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Guido van Rossum
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Misc/NEWS
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Misc/NEWS
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=======================================
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==> Release 1.0.0 (26 January 1994) <==
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=======================================
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As is traditional, so many things have changed that I can't pretend to
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be complete in these release notes, but I'll try anyway :-)
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Note that the very last section is labeled "remaining bugs".
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Source organization and build process
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-------------------------------------
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* The sources have finally been split: instead of a single src
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subdirectory there are now separate directories Include, Parser,
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Grammar, Objects, Python and Modules. Other directories also start
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with a capital letter: Misc, Doc, Lib, Demo.
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* A few extensions (notably Amoeba and X support) have been moved to a
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separate subtree Extensions, which is no longer in the core
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distribution, but separately ftp'able as extensions.tar.Z. (The
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distribution contains a placeholder Ext-dummy with a description of
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the Extensions subtree as well as the most recent versions of the
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scripts used there.)
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* A few large specialized demos (SGI video and www) have been
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moved to a separate subdirectory Demo2, which is no longer in the core
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distribution, but separately ftp'able as demo2.tar.Z.
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* Parts of the standard library have been moved to subdirectories:
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there are now standard subdirectories stdwin, test, sgi and sun4.
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* The configuration process has radically changed: I now use GNU
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autoconf. This makes it much easier to build on new Unix flavors, as
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well as fully supporting VPATH (if your Make has it). The scripts
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Configure.py and Addmodule.sh are no longer needed. Many source files
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have been adapted in order to work with the symbols that the configure
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script generated by autoconf defines (or not); the resulting source is
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much more portable to different C compilers and operating systems,
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even non Unix systems (a Mac port was done in an afternoon). See the
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toplevel README file for a description of the new build process.
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* GNU readline (a slightly newer version) is now a subdirectory of the
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Python toplevel. It is still not automatically configured (being
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totally autoconf-unaware :-). One problem has been solved: typing
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Control-C to a readline prompt will now work. The distribution no
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longer contains a "super-level" directory (above the python toplevel
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directory), and dl, dl-dld and GNU dld are no longer part of the
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Python distribution (you can still ftp them from
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ftp.cwi.nl:/pub/dynload).
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* The DOS functions have been taken out of posixmodule.c and moved
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into a separate file dosmodule.c.
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* There's now a separate file version.c which contains nothing but
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the version number.
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* The actual main program is now contained in config.c (unless NO_MAIN
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is defined); pythonmain.c now contains a function realmain() which is
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called from config.c's main().
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* All files needed to use the built-in module md5 are now contained in
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the distribution. The module has been cleaned up considerably.
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Documentation
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-------------
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* The library manual has been split into many more small latex files,
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so it is easier to edit Doc/lib.tex file to create a custom library
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manual, describing only those modules supported on your system. (This
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is not automated though.)
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* A fourth manual has been added, titled "Extending and Embedding the
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Python Interpreter" (Doc/ext.tex), which collects information about
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the interpreter which was previously spread over several files in the
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misc subdirectory.
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* The entire documentation is now also available on-line for those who
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have a WWW browser (e.g. NCSA Mosaic). Point your browser to the URL
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"http://www.cwi.nl/~guido/Python.html".
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Syntax
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------
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* Strings may now be enclosed in double quotes as well as in single
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quotes. There is no difference in interpretation. The repr() of
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string objects will use double quotes if the string contains a single
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quote and no double quotes. Thanks to Amrit for these changes!
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* There is a new keyword 'exec'. This replaces the exec() built-in
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function. If a function contains an exec statement, local variable
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optimization is not performed for that particular function, thus
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making assignment to local variables in exec statements less
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confusing. (As a consequence, os.exec and python.exec have been
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renamed to execv.)
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* There is a new keyword 'lambda'. An expression of the form
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lambda <parameters> : <expression>
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yields an anonymous function. This is really only syntactic sugar;
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you can just as well define a local function using
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def some_temporary_name(<parameters>): return <expression>
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Lambda expressions are particularly useful in combination with map(),
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filter() and reduce(), described below. Thanks to Amrit for
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submitting this code (as well as map(), filter(), reduce() and
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xrange())!
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Built-in functions
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------------------
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* The built-in module containing the built-in functions is called
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__builtin__ instead of builtin.
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* New built-in functions map(), filter() and reduce() perform standard
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functional programming operations (though not lazily):
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- map(f, seq) returns a new sequence whose items are the items from
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seq with f() applied to them.
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- filter(f, seq) returns a subsequence of seq consisting of those
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items for which f() is true.
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- reduce(f, seq, initial) returns a value computed as follows:
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acc = initial
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for item in seq: acc = f(acc, item)
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return acc
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* New function xrange() creates a "range object". Its arguments are
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the same as those of range(), and when used in a for loop a range
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objects also behaves identical. The advantage of xrange() over
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range() is that its representation (if the range contains many
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elements) is much more compact than that of range(). The disadvantage
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is that the result cannot be used to initialize a list object or for
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the "Python idiom" [RED, GREEN, BLUE] = range(3). On some modern
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architectures, benchmarks have shown that "for i in range(...): ..."
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actually executes *faster* than "for i in xrange(...): ...", but on
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memory starved machines like PCs running DOS range(100000) may be just
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too big to be represented at all...
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* Built-in function exec() has been replaced by the exec statement --
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see above.
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The interpreter
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---------------
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* Syntax errors are now not printed to stderr by the parser, but
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rather the offending line and other relevant information are packed up
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in the SyntaxError exception argument. When the main loop catches a
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SyntaxError exception it will print the error in the same format as
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previously, but at the proper position in the stack traceback.
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* You can now set a maximum to the number of traceback entries
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printed by assigning to sys.tracebacklimit. The default is 1000.
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* The version number in .pyc files has changed yet again.
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* It is now possible to have a .pyc file without a corresponding .py
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file. (Warning: this may break existing installations if you have an
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old .pyc file lingering around somewhere on your module search path
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without a corresponding .py file, when there is a .py file for a
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module of the same name further down the path -- the new interpreter
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will find the first .pyc file and complain about it, while the old
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interpreter would ignore it and use the .py file further down.)
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* The list sys.builtin_module_names is now sorted and also contains
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the names of a few hardwired built-in modules (sys, __main__ and
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__builtin__).
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* A module can now find its own name by accessing the global variable
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__name__. Assigning to this variable essentially renames the module
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(it should also be stored under a different key in sys.modules).
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A neat hack follows from this: a module that wants to execute a main
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program when called as a script no longer needs to compare
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sys.argv[0]; it can simply do "if __name__ == '__main__': main()".
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* When an object is printed by the print statement, its implementation
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of str() is used. This means that classes can define __str__(self) to
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direct how their instances are printed. This is different from
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__repr__(self), which should define an unambigous string
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representation of the instance. (If __str__() is not defined, it
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defaults to __repr__().)
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* Functions and code objects can now be compared meaningfully.
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* On systems supporting SunOS or SVR4 style shared libraries, dynamic
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loading of modules using shared libraries is automatically configured.
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Thanks to Bill Jansen and Denis Severson for contributing this change!
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Built-in objects
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----------------
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* File objects have acquired a new method writelines() which is the
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reverse of readlines(). (It does not actually write lines, just a
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list of strings, but the symmetry makes the choice of name OK.)
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Built-in modules
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----------------
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* Socket objects no longer support the avail() method. Use the select
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module instead, or use this function to replace it:
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def avail(f):
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import select
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return f in select.select([f], [], [], 0)[0]
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* Initialization of stdwin is done differently. It actually modifies
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sys.argv (taking out the options the X version of stdwin recognizes)
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the first time it is imported.
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* A new built-in module parser provides a rudimentary interface to the
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python parser. Corresponding standard library modules token and symbol
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defines the numeric values of tokens and non-terminal symbols.
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* The posix module has aquired new functions setuid(), setgid(),
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execve(), and exec() has been renamed to execv().
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* The array module is extended with 8-byte object swaps, the 'i'
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format character, and a reverse() method. The read() and write()
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methods are renamed to fromfile() and tofile().
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* The rotor module has freed of portability bugs. This introduces a
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backward compatibility problem: strings encoded with the old rotor
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module can't be decoded by the new version.
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* For select.select(), a timeout (4th) argument of None means the same
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as leaving the timeout argument out.
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* Module strop (and hence standard library module string) has aquired
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a new function: rindex(). Thanks to Amrit!
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* Module regex defines a new function symcomp() which uses an extended
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regular expression syntax: parenthesized subexpressions may be labeled
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using the form "\(<labelname>...\)", and the group() method can return
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sub-expressions by name. Thanks to Tracy Tims for these changes!
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* Multiple threads are now supported on Solaris 2. Thanks to Sjoerd
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Mullender!
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Standard library modules
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------------------------
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* The library is now split in several subdirectories: all stuff using
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stdwin is in Lib/stdwin, all SGI specific (or SGI Indigo or GL) stuff
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is in Lib/sgi, all Sun Sparc specific stuff is in Lib/sun4, and all
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test modules are in Lib/test. The default module search path will
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include all relevant subdirectories by default.
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* Module os now knows about trying to import dos. It defines
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functions execl(), execle(), execlp() and execvp().
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* New module dospath (should be attacked by a DOS hacker though).
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* All modules defining classes now define __init__() constructors
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instead of init() methods. THIS IS AN INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE!
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* Some minor changes and bugfixes module ftplib (mostly Steve
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Majewski's suggestions); the debug() method is renamed to
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set_debuglevel().
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* Some new test modules (not run automatically by testall though):
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test_audioop, test_md5, test_rgbimg, test_select.
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* Module string now defines rindex() and rfind() in analogy of index()
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and find(). It also defines atof() and atol() (and corresponding
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exceptions) in analogy to atoi().
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* Added help() functions to modules profile and pdb.
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* The wdb debugger (now in Lib/stdwin) now shows class or instance
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variables on a double click. Thanks to Sjoerd Mullender!
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* The (undocumented) module lambda has gone -- you couldn't import it
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any more, and it was basically more a demo than a library module...
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Multimedia extensions
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---------------------
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* The optional built-in modules audioop and imageop are now standard
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parts of the interpreter. Thanks to Sjoerd Mullender and Jack Jansen
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for contributing this code!
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* There's a new operation in audioop: minmax().
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* There's a new built-in module called rgbimg which supports portable
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efficient reading of SGI RCG image files. Thanks also to Paul
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Haeberli for the original code! (Who will contribute a GIF reader?)
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* The module aifc is gone -- you should now always use aifc, which has
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received a facelift.
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* There's a new module sunau., for reading Sun (and NeXT) audio files.
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* There's a new module audiodev which provides a uniform interface to
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(SGI Indigo and Sun Sparc) audio hardware.
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* There's a new module sndhdr which recognizes various sound files by
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looking in their header and checking for various magic words.
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Optimizations
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-------------
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* Most optimizations below can be configured by compile-time flags.
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Thanks to Sjoerd Mullender for submitting these optimizations!
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* Small integers (default -1..99) are shared -- i.e. if two different
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functions compute the same value it is possible (but not
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guaranteed!!!) that they return the same *object*. Python programs
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can detect this but should *never* rely on it.
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* Empty tuples (which all compare equal) are shared in the same
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manner.
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* Tuples of size up to 20 (default) are put in separate free lists
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when deallocated.
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* There is a compile-time option to cache a string's hash function,
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but this appeared to have a negligeable effect, and as it costs 4
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bytes per string it is disabled by default.
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Embedding Python
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----------------
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* The initialization interface has been simplified somewhat. You now
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only call "initall()" to initialize the interpreter.
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* The previously announced renaming of externally visible identifiers
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has not been carried out. It will happen in a later release. Sorry.
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Miscellaneous bugs that have been fixed
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---------------------------------------
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* All known portability bugs.
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* Version 0.9.9 dumped core in <listobject>.sort() which has been
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fixed. Thanks to Jaap Vermeulen for fixing this and posting the fix
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on the mailing list while I was away!
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* Core dump on a format string ending in '%', e.g. in the expression
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'%' % None.
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* The array module yielded a bogus result for concatenation (a+b would
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yield a+a).
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* Some serious memory leaks in strop.split() and strop.splitfields().
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* Several problems with the nis module.
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* Subtle problem when copying a class method from another class
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through assignment (the method could not be called).
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Remaining bugs
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--------------
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* One problem with 64-bit machines remains -- since .pyc files are
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portable and use only 4 bytes to represent an integer object, 64-bit
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integer literals are silently truncated when written into a .pyc file.
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Work-around: use eval('123456789101112').
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* The freeze script doesn't work any more. A new and more portable
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one can probably be cooked up using tricks from Extensions/mkext.py.
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* The dos support hasn't been tested yet. (Really Soon Now we should
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have a PC with a working C compiler!)
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--Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam <Guido.van.Rossum@cwi.nl>
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URL: <http://www.cwi.nl/cwi/people/Guido.van.Rossum.html>
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