
-
- (Unfortunately the following modules are not all documented; read the
- sources to find out more about them!)
-
- autotest: run testall without showing any output unless it differs
- from the expected output
-
- bisect: use bisection to insert or find an item in a sorted list
-
- colorsys: defines conversions between various color systems (e.g. RGB
- <-> YUV)
-
- nntplib: a client interface to NNTP servers
-
- pipes: utility to construct pipeline from templates, e.g. for
- conversion from one file format to another using several utilities.
-
- regsub: contains three functions that are more or less compatible with
- awk functions of the same name: sub() and gsub() do string
- substitution, split() splits a string using a regular expression to
- define how separators are define.
-
- test_types: test operations on the built-in types of Python
-
- toaiff: convert various audio file formats to AIFF format
-
- tzparse: parse the TZ environment parameter (this may be less general
- than it could be, let me know if you fix it).
-
- (Note that the obsolete module "path" no longer exists.)
-
-
- New SGI-specific library modules
- --------------------------------
-
- CL: constants for use with the built-in compression library interface (cl)
-
- Queue: a multi-producer, multi-consumer queue class implemented for
- use with the built-in thread module
-
- SOCKET: constants for use with built-in module socket, e.g. to set/get
- socket options. This is SGI-specific because the constants to be
- passed are system-dependent. You can generate a version for your own
- system by running the script demo/scripts/h2py.py with
- /usr/include/sys/socket.h as input.
-
- cddb: interface to the database used the the CD player
-
- torgb: convert various image file types to rgb format (requires pbmplus)
-
-
- New demos
- ---------
-
- There's an experimental interface to define Sun RPC clients and
- servers in demo/rpc.
-
- There's a collection of interfaces to WWW, WAIS and Gopher (both
- Python classes and program providing a user interface) in demo/www.
- This includes a program texi2html.py which converts texinfo files to
- HTML files (the format used hy WWW).
-
- The ibrowse demo has moved from demo/stdwin/ibrowse to demo/ibrowse.
-
- For SGI systems, there's a whole collection of programs and classes
- that make use of the Indigo video board in demo/sgi/{sv,video}. This
- represents a significant amount of work that we're giving away!
-
- There are demos "rsa" and "md5test" that exercise the mpz and md5
- modules, respectively. The rsa demo is a complete implementation of
- the RSA public-key cryptosystem!
-
- A bunch of games and examples submitted by Stoffel Erasmus have been
- included in demo/stoffel.
-
- There are miscellaneous new files in some existing demo
- subdirectories: classes/bitvec.py, scripts/{fixps,methfix}.py,
- sgi/al/cmpaf.py, sockets/{mcast,gopher}.py.
-
- There are also many minor changes to existing files, but I'm too lazy
- to run a diff and note the differences -- you can do this yourself if
- you save the old distribution's demos. One highlight: the
- stdwin/python.py demo is much improved!
-
-
- Changes to the documentation
- ----------------------------
-
- The LaTeX source for the library uses different macros to enable it to
- be converted to texinfo, and from there to INFO or HTML format so it
- can be browsed as a hypertext. The net result is that you can now
- read the Python library documentation in Emacs info mode!
-
-
- Changes to the source code that affect C extension writers
- ----------------------------------------------------------
-
- The function strdup() no longer exists (it was used only in one places
- and is somewhat of a a portability problem sice some systems have the
- same function in their C library.
-
- The functions NEW() and RENEW() allocate one spare byte to guard
- against a NULL return from malloc(0) being taken for an error, but
- this should not be relied upon.
-
-
- =========================
- ==> Release 0.9.7beta <==
- =========================
-
-
- Changes to the language proper
- ------------------------------
-
- User-defined classes can now implement operations invoked through
- special syntax, such as x[i] or `x` by defining methods named
- __getitem__(self, i) or __repr__(self), etc.
-
-
- Changes to the build process
- ----------------------------
-
- Instead of extensive manual editing of the Makefile to select
- compile-time options, you can now run a Configure.py script.
- The Makefile as distributed builds a minimal interpreter sufficient to
- run Configure.py. See also misc/BUILD
-
- The Makefile now includes more "utility" targets, e.g. install and
- tags/TAGS
-
- Using the provided strtod.c and strtol.c are now separate options, as
- on the Sun the provided strtod.c dumps core :-(
-
- The regex module is now an option chosen by the Makefile, since some
- (old) C compilers choke on regexpr.c
-
-
- Changes affecting portability
- -----------------------------
-
- You need STDWIN version 0.9.7 (released 30 June 1992) for the stdwin
- interface
-
- Dynamic loading is now supported for Sun (and other non-COFF systems)
- throug dld-3.2.3, as well as for SGI (a new version of Jack Jansen's
- DL is out, 1.4)
-
- The system-dependent code for the use of the select() system call is
- moved to one file: myselect.h
-
- Thanks to Jaap Vermeulen, the code should now port cleanly to the
- SEQUENT
-
-
- Changes to the interpreter interface
- ------------------------------------
-
- The interpretation of $PYTHONPATH in the environment is different: it
- is inserted in front of the default path instead of overriding it
-
-
- Changes to existing built-in functions and methods
- --------------------------------------------------
-
- List objects now support an optional argument to their sort() method,
- which is a comparison function similar to qsort(3) in C
-
- File objects now have a method fileno(), used by the new select module
- (see below)
-
-
- New built-in function
- ---------------------
-
- coerce(x, y): take two numbers and return a tuple containing them
- both converted to a common type
-
-
- Changes to built-in modules
- ---------------------------
-
- sys: fixed core dumps in settrace() and setprofile()
-
- socket: added socket methods setsockopt() and getsockopt(); and
- fileno(), used by the new select module (see below)
-
- stdwin: added fileno() == connectionnumber(), in support of new module
- select (see below)
-
- posix: added get{eg,eu,g,u}id(); waitpid() is now a separate function.
-
- gl: added qgetfd()
-
- fl: added several new functions, fixed several obscure bugs, adapted
- to FORMS 2.1
-
-
- Changes to standard modules
- ---------------------------
-
- posixpath: changed implementation of ismount()
-
- string: atoi() no longer mistakes leading zero for octal number
-
- ...
-
-
- New built-in modules
- --------------------
-
- Modules marked "dynamic only" are not configured at compile time but
- can be loaded dynamically. You need to turn on the DL or DLD option in
- the Makefile for support dynamic loading of modules (this requires
- external code).
-
- select: interfaces to the BSD select() system call
-
- dbm: interfaces to the (new) dbm library (dynamic only)
-
- nis: interfaces to some NIS functions (aka yellow pages)
-
- thread: limited form of multiple threads (sgi only)
-
- audioop: operations useful for audio programs, e.g. u-LAW and ADPCM
- coding (dynamic only)
-
- cd: interface to Indigo SCSI CDROM player audio library (sgi only)
-
- jpeg: read files in JPEG format (dynamic only, sgi only; needs
- external code)
-
- imgfile: read SGI image files (dynamic only, sgi only)
-
- sunaudiodev: interface to sun's /dev/audio (dynamic only, sun only)
-
- sv: interface to Indigo video library (sgi only)
-
- pc: a minimal set of MS-DOS interfaces (MS-DOS only)
-
- rotor: encryption, by Lance Ellinghouse (dynamic only)
-
-
- New standard modules
- --------------------
-
- Not all these modules are documented. Read the source:
- lib/<modulename>.py. Sometimes a file lib/<modulename>.doc contains
- additional documentation.
-
- imghdr: recognizes image file headers
-
- sndhdr: recognizes sound file headers
-
- profile: print run-time statistics of Python code
-
- readcd, cdplayer: companion modules for built-in module cd (sgi only)
-
- emacs: interface to Emacs using py-connect.el (see below).
-
- SOCKET: symbolic constant definitions for socket options
-
- SUNAUDIODEV: symbolic constant definitions for sunaudiodef (sun only)
-
- SV: symbolic constat definitions for sv (sgi only)
-
- CD: symbolic constat definitions for cd (sgi only)
-
-
- New demos
- ---------
-
- scripts/pp.py: execute Python as a filter with a Perl-like command
- line interface
-
- classes/: examples using the new class features
-
- threads/: examples using the new thread module
-
- sgi/cd/: examples using the new cd module
-
-
- Changes to the documentation
- ----------------------------
-
- The last-minute syntax changes of release 0.9.6 are now reflected
- everywhere in the manuals
-
- The reference manual has a new section (3.2) on implementing new kinds
- of numbers, sequences or mappings with user classes
-
- Classes are now treated extensively in the tutorial (chapter 9)
-
- Slightly restructured the system-dependent chapters of the library
- manual
-
- The file misc/EXTENDING incorporates documentation for mkvalue() and
- a new section on error handling
-
- The files misc/CLASSES and misc/ERRORS are no longer necessary
-
- The doc/Makefile now creates PostScript files automatically
-
-
- Miscellaneous changes
- ---------------------
-
- Incorporated Tim Peters' changes to python-mode.el, it's now version
- 1.06
-
- A python/Emacs bridge (provided by Terrence M. Brannon) lets a Python
- program running in an Emacs buffer execute Emacs lisp code. The
- necessary Python code is in lib/emacs.py. The Emacs code is
- misc/py-connect.el (it needs some external Emacs lisp code)
-
-
- Changes to the source code that affect C extension writers
- ----------------------------------------------------------
-
- New service function mkvalue() to construct a Python object from C
- values according to a "format" string a la getargs()
-
- Most functions from pythonmain.c moved to new pythonrun.c which is
- in libpython.a. This should make embedded versions of Python easier
-
- ceval.h is split in eval.h (which needs compile.h and only declares
- eval_code) and ceval.h (which doesn't need compile.hand declares the
- rest)
-
- ceval.h defines macros BGN_SAVE / END_SAVE for use with threads (to
- improve the parallellism of multi-threaded programs by letting other
- Python code run when a blocking system call or something similar is
- made)
-
- In structmember.[ch], new member types BYTE, CHAR and unsigned
- variants have been added
-
- New file xxmodule.c is a template for new extension modules.
-
- ==================================
- ==> RELEASE 0.9.6 (6 Apr 1992) <==
- ==================================
-
- Misc news in 0.9.6:
- - Restructured the misc subdirectory
- - Reference manual completed, library manual much extended (with indexes!)
- - the GNU Readline library is now distributed standard with Python
- - the script "../demo/scripts/classfix.py" fixes Python modules using old
- class syntax
- - Emacs python-mode.el (was python.el) vastly improved (thanks, Tim!)
- - Because of the GNU copyleft business I am not using the GNU regular
- expression implementation but a free re-implementation by Tatu Ylonen
- that recently appeared in comp.sources.misc (Bravo, Tatu!)
-
- New features in 0.9.6:
- - stricter try stmt syntax: cannot mix except and finally clauses on 1 try
- - New module 'os' supplants modules 'mac' and 'posix' for most cases;
- module 'path' is replaced by 'os.path'
- - os.path.split() return value differs from that of old path.split()
- - sys.exc_type, sys.exc_value, sys.exc_traceback are set to the exception
- currently being handled
- - sys.last_type, sys.last_value, sys.last_traceback remember last unhandled
- exception
- - New function string.expandtabs() expands tabs in a string
- - Added times() interface to posix (user & sys time of process & children)
- - Added uname() interface to posix (returns OS type, hostname, etc.)
- - New built-in function execfile() is like exec() but from a file
- - Functions exec() and eval() are less picky about whitespace/newlines
- - New built-in functions getattr() and setattr() access arbitrary attributes
- - More generic argument handling in built-in functions (see "./EXTENDING")
- - Dynamic loading of modules written in C or C++ (see "./DYNLOAD")
- - Division and modulo for long and plain integers with negative operands
- have changed; a/b is now floor(float(a)/float(b)) and a%b is defined
- as a-(a/b)*b. So now the outcome of divmod(a,b) is the same as
- (a/b, a%b) for integers. For floats, % is also changed, but of course
- / is unchanged, and divmod(x,y) does not yield (x/y, x%y)...
- - A function with explicit variable-length argument list can be declared
- like this: def f(*args): ...; or even like this: def f(a, b, *rest): ...
- - Code tracing and profiling features have been added, and two source
- code debuggers are provided in the library (pdb.py, tty-oriented,
- and wdb, window-oriented); you can now step through Python programs!
- See sys.settrace() and sys.setprofile(), and "../lib/pdb.doc"
- - '==' is now the only equality operator; "../demo/scripts/eqfix.py" is
- a script that fixes old Python modules
- - Plain integer right shift now uses sign extension
- - Long integer shift/mask operations now simulate 2's complement
- to give more useful results for negative operands
- - Changed/added range checks for long/plain integer shifts
- - Options found after "-c command" are now passed to the command in sys.argv
- (note subtle incompatiblity with "python -c command -- -options"!)
- - Module stdwin is better protected against touching objects after they've
- been closed; menus can now also be closed explicitly
- - Stdwin now uses its own exception (stdwin.error)
-
- New features in 0.9.5 (released as Macintosh application only, 2 Jan 1992):
- - dictionary objects can now be compared properly; e.g., {}=={} is true
- - new exception SystemExit causes termination if not caught;
- it is raised by sys.exit() so that 'finally' clauses can clean up,
- and it may even be caught. It does work interactively!
- - new module "regex" implements GNU Emacs style regular expressions;
- module "regexp" is rewritten in Python for backward compatibility
- - formal parameter lists may contain trailing commas
-
- Bugs fixed in 0.9.6:
- - assigning to or deleting a list item with a negative index dumped core
- - divmod(-10L,5L) returned (-3L, 5L) instead of (-2L, 0L)
-
- Bugs fixed in 0.9.5:
- - masking operations involving negative long integers gave wrong results
-
-
- ===================================
- ==> RELEASE 0.9.4 (24 Dec 1991) <==
- ===================================
-
- - new function argument handling (see below)
- - built-in apply(func, args) means func(args[0], args[1], ...)
- - new, more refined exceptions
- - new exception string values (NameError = 'NameError' etc.)
- - better checking for math exceptions
- - for sequences (string/tuple/list), x[-i] is now equivalent to x[len(x)-i]
- - fixed list assignment bug: "a[1:1] = a" now works correctly
- - new class syntax, without extraneous parentheses
- - new 'global' statement to assign global variables from within a function
-
-
- New class syntax
- ----------------
-
- You can now declare a base class as follows:
-
- class B: # Was: class B():
- def some_method(self): ...
- ...
-
- and a derived class thusly:
-
- class D(B): # Was: class D() = B():
- def another_method(self, arg): ...
-
- Multiple inheritance looks like this:
-
- class M(B, D): # Was: class M() = B(), D():
- def this_or_that_method(self, arg): ...
-
- The old syntax is still accepted by Python 0.9.4, but will disappear
- in Python 1.0 (to be posted to comp.sources).
-
-
- New 'global' statement
- ----------------------
-
- Every now and then you have a global variable in a module that you
- want to change from within a function in that module -- say, a count
- of calls to a function, or an option flag, etc. Until now this was
- not directly possible. While several kludges are known that
- circumvent the problem, and often the need for a global variable can
- be avoided by rewriting the module as a class, this does not always
- lead to clearer code.
-
- The 'global' statement solves this dilemma. Its occurrence in a
- function body means that, for the duration of that function, the
- names listed there refer to global variables. For instance:
-
- total = 0.0
- count = 0
-
- def add_to_total(amount):
- global total, count
- total = total + amount
- count = count + 1
-
- 'global' must be repeated in each function where it is needed. The
- names listed in a 'global' statement must not be used in the function
- before the statement is reached.
-
- Remember that you don't need to use 'global' if you only want to *use*
- a global variable in a function; nor do you need ot for assignments to
- parts of global variables (e.g., list or dictionary items or
- attributes of class instances). This has not changed; in fact
- assignment to part of a global variable was the standard workaround.
-
-
- New exceptions
- --------------
-
- Several new exceptions have been defined, to distinguish more clearly
- between different types of errors.
-
- name meaning was
-
- AttributeError reference to non-existing attribute NameError
- IOError unexpected I/O error RuntimeError
- ImportError import of non-existing module or name NameError
- IndexError invalid string, tuple or list index RuntimeError
- KeyError key not in dictionary RuntimeError
- OverflowError numeric overflow RuntimeError
- SyntaxError invalid syntax RuntimeError
- ValueError invalid argument value RuntimeError
- ZeroDivisionError division by zero RuntimeError
-
- The string value of each exception is now its name -- this makes it
- easier to experimentally find out which operations raise which
- exceptions; e.g.:
-
- >>> KeyboardInterrupt
- 'KeyboardInterrupt'
- >>>
-
-
- New argument passing semantics
- ------------------------------
-
- Off-line discussions with Steve Majewski and Daniel LaLiberte have
- convinced me that Python's parameter mechanism could be changed in a
- way that made both of them happy (I hope), kept me happy, fixed a
- number of outstanding problems, and, given some backward compatibility
- provisions, would only break a very small amount of existing code --
- probably all mine anyway. In fact I suspect that most Python users
- will hardly notice the difference. And yet it has cost me at least
- one sleepless night to decide to make the change...
-
- Philosophically, the change is quite radical (to me, anyway): a
- function is no longer called with either zero or one argument, which
- is a tuple if there appear to be more arguments. Every function now
- has an argument list containing 0, 1 or more arguments. This list is
- always implemented as a tuple, and it is a (run-time) error if a
- function is called with a different number of arguments than expected.
-
- What's the difference? you may ask. The answer is, very little unless
- you want to write variadic functions -- functions that may be called
- with a variable number of arguments. Formerly, you could write a
- function that accepted one or more arguments with little trouble, but
- writing a function that could be called with either 0 or 1 argument
- (or more) was next to impossible. This is now a piece of cake: you
- can simply declare an argument that receives the entire argument
- tuple, and check its length -- it will be of size 0 if there are no
- arguments.
-
- Another anomaly of the old system was the way multi-argument methods
- (in classes) had to be declared, e.g.:
-
- class Point():
- def init(self, (x, y, color)): ...
- def setcolor(self, color): ...
- dev moveto(self, (x, y)): ...
- def draw(self): ...
-
- Using the new scheme there is no need to enclose the method arguments
- in an extra set of parentheses, so the above class could become:
-
- class Point:
- def init(self, x, y, color): ...
- def setcolor(self, color): ...
- dev moveto(self, x, y): ...
- def draw(self): ...
-
- That is, the equivalence rule between methods and functions has
- changed so that now p.moveto(x,y) is equivalent to Point.moveto(p,x,y)
- while formerly it was equivalent to Point.moveto(p,(x,y)).
-
- A special backward compatibility rule makes that the old version also
- still works: whenever a function with exactly two arguments (at the top
- level) is called with more than two arguments, the second and further
- arguments are packed into a tuple and passed as the second argument.
- This rule is invoked independently of whether the function is actually a
- method, so there is a slight chance that some erroneous calls of
- functions expecting two arguments with more than that number of
- arguments go undetected at first -- when the function tries to use the
- second argument it may find it is a tuple instead of what was expected.
- Note that this rule will be removed from future versions of the
- language; it is a backward compatibility provision *only*.
-
- Two other rules and a new built-in function handle conversion between
- tuples and argument lists:
-
- Rule (a): when a function with more than one argument is called with a
- single argument that is a tuple of the right size, the tuple's items
- are used as arguments.
-
- Rule (b): when a function with exactly one argument receives no
- arguments or more than one, that one argument will receive a tuple
- containing the arguments (the tuple will be empty if there were no
- arguments).
-
-
- A new built-in function, apply(), was added to support functions that
- need to call other functions with a constructed argument list. The call
-
- apply(function, tuple)
-
- is equivalent to
-
- function(tuple[0], tuple[1], ..., tuple[len(tuple)-1])
-
-
- While no new argument syntax was added in this phase, it would now be
- quite sensible to add explicit syntax to Python for default argument
- values (as in C++ or Modula-3), or a "rest" argument to receive the
- remaining arguments of a variable-length argument list.
-
-
- ========================================================
- ==> Release 0.9.3 (never made available outside CWI) <==
- ========================================================
-
- - string sys.version shows current version (also printed on interactive entry)
- - more detailed exceptions, e.g., IOError, ZeroDivisionError, etc.
- - 'global' statement to declare module-global variables assigned in functions.
- - new class declaration syntax: class C(Base1, Base2, ...): suite
- (the old syntax is still accepted -- be sure to convert your classes now!)
- - C shifting and masking operators: << >> ~ & ^ | (for ints and longs).
- - C comparison operators: == != (the old = and <> remain valid).
- - floating point numbers may now start with a period (e.g., .14).
- - definition of integer division tightened (always truncates towards zero).
- - new builtins hex(x), oct(x) return hex/octal string from (long) integer.
- - new list method l.count(x) returns the number of occurrences of x in l.
- - new SGI module: al (Indigo and 4D/35 audio library).
- - the FORMS interface (modules fl and FL) now uses FORMS 2.0
- - module gl: added lrect{read,write}, rectzoom and pixmode;
- added (non-GL) functions (un)packrect.
- - new socket method: s.allowbroadcast(flag).
- - many objects support __dict__, __methods__ or __members__.
- - dir() lists anything that has __dict__.
- - class attributes are no longer read-only.
- - classes support __bases__, instances support __class__ (and __dict__).
- - divmod() now also works for floats.
- - fixed obscure bug in eval('1 ').
-
-
- ===================================
- ==> Release 0.9.2 (Autumn 1991) <==
- ===================================
-
- Highlights
- ----------
-
- - tutorial now (almost) complete; library reference reorganized
- - new syntax: continue statement; semicolons; dictionary constructors;
- restrictions on blank lines in source files removed
- - dramatically improved module load time through precompiled modules
- - arbitrary precision integers: compute 2 to the power 1000 and more...
- - arithmetic operators now accept mixed type operands, e.g., 3.14/4
- - more operations on list: remove, index, reverse; repetition
- - improved/new file operations: readlines, seek, tell, flush, ...
- - process management added to the posix module: fork/exec/wait/kill etc.
- - BSD socket operations (with example servers and clients!)
- - many new STDWIN features (color, fonts, polygons, ...)
- - new SGI modules: font manager and FORMS library interface
-
-
- Extended list of changes in 0.9.2
- ---------------------------------
-
- Here is a summary of the most important user-visible changes in 0.9.2,
- in somewhat arbitrary order. Changes in later versions are listed in
- the "highlights" section above.
-
-
- 1. Changes to the interpreter proper
-
- - Simple statements can now be separated by semicolons.
- If you write "if t: s1; s2", both s1 and s2 are executed
- conditionally.
- - The 'continue' statement was added, with semantics as in C.
- - Dictionary displays are now allowed on input: {key: value, ...}.
- - Blank lines and lines bearing only a comment no longer need to
- be indented properly. (A completely empty line still ends a multi-
- line statement interactively.)
- - Mixed arithmetic is supported, 1 compares equal to 1.0, etc.
- - Option "-c command" to execute statements from the command line
- - Compiled versions of modules are cached in ".pyc" files, giving a
- dramatic improvement of start-up time
- - Other, smaller speed improvements, e.g., extracting characters from
- strings, looking up single-character keys, and looking up global
- variables
- - Interrupting a print operation raises KeyboardInterrupt instead of
- only cancelling the print operation
- - Fixed various portability problems (it now passes gcc with only
- warnings -- more Standard C compatibility will be provided in later
- versions)
- - Source is prepared for porting to MS-DOS
- - Numeric constants are now checked for overflow (this requires
- standard-conforming strtol() and strtod() functions; a correct
- strtol() implementation is provided, but the strtod() provided
- relies on atof() for everything, including error checking
-
-
- 2. Changes to the built-in types, functions and modules
-
- - New module socket: interface to BSD socket primitives
- - New modules pwd and grp: access the UNIX password and group databases
- - (SGI only:) New module "fm" interfaces to the SGI IRIX Font Manager
- - (SGI only:) New module "fl" interfaces to Mark Overmars' FORMS library
- - New numeric type: long integer, for unlimited precision
- - integer constants suffixed with 'L' or 'l' are long integers
- - new built-in function long(x) converts int or float to long
- - int() and float() now also convert from long integers
- - New built-in function:
- - pow(x, y) returns x to the power y
- - New operation and methods for lists:
- - l*n returns a new list consisting of n concatenated copies of l
- - l.remove(x) removes the first occurrence of the value x from l
- - l.index(x) returns the index of the first occurrence of x in l
- - l.reverse() reverses l in place
- - New operation for tuples:
- - t*n returns a tuple consisting of n concatenated copies of t
- - Improved file handling:
- - f.readline() no longer restricts the line length, is faster,
- and isn't confused by null bytes; same for raw_input()
- - f.read() without arguments reads the entire (rest of the) file
- - mixing of print and sys.stdout.write() has different effect
- - New methods for files:
- - f.readlines() returns a list containing the lines of the file,
- as read with f.readline()
- - f.flush(), f.tell(), f.seek() call their stdio counterparts
- - f.isatty() tests for "tty-ness"
- - New posix functions:
- - _exit(), exec(), fork(), getpid(), getppid(), kill(), wait()
- - popen() returns a file object connected to a pipe
- - utime() replaces utimes() (the latter is not a POSIX name)
- - New stdwin features, including:
- - font handling
- - color drawing
- - scroll bars made optional
- - polygons
- - filled and xor shapes
- - text editing objects now have a 'settext' method
-
-
- 3. Changes to the standard library
-
- - Name change: the functions path.cat and macpath.cat are now called
- path.join and macpath.join
- - Added new modules: formatter, mutex, persist, sched, mainloop
- - Added some modules and functionality to the "widget set" (which is
- still under development, so please bear with me):
- DirList, FormSplit, TextEdit, WindowSched
- - Fixed module testall to work non-interactively
- - Module string:
- - added functions join() and joinfields()
- - fixed center() to work correct and make it "transitive"
- - Obsolete modules were removed: util, minmax
- - Some modules were moved to the demo directory
-
-
- 4. Changes to the demonstration programs
-
- - Added new useful scipts: byteyears, eptags, fact, from, lfact,
- objgraph, pdeps, pi, primes, ptags, which
- - Added a bunch of socket demos
- - Doubled the speed of ptags
- - Added new stdwin demos: microedit, miniedit
- - Added a windowing interface to the Python interpreter: python (most
- useful on the Mac)
- - Added a browser for Emacs info files: demo/stdwin/ibrowse
- (yes, I plan to put all STDWIN and Python documentation in texinfo
- form in the future)
-
-
- 5. Other changes to the distribution
-
- - An Emacs Lisp file "python.el" is provided to facilitate editing
- Python programs in GNU Emacs (slightly improved since posted to
- gnu.emacs.sources)
- - Some info on writing an extension in C is provided
- - Some info on building Python on non-UNIX platforms is provided
-
-
- =====================================
- ==> Release 0.9.1 (February 1991) <==
- =====================================
-
- - Micro changes only
- - Added file "patchlevel.h"
-
-
- =====================================
- ==> Release 0.9.0 (February 1991) <==
- =====================================
-
- Original posting to alt.sources.
-