Mailing List Archive

1.5.2 -> 1.6 Changes
Here is a new list of things that will change in the next release.
Thanks to all the people who gave me hints and information!
If you have anything you think I missed, or mistreated, please e-mail
me personally -- I'll post an updated version soon.

Obligatory
==========
A lot of bug-fixes, some optimizations, many improvements in the documentation

Core changes
============
Deleting objects is safe even for deeply nested data structures.

Long/int unifications: long integers can be used in seek() calls, as slice
indexes. str(1L) --> '1', not '1L' (repr() is still the same)

Builds on NT Alpha

UnboundLocalError is raised when a local variable is undefined
long, int take optional "base" parameter

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__

New calling syntax: f(*args, **kw) equivalent to apply(f, args, kw)

Some methods which would take multiple arguments and treat them as a tuple
were fixed: list.{append, insert, remove, count}, socket.connect

New modules
===========
winreg - Windows registry interface.
Distutils - tools for distributing Python modules
robotparser - parse a robots.txt file (for writing web spiders)
linuxaudio - audio for Linux
mmap - treat a file as a memory buffer
sre - regular expressions (fast, supports unicode)
filecmp - supersedes the old cmp.py and dircmp.py modules
tabnanny - check Python sources for tab-width dependance
unicode - support for unicode
codecs - support for Unicode encoders/decoders

Module changes
==============
re - changed to be a frontend to sre
readline, ConfigParser, cgi, calendar, posix, readline, xmllib, aifc, chunk,
wave, random, shelve, nntplib - minor enhancements
socket, httplib, urllib - optional OpenSSL support
_tkinter - support for 8.1,8.2,8.3 (no support for versions older then 8.0)

Tool changes
============
IDLE -- complete overhaul

(Andrew, I'm still waiting for the expat support and integration to add to
this list -- other than that, please contact me if you want something less
telegraphic <wink>)
--
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,

I would highlight those bits that are likely to warrant a little closer
scrutiny. The list.{append,insert,...} and socket.connect change certainly
qualify. Perhaps split the Core Changes section into two subsections, one
set of changes likely to require some adaptation and one set that should be
backwards-compatible.

--
Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip@mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
Re: 1.5.2 -> 1.6 Changes [ In reply to ]
See what I've done to Moshe's list: http://www.python.org/1.6/

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
Re: 1.5.2 -> 1.6 Changes [ In reply to ]
Guido> See what I've done to Moshe's list: http://www.python.org/1.6/

Looks good. Attached are a couple nitpicky diffs.

Skip
Re: 1.5.2 -> 1.6 Changes [ In reply to ]
Hi!

Guido van Rossum :
> See what I've done to Moshe's list: http://www.python.org/1.6/

Very fine, but I have a few small annotations:

1.'linuxaudio' has been renamed to 'linuxaudiodev'

2.The following text:

"_tkinter - support for 8.1,8.2,8.3 (no support for versions older than 8.0)."

looks a bit misleading, since it is not explicit about Version 8.0.x
I suggest the following wording:

"_tkinter - supports Tcl/Tk from version 8.0 up to the current 8.3.
Support for versions older than 8.0 has been dropped."

3.'src/Tools/i18n/pygettext.py' by Barry should be mentioned. This is
a very useful utility. I suggest to append the following text:

"New utility pygettext.py -- Python equivalent of xgettext(1).
A message text extraction tool used for internationalizing
applications written in Python"

Regards, Peter
Re: 1.5.2 -> 1.6 Changes [ In reply to ]
Peter Funk writes:
> I suggest the following wording:
...
> a very useful utility. I suggest to append the following text:

Peter,
I'm beginning to figure this out -- you really just want to get
published! ;)
You forgot the legelese. ;(


-Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives