Mailing List Archive

1.5.2->1.6 Changes
I'm starting to compile a list of changes from 1.5.2 to 1.6. Here's what I
came up with so far
-- string objects now have methods (though they are still immutable)
-- unicode support: Unicode strings are marked with u"string", and there
is support for arbitrary encoders/decoders
-- "in" operator can now be overriden in user-defined classes to mean anything:
it calls the magic method __contains__
-- SRE is the new regular expression engine. re.py became an interface to
the same engine. The new engine fully supports unicode regular expressions.
-- Some methods which would take multiple arguments and treat them as a tuple
were fixed: list.{append, insert, remove, count}, socket.connect
-- Some modules were made obsolete
-- filecmp.py (supersedes the old cmp.py and dircmp.py modules),
-- tabnanny.py (make sure the source file doesn't assume a specific tab-width)
-- win32reg (win32 registry editor)
-- unicode module, and codecs package
-- New calling syntax: f(*args, **kw) equivalent to apply(f, args, kw)
-- _tkinter now uses the object, rather then string, interface to Tcl.

Please e-mail me personally if you think of any other changes, and I'll
try to integrate them into a complete "changes" document.

Thanks in advance
--
Moshe Zadka <mzadka@geocities.com>.
http://www.oreilly.com/news/prescod_0300.html
http://www.linux.org.il -- we put the penguin in .com
Re: 1.5.2->1.6 Changes [ In reply to ]
Moshe Zadka <moshez@math.huji.ac.il>:
> -- _tkinter now uses the object, rather then string, interface to Tcl.

Hm, does this mean that the annoying requirement to do explicit gets and
sets to move data between the Python world and the Tcl/Tk world is gone?
--
<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a>

"A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny
gun ownership to the bourgeoisie."
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Re: 1.5.2->1.6 Changes [ In reply to ]
On Wed, 29 Mar 2000, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

> Moshe Zadka <moshez@math.huji.ac.il>:
> > -- _tkinter now uses the object, rather then string, interface to Tcl.
>
> Hm, does this mean that the annoying requirement to do explicit gets and
> sets to move data between the Python world and the Tcl/Tk world is gone?

I doubt it. It's just that Python and Tcl have such a different outlook
about variables, that I don't think it can be slided over.
--
Moshe Zadka <mzadka@geocities.com>.
http://www.oreilly.com/news/prescod_0300.html
http://www.linux.org.il -- we put the penguin in .com
Re: 1.5.2->1.6 Changes [ In reply to ]
> Moshe Zadka <moshez@math.huji.ac.il>:
> > -- _tkinter now uses the object, rather then string, interface to Tcl.

Eric Raymond:
> Hm, does this mean that the annoying requirement to do explicit gets and
> sets to move data between the Python world and the Tcl/Tk world is gone?

Not sure what you are referring to -- this should be completely
transparant to Python/Tkinter users. If you are thinking of the way
Tcl variables are created and manipulated in Python, no, this doesn't
change, alas (Tcl variables aren't objects -- they are manipulated
through get and set commands. :-)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
Re: 1.5.2->1.6 Changes [ In reply to ]
Moshe Zadka writes:
> -- filecmp.py (supersedes the old cmp.py and dircmp.py modules),
> -- tabnanny.py (make sure the source file doesn't assume a specific tab-width)

Weren't these in 1.5.2? I think filecmp is documented in the
released docs... ah, no, I'm safe. ;)

> Please e-mail me personally if you think of any other changes, and I'll
> try to integrate them into a complete "changes" document.

The documentation is updated. ;)


-Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives
Re: 1.5.2->1.6 Changes [ In reply to ]
On Wed, 29 Mar 2000, Fred L. Drake, Jr. wrote:

>
> Moshe Zadka writes:
> > -- filecmp.py (supersedes the old cmp.py and dircmp.py modules),
> > -- tabnanny.py (make sure the source file doesn't assume a specific tab-width)
>
> Weren't these in 1.5.2? I think filecmp is documented in the
> released docs... ah, no, I'm safe. ;)

Tabnanny wasn't a module, and filecmp wasn't at all.

> The documentation is updated. ;)

Yes, but it was released as a late part of 1.5.2.
--
Moshe Zadka <mzadka@geocities.com>.
http://www.oreilly.com/news/prescod_0300.html
http://www.linux.org.il -- we put the penguin in .com