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-\documentclass{howto}
-
-% $Id$
-
-\title{What's New in Python 2.0}
-\release{1.02}
-\author{A.M. Kuchling and Moshe Zadka}
-\authoraddress{
-	\strong{Python Software Foundation}\\
-	Email: \email{amk@amk.ca}, \email{moshez@twistedmatrix.com}
-}
-\begin{document}
-\maketitle\tableofcontents
-
-\section{Introduction}
-
-A new release of Python, version 2.0, was released on October 16, 2000. This
-article covers the exciting new features in 2.0, highlights some other
-useful changes, and points out a few incompatible changes that may require
-rewriting code.
-
-Python's development never completely stops between releases, and a
-steady flow of bug fixes and improvements are always being submitted.
-A host of minor fixes, a few optimizations, additional docstrings, and
-better error messages went into 2.0; to list them all would be
-impossible, but they're certainly significant.  Consult the
-publicly-available CVS logs if you want to see the full list.  This
-progress is due to the five developers working for 
-PythonLabs are now getting paid to spend their days fixing bugs,
-and also due to the improved communication resulting 
-from moving to SourceForge.
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{What About Python 1.6?}
-
-Python 1.6 can be thought of as the Contractual Obligations Python
-release.  After the core development team left CNRI in May 2000, CNRI
-requested that a 1.6 release be created, containing all the work on
-Python that had been performed at CNRI.  Python 1.6 therefore
-represents the state of the CVS tree as of May 2000, with the most
-significant new feature being Unicode support.  Development continued
-after May, of course, so the 1.6 tree received a few fixes to ensure
-that it's forward-compatible with Python 2.0.  1.6 is therefore part
-of Python's evolution, and not a side branch.
-
-So, should you take much interest in Python 1.6?  Probably not.  The
-1.6final and 2.0beta1 releases were made on the same day (September 5,
-2000), the plan being to finalize Python 2.0 within a month or so.  If
-you have applications to maintain, there seems little point in
-breaking things by moving to 1.6, fixing them, and then having another
-round of breakage within a month by moving to 2.0; you're better off
-just going straight to 2.0.  Most of the really interesting features
-described in this document are only in 2.0, because a lot of work was
-done between May and September.  
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{New Development Process}
-
-The most important change in Python 2.0 may not be to the code at all,
-but to how Python is developed: in May 2000 the Python developers
-began using the tools made available by SourceForge for storing 
-source code, tracking bug reports, and managing the queue of patch
-submissions.  To report bugs or submit patches for Python 2.0, use the
-bug tracking and patch manager tools available from Python's project
-page, located at \url{http://sourceforge.net/projects/python/}.
-
-The most important of the services now hosted at SourceForge is the
-Python CVS tree, the version-controlled repository containing the
-source code for Python.  Previously, there were roughly 7 or so people
-who had write access to the CVS tree, and all patches had to be
-inspected and checked in by one of the people on this short list.
-Obviously, this wasn't very scalable.  By moving the CVS tree to
-SourceForge, it became possible to grant write access to more people;
-as of September 2000 there were 27 people able to check in changes, a
-fourfold increase.  This makes possible large-scale changes that
-wouldn't be attempted if they'd have to be filtered through the small
-group of core developers.  For example, one day Peter Schneider-Kamp
-took it into his head to drop K\&R C compatibility and convert the C
-source for Python to ANSI C. After getting approval on the python-dev
-mailing list, he launched into a flurry of checkins that lasted about
-a week, other developers joined in to help, and the job was done.  If
-there were only 5 people with write access, probably that task would
-have been viewed as ``nice, but not worth the time and effort needed''
-and it would never have gotten done.
-
-The shift to using SourceForge's services has resulted in a remarkable
-increase in the speed of development.  Patches now get submitted,
-commented on, revised by people other than the original submitter, and
-bounced back and forth between people until the patch is deemed worth
-checking in.  Bugs are tracked in one central location and can be
-assigned to a specific person for fixing, and we can count the number
-of open bugs to measure progress.  This didn't come without a cost:
-developers now have more e-mail to deal with, more mailing lists to
-follow, and special tools had to be written for the new environment.
-For example, SourceForge sends default patch and bug notification
-e-mail messages that are completely unhelpful, so Ka-Ping Yee wrote an
-HTML screen-scraper that sends more useful messages.
-
-The ease of adding code caused a few initial growing pains, such as
-code was checked in before it was ready or without getting clear
-agreement from the developer group.  The approval process that has
-emerged is somewhat similar to that used by the Apache group.
-Developers can vote +1, +0, -0, or -1 on a patch; +1 and -1 denote
-acceptance or rejection, while +0 and -0 mean the developer is mostly
-indifferent to the change, though with a slight positive or negative
-slant.  The most significant change from the Apache model is that the
-voting is essentially advisory, letting Guido van Rossum, who has
-Benevolent Dictator For Life status, know what the general opinion is.
-He can still ignore the result of a vote, and approve or
-reject a change even if the community disagrees with him.
-
-Producing an actual patch is the last step in adding a new feature,
-and is usually easy compared to the earlier task of coming up with a
-good design.  Discussions of new features can often explode into
-lengthy mailing list threads, making the discussion hard to follow,
-and no one can read every posting to python-dev.  Therefore, a
-relatively formal process has been set up to write Python Enhancement
-Proposals (PEPs), modelled on the Internet RFC process.  PEPs are
-draft documents that describe a proposed new feature, and are
-continually revised until the community reaches a consensus, either
-accepting or rejecting the proposal.  Quoting from the introduction to
-PEP 1, ``PEP Purpose and Guidelines'':
-
-\begin{quotation}
-    PEP stands for Python Enhancement Proposal.  A PEP is a design
-    document providing information to the Python community, or
-    describing a new feature for Python.  The PEP should provide a
-    concise technical specification of the feature and a rationale for
-    the feature.
-
-    We intend PEPs to be the primary mechanisms for proposing new
-    features, for collecting community input on an issue, and for
-    documenting the design decisions that have gone into Python.  The
-    PEP author is responsible for building consensus within the
-    community and documenting dissenting opinions.
-\end{quotation}
-
-Read the rest of PEP 1 for the details of the PEP editorial process,
-style, and format.  PEPs are kept in the Python CVS tree on
-SourceForge, though they're not part of the Python 2.0 distribution,
-and are also available in HTML form from
-\url{http://www.python.org/peps/}.  As of September 2000,
-there are 25 PEPS, ranging from PEP 201, ``Lockstep Iteration'', to
-PEP 225, ``Elementwise/Objectwise Operators''.
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{Unicode}
-
-The largest new feature in Python 2.0 is a new fundamental data type:
-Unicode strings.  Unicode uses 16-bit numbers to represent characters
-instead of the 8-bit number used by ASCII, meaning that 65,536
-distinct characters can be supported.
-
-The final interface for Unicode support was arrived at through
-countless often-stormy discussions on the python-dev mailing list, and
-mostly implemented by Marc-Andr\'e Lemburg, based on a Unicode string
-type implementation by Fredrik Lundh.  A detailed explanation of the
-interface was written up as \pep{100}, ``Python Unicode Integration''.
-This article will simply cover the most significant points about the
-Unicode interfaces.
-
-In Python source code, Unicode strings are written as
-\code{u"string"}.  Arbitrary Unicode characters can be written using a
-new escape sequence, \code{\e u\var{HHHH}}, where \var{HHHH} is a
-4-digit hexadecimal number from 0000 to FFFF.  The existing
-\code{\e x\var{HHHH}} escape sequence can also be used, and octal
-escapes can be used for characters up to U+01FF, which is represented
-by \code{\e 777}.
-
-Unicode strings, just like regular strings, are an immutable sequence
-type.  They can be indexed and sliced, but not modified in place.
-Unicode strings have an \method{encode( \optional{encoding} )} method
-that returns an 8-bit string in the desired encoding.  Encodings are
-named by strings, such as \code{'ascii'}, \code{'utf-8'},
-\code{'iso-8859-1'}, or whatever.  A codec API is defined for
-implementing and registering new encodings that are then available
-throughout a Python program.  If an encoding isn't specified, the
-default encoding is usually 7-bit ASCII, though it can be changed for
-your Python installation by calling the
-\function{sys.setdefaultencoding(\var{encoding})} function in a
-customised version of \file{site.py}.
-
-Combining 8-bit and Unicode strings always coerces to Unicode, using
-the default ASCII encoding; the result of \code{'a' + u'bc'} is
-\code{u'abc'}.
-
-New built-in functions have been added, and existing built-ins
-modified to support Unicode:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-\item \code{unichr(\var{ch})} returns a Unicode string 1 character
-long, containing the character \var{ch}.
-
-\item \code{ord(\var{u})}, where \var{u} is a 1-character regular or Unicode string, returns the number of the character as an integer.
-
-\item \code{unicode(\var{string} \optional{, \var{encoding}} 
-\optional{, \var{errors}} ) } creates a Unicode string from an 8-bit
-string.  \code{encoding} is a string naming the encoding to use.
-The \code{errors} parameter specifies the treatment of characters that
-are invalid for the current encoding; passing \code{'strict'} as the
-value causes an exception to be raised on any encoding error, while
-\code{'ignore'} causes errors to be silently ignored and
-\code{'replace'} uses U+FFFD, the official replacement character, in
-case of any problems.
-
-\item The \keyword{exec} statement, and various built-ins such as
-\code{eval()}, \code{getattr()}, and \code{setattr()} will also
-accept Unicode strings as well as regular strings.  (It's possible
-that the process of fixing this missed some built-ins; if you find a
-built-in function that accepts strings but doesn't accept Unicode
-strings at all, please report it as a bug.)
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-A new module, \module{unicodedata}, provides an interface to Unicode
-character properties.  For example, \code{unicodedata.category(u'A')}
-returns the 2-character string 'Lu', the 'L' denoting it's a letter,
-and 'u' meaning that it's uppercase.
-\code{unicodedata.bidirectional(u'\e u0660')} returns 'AN', meaning that U+0660 is
-an Arabic number.
-
-The \module{codecs} module contains functions to look up existing encodings
-and register new ones.  Unless you want to implement a
-new encoding, you'll most often use the
-\function{codecs.lookup(\var{encoding})} function, which returns a
-4-element tuple: \code{(\var{encode_func},
-\var{decode_func}, \var{stream_reader}, \var{stream_writer})}.
-
-\begin{itemize}
-\item \var{encode_func} is a function that takes a Unicode string, and
-returns a 2-tuple \code{(\var{string}, \var{length})}.  \var{string}
-is an 8-bit string containing a portion (perhaps all) of the Unicode
-string converted into the given encoding, and \var{length} tells you
-how much of the Unicode string was converted.
-
-\item \var{decode_func} is the opposite of \var{encode_func}, taking
-an 8-bit string and returning a 2-tuple \code{(\var{ustring},
-\var{length})}, consisting of the resulting Unicode string
-\var{ustring} and the integer \var{length} telling how much of the
-8-bit string was consumed.
-
-\item \var{stream_reader} is a class that supports decoding input from
-a stream.  \var{stream_reader(\var{file_obj})} returns an object that
-supports the \method{read()}, \method{readline()}, and
-\method{readlines()} methods.  These methods will all translate from
-the given encoding and return Unicode strings.
-
-\item \var{stream_writer}, similarly, is a class that supports
-encoding output to a stream.  \var{stream_writer(\var{file_obj})}
-returns an object that supports the \method{write()} and
-\method{writelines()} methods.  These methods expect Unicode strings,
-translating them to the given encoding on output.
-\end{itemize}
-
-For example, the following code writes a Unicode string into a file, 
-encoding it as UTF-8:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-import codecs
-
-unistr = u'\u0660\u2000ab ...'
-
-(UTF8_encode, UTF8_decode,
- UTF8_streamreader, UTF8_streamwriter) = codecs.lookup('UTF-8')
-
-output = UTF8_streamwriter( open( '/tmp/output', 'wb') )
-output.write( unistr )
-output.close()
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The following code would then read UTF-8 input from the file:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-input = UTF8_streamreader( open( '/tmp/output', 'rb') )
-print repr(input.read())
-input.close()
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Unicode-aware regular expressions are available through the
-\module{re} module, which has a new underlying implementation called
-SRE written by Fredrik Lundh of Secret Labs AB. 
-
-A \code{-U} command line option was added which causes the Python
-compiler to interpret all string literals as Unicode string literals.
-This is intended to be used in testing and future-proofing your Python
-code, since some future version of Python may drop support for 8-bit
-strings and provide only Unicode strings.
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{List Comprehensions}
-
-Lists are a workhorse data type in Python, and many programs
-manipulate a list at some point.  Two common operations on lists are
-to loop over them, and either pick out the elements that meet a
-certain criterion, or apply some function to each element.  For
-example, given a list of strings, you might want to pull out all the
-strings containing a given substring, or strip off trailing whitespace
-from each line.  
-
-The existing \function{map()} and \function{filter()} functions can be
-used for this purpose, but they require a function as one of their
-arguments.  This is fine if there's an existing built-in function that
-can be passed directly, but if there isn't, you have to create a
-little function to do the required work, and Python's scoping rules
-make the result ugly if the little function needs additional
-information.  Take the first example in the previous paragraph,
-finding all the strings in the list containing a given substring.  You
-could write the following to do it:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-# Given the list L, make a list of all strings 
-# containing the substring S.
-sublist = filter( lambda s, substring=S: 
-                     string.find(s, substring) != -1,
-	          L)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Because of Python's scoping rules, a default argument is used so that
-the anonymous function created by the \keyword{lambda} statement knows
-what substring is being searched for.  List comprehensions make this
-cleaner:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-sublist = [ s for s in L if string.find(s, S) != -1 ]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-List comprehensions have the form:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-[ expression for expr in sequence1 
-             for expr2 in sequence2 ...
-	     for exprN in sequenceN
-             if condition ]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The \keyword{for}...\keyword{in} clauses contain the sequences to be
-iterated over.  The sequences do not have to be the same length,
-because they are \emph{not} iterated over in parallel, but
-from left to right; this is explained more clearly in the following
-paragraphs.  The elements of the generated list will be the successive
-values of \var{expression}.  The final \keyword{if} clause is
-optional; if present, \var{expression} is only evaluated and added to
-the result if \var{condition} is true.
-
-To make the semantics very clear, a list comprehension is equivalent
-to the following Python code:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-for expr1 in sequence1:
-    for expr2 in sequence2:
-    ...
-        for exprN in sequenceN:
-             if (condition):
-                  # Append the value of 
-                  # the expression to the 
-                  # resulting list.
-\end{verbatim}
-
-This means that when there are multiple \keyword{for}...\keyword{in} clauses,
-the resulting list will be equal to the product of the lengths of all
-the sequences.  If you have two lists of length 3, the output list is
-9 elements long:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-seq1 = 'abc'
-seq2 = (1,2,3)
->>> [ (x,y) for x in seq1 for y in seq2]
-[('a', 1), ('a', 2), ('a', 3), ('b', 1), ('b', 2), ('b', 3), ('c', 1),
-('c', 2), ('c', 3)]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-To avoid introducing an ambiguity into Python's grammar, if
-\var{expression} is creating a tuple, it must be surrounded with
-parentheses.  The first list comprehension below is a syntax error,
-while the second one is correct:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-# Syntax error
-[ x,y for x in seq1 for y in seq2]
-# Correct
-[ (x,y) for x in seq1 for y in seq2]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The idea of list comprehensions originally comes from the functional
-programming language Haskell (\url{http://www.haskell.org}).  Greg
-Ewing argued most effectively for adding them to Python and wrote the
-initial list comprehension patch, which was then discussed for a
-seemingly endless time on the python-dev mailing list and kept
-up-to-date by Skip Montanaro.
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{Augmented Assignment}
-
-Augmented assignment operators, another long-requested feature, have
-been added to Python 2.0.  Augmented assignment operators include
-\code{+=}, \code{-=}, \code{*=}, and so forth.  For example, the
-statement \code{a += 2} increments the value of the variable 
-\code{a} by 2, equivalent to the slightly lengthier \code{a = a + 2}.
-
-% The empty groups below prevent conversion to guillemets.
-The full list of supported assignment operators is \code{+=},
-\code{-=}, \code{*=}, \code{/=}, \code{\%=}, \code{**=}, \code{\&=},
-\code{|=}, \verb|^=|, \code{>>=}, and \code{<<=}.  Python classes can
-override the augmented assignment operators by defining methods named
-\method{__iadd__}, \method{__isub__}, etc.  For example, the following
-\class{Number} class stores a number and supports using += to create a
-new instance with an incremented value.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-class Number:
-    def __init__(self, value):
-        self.value = value
-    def __iadd__(self, increment):
-	return Number( self.value + increment)
-
-n = Number(5)
-n += 3
-print n.value
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The \method{__iadd__} special method is called with the value of the
-increment, and should return a new instance with an appropriately
-modified value; this return value is bound as the new value of the
-variable on the left-hand side. 
-
-Augmented assignment operators were first introduced in the C
-programming language, and most C-derived languages, such as
-\program{awk}, \Cpp, Java, Perl, and PHP also support them.  The augmented
-assignment patch was implemented by Thomas Wouters.
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{String Methods}
-
-Until now string-manipulation functionality was in the \module{string}
-module, which was usually a front-end for the \module{strop}
-module written in C.  The addition of Unicode posed a difficulty for
-the \module{strop} module, because the functions would all need to be
-rewritten in order to accept either 8-bit or Unicode strings.  For
-functions such as \function{string.replace()}, which takes 3 string
-arguments, that means eight possible permutations, and correspondingly
-complicated code.
-
-Instead, Python 2.0 pushes the problem onto the string type, making
-string manipulation functionality available through methods on both
-8-bit strings and Unicode strings.  
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> 'andrew'.capitalize()
-'Andrew'
->>> 'hostname'.replace('os', 'linux')
-'hlinuxtname'
->>> 'moshe'.find('sh')
-2
-\end{verbatim}
-
-One thing that hasn't changed, a noteworthy April Fools' joke
-notwithstanding, is that Python strings are immutable. Thus, the
-string methods return new strings, and do not modify the string on
-which they operate.
-
-The old \module{string} module is still around for backwards
-compatibility, but it mostly acts as a front-end to the new string
-methods.
-
-Two methods which have no parallel in pre-2.0 versions, although they
-did exist in JPython for quite some time, are \method{startswith()}
-and \method{endswith}.  \code{s.startswith(t)} is equivalent to \code{s[:len(t)]
-== t}, while \code{s.endswith(t)} is equivalent to \code{s[-len(t):] == t}.
-
-One other method which deserves special mention is \method{join}.  The
-\method{join} method of a string receives one parameter, a sequence of
-strings, and is equivalent to the \function{string.join} function from
-the old \module{string} module, with the arguments reversed. In other
-words, \code{s.join(seq)} is equivalent to the old
-\code{string.join(seq, s)}.
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{Garbage Collection of Cycles}
-
-The C implementation of Python uses reference counting to implement
-garbage collection.  Every Python object maintains a count of the
-number of references pointing to itself, and adjusts the count as
-references are created or destroyed.  Once the reference count reaches
-zero, the object is no longer accessible, since you need to have a
-reference to an object to access it, and if the count is zero, no
-references exist any longer.  
-
-Reference counting has some pleasant properties: it's easy to
-understand and implement, and the resulting implementation is
-portable, fairly fast, and reacts well with other libraries that
-implement their own memory handling schemes.  The major problem with
-reference counting is that it sometimes doesn't realise that objects
-are no longer accessible, resulting in a memory leak.  This happens
-when there are cycles of references.
-
-Consider the simplest possible cycle, 
-a class instance which has a reference to itself:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-instance = SomeClass()
-instance.myself = instance
-\end{verbatim}
-
-After the above two lines of code have been executed, the reference
-count of \code{instance} is 2; one reference is from the variable
-named \samp{'instance'}, and the other is from the \samp{myself}
-attribute of the instance.  
-
-If the next line of code is \code{del instance}, what happens?  The
-reference count of \code{instance} is decreased by 1, so it has a
-reference count of 1; the reference in the \samp{myself} attribute
-still exists.  Yet the instance is no longer accessible through Python
-code, and it could be deleted.  Several objects can participate in a
-cycle if they have references to each other, causing all of the
-objects to be leaked.
-
-Python 2.0 fixes this problem by periodically executing a cycle
-detection algorithm which looks for inaccessible cycles and deletes
-the objects involved.  A new \module{gc} module provides functions to
-perform a garbage collection, obtain debugging statistics, and tuning
-the collector's parameters.
-
-Running the cycle detection algorithm takes some time, and therefore
-will result in some additional overhead.  It is hoped that after we've
-gotten experience with the cycle collection from using 2.0, Python 2.1
-will be able to minimize the overhead with careful tuning.  It's not
-yet obvious how much performance is lost, because benchmarking this is
-tricky and depends crucially on how often the program creates and
-destroys objects.  The detection of cycles can be disabled when Python
-is compiled, if you can't afford even a tiny speed penalty or suspect
-that the cycle collection is buggy, by specifying the
-\longprogramopt{without-cycle-gc} switch when running the
-\program{configure} script.
-
-Several people tackled this problem and contributed to a solution.  An
-early implementation of the cycle detection approach was written by
-Toby Kelsey.  The current algorithm was suggested by Eric Tiedemann
-during a visit to CNRI, and Guido van Rossum and Neil Schemenauer
-wrote two different implementations, which were later integrated by
-Neil.  Lots of other people offered suggestions along the way; the
-March 2000 archives of the python-dev mailing list contain most of the
-relevant discussion, especially in the threads titled ``Reference
-cycle collection for Python'' and ``Finalization again''.
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{Other Core Changes}
-
-Various minor changes have been made to Python's syntax and built-in
-functions.  None of the changes are very far-reaching, but they're
-handy conveniences.
-
-\subsection{Minor Language Changes}
-
-A new syntax makes it more convenient to call a given function
-with a tuple of arguments and/or a dictionary of keyword arguments.
-In Python 1.5 and earlier, you'd use the \function{apply()}
-built-in function: \code{apply(f, \var{args}, \var{kw})} calls the
-function \function{f()} with the argument tuple \var{args} and the
-keyword arguments in the dictionary \var{kw}.  \function{apply()} 
-is the same in 2.0, but thanks to a patch from
-Greg Ewing, \code{f(*\var{args}, **\var{kw})} as a shorter
-and clearer way to achieve the same effect.  This syntax is
-symmetrical with the syntax for defining functions:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def f(*args, **kw):
-    # args is a tuple of positional args,
-    # kw is a dictionary of keyword args
-    ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The \keyword{print} statement can now have its output directed to a
-file-like object by following the \keyword{print} with 
-\verb|>> file|, similar to the redirection operator in \UNIX{} shells.
-Previously you'd either have to use the \method{write()} method of the
-file-like object, which lacks the convenience and simplicity of
-\keyword{print}, or you could assign a new value to 
-\code{sys.stdout} and then restore the old value.  For sending output to standard error,
-it's much easier to write this:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-print >> sys.stderr, "Warning: action field not supplied"
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Modules can now be renamed on importing them, using the syntax
-\code{import \var{module} as \var{name}} or \code{from \var{module}
-import \var{name} as \var{othername}}.  The patch was submitted by
-Thomas Wouters.
-
-A new format style is available when using the \code{\%} operator;
-'\%r' will insert the \function{repr()} of its argument.  This was
-also added from symmetry considerations, this time for symmetry with
-the existing '\%s' format style, which inserts the \function{str()} of
-its argument.  For example, \code{'\%r \%s' \% ('abc', 'abc')} returns a
-string containing \verb|'abc' abc|.
-
-Previously there was no way to implement a class that overrode
-Python's built-in \keyword{in} operator and implemented a custom
-version.  \code{\var{obj} in \var{seq}} returns true if \var{obj} is
-present in the sequence \var{seq}; Python computes this by simply
-trying every index of the sequence until either \var{obj} is found or
-an \exception{IndexError} is encountered.  Moshe Zadka contributed a
-patch which adds a \method{__contains__} magic method for providing a
-custom implementation for \keyword{in}. Additionally, new built-in
-objects written in C can define what \keyword{in} means for them via a
-new slot in the sequence protocol.
-
-Earlier versions of Python used a recursive algorithm for deleting
-objects.  Deeply nested data structures could cause the interpreter to
-fill up the C stack and crash; Christian Tismer rewrote the deletion
-logic to fix this problem.  On a related note, comparing recursive
-objects recursed infinitely and crashed; Jeremy Hylton rewrote the
-code to no longer crash, producing a useful result instead.  For
-example, after this code:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-a = []
-b = []
-a.append(a)
-b.append(b)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The comparison \code{a==b} returns true, because the two recursive
-data structures are isomorphic. See the thread ``trashcan
-and PR\#7'' in the April 2000 archives of the python-dev mailing list
-for the discussion leading up to this implementation, and some useful
-relevant links.  
-% Starting URL:
-% http://www.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2000-April/004834.html
-
-Note that comparisons can now also raise exceptions. In earlier
-versions of Python, a comparison operation such as \code{cmp(a,b)}
-would always produce an answer, even if a user-defined
-\method{__cmp__} method encountered an error, since the resulting
-exception would simply be silently swallowed.
-
-Work has been done on porting Python to 64-bit Windows on the Itanium
-processor, mostly by Trent Mick of ActiveState.  (Confusingly,
-\code{sys.platform} is still \code{'win32'} on Win64 because it seems
-that for ease of porting, MS Visual \Cpp{} treats code as 32 bit on Itanium.)
-PythonWin also supports Windows CE; see the Python CE page at
-\url{http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/ce/} for more
-information.
-
-Another new platform is Darwin/MacOS X; initial support for it is in
-Python 2.0.  Dynamic loading works, if you specify ``configure
---with-dyld --with-suffix=.x''.  Consult the README in the Python
-source distribution for more instructions.
-
-An attempt has been made to alleviate one of Python's warts, the
-often-confusing \exception{NameError} exception when code refers to a
-local variable before the variable has been assigned a value.  For
-example, the following code raises an exception on the \keyword{print}
-statement in both 1.5.2 and 2.0; in 1.5.2 a \exception{NameError}
-exception is raised, while 2.0 raises a new
-\exception{UnboundLocalError} exception.
-\exception{UnboundLocalError} is a subclass of \exception{NameError},
-so any existing code that expects \exception{NameError} to be raised
-should still work.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def f():
-    print "i=",i
-    i = i + 1 
-f()
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Two new exceptions, \exception{TabError} and
-\exception{IndentationError}, have been introduced.  They're both
-subclasses of \exception{SyntaxError}, and are raised when Python code
-is found to be improperly indented.
-
-\subsection{Changes to Built-in Functions}
-
-A new built-in, \function{zip(\var{seq1}, \var{seq2}, ...)}, has been
-added.  \function{zip()} returns a list of tuples where each tuple
-contains the i-th element from each of the argument sequences.  The
-difference between \function{zip()} and \code{map(None, \var{seq1},
-\var{seq2})} is that \function{map()} pads the sequences with
-\code{None} if the sequences aren't all of the same length, while
-\function{zip()} truncates the returned list to the length of the
-shortest argument sequence.
-
-The \function{int()} and \function{long()} functions now accept an
-optional ``base'' parameter when the first argument is a string.
-\code{int('123', 10)} returns 123, while \code{int('123', 16)} returns
-291.  \code{int(123, 16)} raises a \exception{TypeError} exception
-with the message ``can't convert non-string with explicit base''.
-
-A new variable holding more detailed version information has been
-added to the \module{sys} module.  \code{sys.version_info} is a tuple
-\code{(\var{major}, \var{minor}, \var{micro}, \var{level},
-\var{serial})} For example, in a hypothetical 2.0.1beta1,
-\code{sys.version_info} would be \code{(2, 0, 1, 'beta', 1)}.
-\var{level} is a string such as \code{"alpha"}, \code{"beta"}, or
-\code{"final"} for a final release.
-
-Dictionaries have an odd new method, \method{setdefault(\var{key},
-\var{default})}, which behaves similarly to the existing
-\method{get()} method.  However, if the key is missing,
-\method{setdefault()} both returns the value of \var{default} as
-\method{get()} would do, and also inserts it into the dictionary as
-the value for \var{key}.  Thus, the following lines of code:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-if dict.has_key( key ): return dict[key]
-else: 
-    dict[key] = []
-    return dict[key]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-can be reduced to a single \code{return dict.setdefault(key, [])} statement.
-
-The interpreter sets a maximum recursion depth in order to catch
-runaway recursion before filling the C stack and causing a core dump
-or GPF..  Previously this limit was fixed when you compiled Python,
-but in 2.0 the maximum recursion depth can be read and modified using
-\function{sys.getrecursionlimit} and \function{sys.setrecursionlimit}.
-The default value is 1000, and a rough maximum value for a given
-platform can be found by running a new script,
-\file{Misc/find_recursionlimit.py}.
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{Porting to 2.0}
-
-New Python releases try hard to be compatible with previous releases,
-and the record has been pretty good.  However, some changes are
-considered useful enough, usually because they fix initial design decisions that
-turned out to be actively mistaken, that breaking backward compatibility
-can't always be avoided.  This section lists the changes in Python 2.0
-that may cause old Python code to break.
-
-The change which will probably break the most code is tightening up
-the arguments accepted by some methods.  Some methods would take
-multiple arguments and treat them as a tuple, particularly various
-list methods such as \method{.append()} and \method{.insert()}.
-In earlier versions of Python, if \code{L} is a list, \code{L.append(
-1,2 )} appends the tuple \code{(1,2)} to the list.  In Python 2.0 this
-causes a \exception{TypeError} exception to be raised, with the
-message: 'append requires exactly 1 argument; 2 given'.  The fix is to
-simply add an extra set of parentheses to pass both values as a tuple: 
-\code{L.append( (1,2) )}.
-
-The earlier versions of these methods were more forgiving because they
-used an old function in Python's C interface to parse their arguments;
-2.0 modernizes them to use \function{PyArg_ParseTuple}, the current
-argument parsing function, which provides more helpful error messages
-and treats multi-argument calls as errors.  If you absolutely must use
-2.0 but can't fix your code, you can edit \file{Objects/listobject.c}
-and define the preprocessor symbol \code{NO_STRICT_LIST_APPEND} to
-preserve the old behaviour; this isn't recommended.
-
-Some of the functions in the \module{socket} module are still
-forgiving in this way.  For example, \function{socket.connect(
-('hostname', 25) )} is the correct form, passing a tuple representing
-an IP address, but \function{socket.connect( 'hostname', 25 )} also
-works. \function{socket.connect_ex()} and \function{socket.bind()} are
-similarly easy-going.  2.0alpha1 tightened these functions up, but
-because the documentation actually used the erroneous multiple
-argument form, many people wrote code which would break with the
-stricter checking.  GvR backed out the changes in the face of public
-reaction, so for the \module{socket} module, the documentation was
-fixed and the multiple argument form is simply marked as deprecated;
-it \emph{will} be tightened up again in a future Python version.
-
-The \code{\e x} escape in string literals now takes exactly 2 hex
-digits.  Previously it would consume all the hex digits following the
-'x' and take the lowest 8 bits of the result, so \code{\e x123456} was
-equivalent to \code{\e x56}.
-
-The \exception{AttributeError} and \exception{NameError} exceptions
-have a more friendly error message, whose text will be something like
-\code{'Spam' instance has no attribute 'eggs'} or \code{name 'eggs' is
-not defined}.  Previously the error message was just the missing
-attribute name \code{eggs}, and code written to take advantage of this
-fact will break in 2.0.
-
-Some work has been done to make integers and long integers a bit more
-interchangeable.  In 1.5.2, large-file support was added for Solaris,
-to allow reading files larger than 2~GiB; this made the \method{tell()}
-method of file objects return a long integer instead of a regular
-integer.  Some code would subtract two file offsets and attempt to use
-the result to multiply a sequence or slice a string, but this raised a
-\exception{TypeError}.  In 2.0, long integers can be used to multiply
-or slice a sequence, and it'll behave as you'd intuitively expect it
-to; \code{3L * 'abc'} produces 'abcabcabc', and \code{
-(0,1,2,3)[2L:4L]} produces (2,3). Long integers can also be used in
-various contexts where previously only integers were accepted, such
-as in the \method{seek()} method of file objects, and in the formats
-supported by the \verb|%| operator (\verb|%d|, \verb|%i|, \verb|%x|,
-etc.).  For example, \code{"\%d" \% 2L**64} will produce the string
-\samp{18446744073709551616}.
-
-The subtlest long integer change of all is that the \function{str()}
-of a long integer no longer has a trailing 'L' character, though
-\function{repr()} still includes it.  The 'L' annoyed many people who
-wanted to print long integers that looked just like regular integers,
-since they had to go out of their way to chop off the character.  This
-is no longer a problem in 2.0, but code which does \code{str(longval)[:-1]} and assumes the 'L' is there, will now lose
-the final digit.
-
-Taking the \function{repr()} of a float now uses a different
-formatting precision than \function{str()}.  \function{repr()} uses
-\code{\%.17g} format string for C's \function{sprintf()}, while
-\function{str()} uses \code{\%.12g} as before.  The effect is that 
-\function{repr()} may occasionally show more decimal places than 
-\function{str()}, for certain numbers. 
-For example, the number 8.1 can't be represented exactly in binary, so
-\code{repr(8.1)} is \code{'8.0999999999999996'}, while str(8.1) is
-\code{'8.1'}.
-
-The \code{-X} command-line option, which turned all standard
-exceptions into strings instead of classes, has been removed; the
-standard exceptions will now always be classes.  The
-\module{exceptions} module containing the standard exceptions was
-translated from Python to a built-in C module, written by Barry Warsaw
-and Fredrik Lundh.
-
-% Commented out for now -- I don't think anyone will care.
-%The pattern and match objects provided by SRE are C types, not Python
-%class instances as in 1.5.  This means you can no longer inherit from
-%\class{RegexObject} or \class{MatchObject}, but that shouldn't be much
-%of a problem since no one should have been doing that in the first
-%place.
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{Extending/Embedding Changes}
-
-Some of the changes are under the covers, and will only be apparent to
-people writing C extension modules or embedding a Python interpreter
-in a larger application.  If you aren't dealing with Python's C API,
-you can safely skip this section.
-
-The version number of the Python C API was incremented, so C
-extensions compiled for 1.5.2 must be recompiled in order to work with
-2.0.  On Windows, it's not possible for Python 2.0 to import a third
-party extension built for Python 1.5.x due to how Windows DLLs work,
-so Python will raise an exception and the import will fail.
-
-Users of Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module will be pleased to find
-out that hooks have been added so that ExtensionClasses are now
-supported by \function{isinstance()} and \function{issubclass()}.
-This means you no longer have to remember to write code such as
-\code{if type(obj) == myExtensionClass}, but can use the more natural
-\code{if isinstance(obj, myExtensionClass)}.
-
-The \file{Python/importdl.c} file, which was a mass of \#ifdefs to
-support dynamic loading on many different platforms, was cleaned up
-and reorganised by Greg Stein.  \file{importdl.c} is now quite small,
-and platform-specific code has been moved into a bunch of
-\file{Python/dynload_*.c} files.  Another cleanup: there were also a
-number of \file{my*.h} files in the Include/ directory that held
-various portability hacks; they've been merged into a single file,
-\file{Include/pyport.h}.
-
-Vladimir Marangozov's long-awaited malloc restructuring was completed,
-to make it easy to have the Python interpreter use a custom allocator
-instead of C's standard \function{malloc()}.  For documentation, read
-the comments in \file{Include/pymem.h} and
-\file{Include/objimpl.h}.  For the lengthy discussions during which
-the interface was hammered out, see the Web archives of the 'patches'
-and 'python-dev' lists at python.org.
-
-Recent versions of the GUSI development environment for MacOS support
-POSIX threads.  Therefore, Python's POSIX threading support now works
-on the Macintosh.  Threading support using the user-space GNU \texttt{pth}
-library was also contributed.
-
-Threading support on Windows was enhanced, too.  Windows supports
-thread locks that use kernel objects only in case of contention; in
-the common case when there's no contention, they use simpler functions
-which are an order of magnitude faster.  A threaded version of Python
-1.5.2 on NT is twice as slow as an unthreaded version; with the 2.0
-changes, the difference is only 10\%.  These improvements were
-contributed by Yakov Markovitch.
-
-Python 2.0's source now uses only ANSI C prototypes, so compiling Python now
-requires an ANSI C compiler, and can no longer be done using a compiler that
-only supports K\&R C.  
-
-Previously the Python virtual machine used 16-bit numbers in its
-bytecode, limiting the size of source files.  In particular, this
-affected the maximum size of literal lists and dictionaries in Python
-source; occasionally people who are generating Python code would run
-into this limit.  A patch by Charles G. Waldman raises the limit from
-\verb|2^16| to \verb|2^{32}|.
-
-Three new convenience functions intended for adding constants to a
-module's dictionary at module initialization time were added:
-\function{PyModule_AddObject()}, \function{PyModule_AddIntConstant()},
-and \function{PyModule_AddStringConstant()}.  Each of these functions
-takes a module object, a null-terminated C string containing the name
-to be added, and a third argument for the value to be assigned to the
-name.  This third argument is, respectively, a Python object, a C
-long, or a C string.
-
-A wrapper API was added for \UNIX-style signal handlers.
-\function{PyOS_getsig()} gets a signal handler and
-\function{PyOS_setsig()} will set a new handler.
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{Distutils: Making Modules Easy to Install}
-
-Before Python 2.0, installing modules was a tedious affair -- there
-was no way to figure out automatically where Python is installed, or
-what compiler options to use for extension modules.  Software authors
-had to go through an arduous ritual of editing Makefiles and
-configuration files, which only really work on \UNIX{} and leave Windows
-and MacOS unsupported.  Python users faced wildly differing
-installation instructions which varied between different extension
-packages, which made administering a Python installation something of 
-a chore.
-
-The SIG for distribution utilities, shepherded by Greg Ward, has
-created the Distutils, a system to make package installation much
-easier.  They form the \module{distutils} package, a new part of
-Python's standard library. In the best case, installing a Python
-module from source will require the same steps: first you simply mean
-unpack the tarball or zip archive, and the run ``\code{python setup.py
-install}''.  The platform will be automatically detected, the compiler
-will be recognized, C extension modules will be compiled, and the
-distribution installed into the proper directory.  Optional
-command-line arguments provide more control over the installation
-process, the distutils package offers many places to override defaults
--- separating the build from the install, building or installing in
-non-default directories, and more.
-
-In order to use the Distutils, you need to write a \file{setup.py}
-script.  For the simple case, when the software contains only .py
-files, a minimal \file{setup.py} can be just a few lines long:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-from distutils.core import setup
-setup (name = "foo", version = "1.0", 
-       py_modules = ["module1", "module2"])
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The \file{setup.py} file isn't much more complicated if the software
-consists of a few packages:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-from distutils.core import setup
-setup (name = "foo", version = "1.0", 
-       packages = ["package", "package.subpackage"])
-\end{verbatim}
-
-A C extension can be the most complicated case; here's an example taken from 
-the PyXML package:
-
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-from distutils.core import setup, Extension
-
-expat_extension = Extension('xml.parsers.pyexpat',
-	define_macros = [('XML_NS', None)],
-	include_dirs = [ 'extensions/expat/xmltok',
-	                 'extensions/expat/xmlparse' ],
-	sources = [ 'extensions/pyexpat.c',
-	            'extensions/expat/xmltok/xmltok.c',
- 		    'extensions/expat/xmltok/xmlrole.c',
-                  ]
-       )
-setup (name = "PyXML", version = "0.5.4", 
-       ext_modules =[ expat_extension ] )
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The Distutils can also take care of creating source and binary
-distributions.  The ``sdist'' command, run by ``\code{python setup.py
-sdist}', builds a source distribution such as \file{foo-1.0.tar.gz}.
-Adding new commands isn't difficult, ``bdist_rpm'' and
-``bdist_wininst'' commands have already been contributed to create an
-RPM distribution and a Windows installer for the software,
-respectively.  Commands to create other distribution formats such as
-Debian packages and Solaris \file{.pkg} files are in various stages of
-development.
-
-All this is documented in a new manual, \textit{Distributing Python
-Modules}, that joins the basic set of Python documentation.
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{XML Modules}
-
-Python 1.5.2 included a simple XML parser in the form of the
-\module{xmllib} module, contributed by Sjoerd Mullender.  Since
-1.5.2's release, two different interfaces for processing XML have
-become common: SAX2 (version 2 of the Simple API for XML) provides an
-event-driven interface with some similarities to \module{xmllib}, and
-the DOM (Document Object Model) provides a tree-based interface,
-transforming an XML document into a tree of nodes that can be
-traversed and modified.  Python 2.0 includes a SAX2 interface and a
-stripped-down DOM interface as part of the \module{xml} package.
-Here we will give a brief overview of these new interfaces; consult
-the Python documentation or the source code for complete details.
-The Python XML SIG is also working on improved documentation.
-
-\subsection{SAX2 Support}
-
-SAX defines an event-driven interface for parsing XML.  To use SAX,
-you must write a SAX handler class.  Handler classes inherit from
-various classes provided by SAX, and override various methods that
-will then be called by the XML parser.  For example, the
-\method{startElement} and \method{endElement} methods are called for
-every starting and end tag encountered by the parser, the
-\method{characters()} method is called for every chunk of character
-data, and so forth.
-
-The advantage of the event-driven approach is that the whole
-document doesn't have to be resident in memory at any one time, which
-matters if you are processing really huge documents.  However, writing
-the SAX handler class can get very complicated if you're trying to
-modify the document structure in some elaborate way.
-
-For example, this little example program defines a handler that prints
-a message for every starting and ending tag, and then parses the file
-\file{hamlet.xml} using it:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-from xml import sax
-
-class SimpleHandler(sax.ContentHandler):
-    def startElement(self, name, attrs):
-        print 'Start of element:', name, attrs.keys()
-
-    def endElement(self, name):
-        print 'End of element:', name
-
-# Create a parser object
-parser = sax.make_parser()
-
-# Tell it what handler to use
-handler = SimpleHandler()
-parser.setContentHandler( handler )
-
-# Parse a file!
-parser.parse( 'hamlet.xml' )
-\end{verbatim}
-
-For more information, consult the Python documentation, or the XML
-HOWTO at \url{http://pyxml.sourceforge.net/topics/howto/xml-howto.html}.
-
-\subsection{DOM Support}
-
-The Document Object Model is a tree-based representation for an XML
-document.  A top-level \class{Document} instance is the root of the
-tree, and has a single child which is the top-level \class{Element}
-instance. This \class{Element} has children nodes representing
-character data and any sub-elements, which may have further children
-of their own, and so forth.  Using the DOM you can traverse the
-resulting tree any way you like, access element and attribute values,
-insert and delete nodes, and convert the tree back into XML.
-
-The DOM is useful for modifying XML documents, because you can create
-a DOM tree, modify it by adding new nodes or rearranging subtrees, and
-then produce a new XML document as output.  You can also construct a
-DOM tree manually and convert it to XML, which can be a more flexible
-way of producing XML output than simply writing
-\code{<tag1>}...\code{</tag1>} to a file.
-
-The DOM implementation included with Python lives in the
-\module{xml.dom.minidom} module.  It's a lightweight implementation of
-the Level 1 DOM with support for XML namespaces.  The 
-\function{parse()} and \function{parseString()} convenience
-functions are provided for generating a DOM tree:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-from xml.dom import minidom
-doc = minidom.parse('hamlet.xml')
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\code{doc} is a \class{Document} instance.  \class{Document}, like all
-the other DOM classes such as \class{Element} and \class{Text}, is a
-subclass of the \class{Node} base class.  All the nodes in a DOM tree
-therefore support certain common methods, such as \method{toxml()}
-which returns a string containing the XML representation of the node
-and its children.  Each class also has special methods of its own; for
-example, \class{Element} and \class{Document} instances have a method
-to find all child elements with a given tag name.  Continuing from the
-previous 2-line example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-perslist = doc.getElementsByTagName( 'PERSONA' )
-print perslist[0].toxml()
-print perslist[1].toxml()
-\end{verbatim}
-
-For the \textit{Hamlet} XML file, the above few lines output:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-<PERSONA>CLAUDIUS, king of Denmark. </PERSONA>
-<PERSONA>HAMLET, son to the late, and nephew to the present king.</PERSONA>
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The root element of the document is available as
-\code{doc.documentElement}, and its children can be easily modified
-by deleting, adding, or removing nodes:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-root = doc.documentElement
-
-# Remove the first child
-root.removeChild( root.childNodes[0] )
-
-# Move the new first child to the end
-root.appendChild( root.childNodes[0] )
-
-# Insert the new first child (originally,
-# the third child) before the 20th child.
-root.insertBefore( root.childNodes[0], root.childNodes[20] )
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Again, I will refer you to the Python documentation for a complete
-listing of the different \class{Node} classes and their various methods.
-
-\subsection{Relationship to PyXML}
-
-The XML Special Interest Group has been working on XML-related Python
-code for a while.  Its code distribution, called PyXML, is available
-from the SIG's Web pages at \url{http://www.python.org/sigs/xml-sig/}.
-The PyXML distribution also used the package name \samp{xml}.  If
-you've written programs that used PyXML, you're probably wondering
-about its compatibility with the 2.0 \module{xml} package.
-
-The answer is that Python 2.0's \module{xml} package isn't compatible
-with PyXML, but can be made compatible by installing a recent version
-PyXML.  Many applications can get by with the XML support that is
-included with Python 2.0, but more complicated applications will
-require that the full PyXML package will be installed.  When
-installed, PyXML versions 0.6.0 or greater will replace the
-\module{xml} package shipped with Python, and will be a strict
-superset of the standard package, adding a bunch of additional
-features.  Some of the additional features in PyXML include:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-\item 4DOM, a full DOM implementation
-from FourThought, Inc.
-\item The xmlproc validating parser, written by Lars Marius Garshol.
-\item The \module{sgmlop} parser accelerator module, written by Fredrik Lundh.
-\end{itemize}
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{Module changes}
-
-Lots of improvements and bugfixes were made to Python's extensive
-standard library; some of the affected modules include
-\module{readline}, \module{ConfigParser}, \module{cgi},
-\module{calendar}, \module{posix}, \module{readline}, \module{xmllib},
-\module{aifc}, \module{chunk, wave}, \module{random}, \module{shelve},
-and \module{nntplib}.  Consult the CVS logs for the exact
-patch-by-patch details.  
-
-Brian Gallew contributed OpenSSL support for the \module{socket}
-module.  OpenSSL is an implementation of the Secure Socket Layer,
-which encrypts the data being sent over a socket.  When compiling
-Python, you can edit \file{Modules/Setup} to include SSL support,
-which adds an additional function to the \module{socket} module:
-\function{socket.ssl(\var{socket}, \var{keyfile}, \var{certfile})},
-which takes a socket object and returns an SSL socket.  The
-\module{httplib} and \module{urllib} modules were also changed to
-support ``https://'' URLs, though no one has implemented FTP or SMTP
-over SSL.  
-
-The \module{httplib} module has been rewritten by Greg Stein to
-support HTTP/1.1.  Backward compatibility with the 1.5 version of
-\module{httplib} is provided, though using HTTP/1.1 features such as
-pipelining will require rewriting code to use a different set of
-interfaces.
-
-The \module{Tkinter} module now supports Tcl/Tk version 8.1, 8.2, or
-8.3, and support for the older 7.x versions has been dropped.  The
-Tkinter module now supports displaying Unicode strings in Tk widgets.
-Also, Fredrik Lundh contributed an optimization which makes operations
-like \code{create_line} and \code{create_polygon} much faster,
-especially when using lots of coordinates.
-
-The \module{curses} module has been greatly extended, starting from
-Oliver Andrich's enhanced version, to provide many additional
-functions from ncurses and SYSV curses, such as colour, alternative
-character set support, pads, and mouse support.  This means the module
-is no longer compatible with operating systems that only have BSD
-curses, but there don't seem to be any currently maintained OSes that
-fall into this category.
-
-As mentioned in the earlier discussion of 2.0's Unicode support, the
-underlying implementation of the regular expressions provided by the
-\module{re} module has been changed.  SRE, a new regular expression
-engine written by Fredrik Lundh and partially funded by Hewlett
-Packard, supports matching against both 8-bit strings and Unicode
-strings.
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{New modules}
-
-A number of new modules were added.  We'll simply list them with brief
-descriptions; consult the 2.0 documentation for the details of a
-particular module.
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item{\module{atexit}}: 
-For registering functions to be called before the Python interpreter exits.
-Code that currently sets
-\code{sys.exitfunc} directly should be changed to 
-use the \module{atexit} module instead, importing \module{atexit}
-and calling \function{atexit.register()} with 
-the function to be called on exit.
-(Contributed by Skip Montanaro.)
-
-\item{\module{codecs}, \module{encodings}, \module{unicodedata}:}  Added as part of the new Unicode support. 
-
-\item{\module{filecmp}:} Supersedes the old \module{cmp}, \module{cmpcache} and
-\module{dircmp} modules, which have now become deprecated.
-(Contributed by Gordon MacMillan and Moshe Zadka.)
-
-\item{\module{gettext}:} This module provides internationalization
-(I18N) and localization (L10N) support for Python programs by
-providing an interface to the GNU gettext message catalog library.
-(Integrated by Barry Warsaw, from separate contributions by Martin 
-von~L\"owis, Peter Funk, and James Henstridge.)
-
-\item{\module{linuxaudiodev}:} Support for the \file{/dev/audio}
-device on Linux, a twin to the existing \module{sunaudiodev} module.
-(Contributed by Peter Bosch, with fixes by Jeremy Hylton.)
-
-\item{\module{mmap}:} An interface to memory-mapped files on both
-Windows and \UNIX.  A file's contents can be mapped directly into
-memory, at which point it behaves like a mutable string, so its
-contents can be read and modified.  They can even be passed to
-functions that expect ordinary strings, such as the \module{re}
-module. (Contributed by Sam Rushing, with some extensions by
-A.M. Kuchling.)
-
-\item{\module{pyexpat}:} An interface to the Expat XML parser.
-(Contributed by Paul Prescod.)
-
-\item{\module{robotparser}:} Parse a \file{robots.txt} file, which is
-used for writing Web spiders that politely avoid certain areas of a
-Web site.  The parser accepts the contents of a \file{robots.txt} file,
-builds a set of rules from it, and can then answer questions about
-the fetchability of a given URL.  (Contributed by Skip Montanaro.)
-
-\item{\module{tabnanny}:} A module/script to 
-check Python source code for ambiguous indentation.
-(Contributed by Tim Peters.)
-
-\item{\module{UserString}:} A base class useful for deriving objects that behave like strings.  
-
-\item{\module{webbrowser}:} A module that provides a platform independent
-way to launch a web browser on a specific URL. For each platform, various
-browsers are tried in a specific order. The user can alter which browser
-is launched by setting the \var{BROWSER} environment variable. 
-(Originally inspired by Eric S. Raymond's patch to \module{urllib}
-which added similar functionality, but
-the final module comes from code originally 
-implemented by Fred Drake as \file{Tools/idle/BrowserControl.py},
-and adapted for the standard library by Fred.)
-
-\item{\module{_winreg}:} An interface to the
-Windows registry.  \module{_winreg} is an adaptation of functions that
-have been part of PythonWin since 1995, but has now been added to the core 
-distribution, and enhanced to support Unicode.  
-\module{_winreg} was written by Bill Tutt and Mark Hammond.
-
-\item{\module{zipfile}:} A module for reading and writing ZIP-format
-archives.  These are archives produced by \program{PKZIP} on
-DOS/Windows or \program{zip} on \UNIX, not to be confused with
-\program{gzip}-format files (which are supported by the \module{gzip}
-module)
-(Contributed by James C. Ahlstrom.)
-
-\item{\module{imputil}:} A module that provides a simpler way for
-writing customised import hooks, in comparison to the existing
-\module{ihooks} module.  (Implemented by Greg Stein, with much
-discussion on python-dev along the way.)
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{IDLE Improvements}
-
-IDLE is the official Python cross-platform IDE, written using Tkinter.
-Python 2.0 includes IDLE 0.6, which adds a number of new features and
-improvements.  A partial list:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-\item  UI improvements and optimizations,
-especially in the area of syntax highlighting and auto-indentation.
-
-\item The class browser now shows more information, such as the top
-level functions in a module.
-
-\item Tab width is now a user settable option. When opening an existing Python
-file, IDLE automatically detects the indentation conventions, and adapts.
-
-\item There is now support for calling browsers on various platforms,
-used to open the Python documentation in a browser.
-
-\item IDLE now has a command line, which is largely similar to 
-the vanilla Python interpreter.
-
-\item Call tips were added in many places.
-
-\item IDLE can now be installed as a package.
-
-\item In the editor window, there is now a line/column bar at the bottom.
-
-\item Three new keystroke commands: Check module (Alt-F5), Import
-module (F5) and Run script (Ctrl-F5).
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{Deleted and Deprecated Modules}
-
-A few modules have been dropped because they're obsolete, or because
-there are now better ways to do the same thing.  The \module{stdwin}
-module is gone; it was for a platform-independent windowing toolkit
-that's no longer developed.  
-
-A number of modules have been moved to the
-\file{lib-old} subdirectory:
-\module{cmp}, \module{cmpcache}, \module{dircmp}, \module{dump}, 
-\module{find}, \module{grep}, \module{packmail}, 
-\module{poly}, \module{util}, \module{whatsound}, \module{zmod}. 
-If you have code which relies on a module  that's been moved to
-\file{lib-old}, you can simply add that directory to \code{sys.path}  
-to get them back, but you're encouraged to update any code that uses
-these modules.
-
-\section{Acknowledgements}
-
-The authors would like to thank the following people for offering
-suggestions on various drafts of this article: David Bolen, Mark
-Hammond, Gregg Hauser, Jeremy Hylton, Fredrik Lundh, Detlef Lannert,
-Aahz Maruch, Skip Montanaro, Vladimir Marangozov, Tobias Polzin, Guido
-van Rossum, Neil Schemenauer, and Russ Schmidt.
-
-\end{document}
diff --git a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew21.tex b/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew21.tex
deleted file mode 100644
index 67cbbe4..0000000
--- a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew21.tex
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,868 +0,0 @@
-\documentclass{howto}
-
-\usepackage{distutils}
-
-% $Id$
-
-\title{What's New in Python 2.1}
-\release{1.01}
-\author{A.M. Kuchling}
-\authoraddress{
-	\strong{Python Software Foundation}\\
-	Email: \email{amk@amk.ca}
-}
-\begin{document}
-\maketitle\tableofcontents
-
-\section{Introduction}
-
-This article explains the new features in Python 2.1.  While there aren't as
-many changes in 2.1 as there were in Python 2.0, there are still some
-pleasant surprises in store.  2.1 is the first release to be steered
-through the use of Python Enhancement Proposals, or PEPs, so most of
-the sizable changes have accompanying PEPs that provide more complete
-documentation and a design rationale for the change.  This article
-doesn't attempt to document the new features completely, but simply
-provides an overview of the new features for Python programmers.
-Refer to the Python 2.1 documentation, or to the specific PEP, for
-more details about any new feature that particularly interests you.
-
-One recent goal of the Python development team has been to accelerate
-the pace of new releases, with a new release coming every 6 to 9
-months. 2.1 is the first release to come out at this faster pace, with
-the first alpha appearing in January, 3 months after the final version
-of 2.0 was released.
-
-The final release of Python 2.1 was made on April 17, 2001.
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 227: Nested Scopes}
-
-The largest change in Python 2.1 is to Python's scoping rules.  In
-Python 2.0, at any given time there are at most three namespaces used
-to look up variable names: local, module-level, and the built-in
-namespace.  This often surprised people because it didn't match their
-intuitive expectations.  For example, a nested recursive function
-definition doesn't work:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def f():
-    ...
-    def g(value):
-        ...
-        return g(value-1) + 1
-    ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The function \function{g()} will always raise a \exception{NameError}
-exception, because the binding of the name \samp{g} isn't in either
-its local namespace or in the module-level namespace.  This isn't much
-of a problem in practice (how often do you recursively define interior
-functions like this?), but this also made using the \keyword{lambda}
-statement clumsier, and this was a problem in practice.  In code which
-uses \keyword{lambda} you can often find local variables being copied
-by passing them as the default values of arguments.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def find(self, name):
-    "Return list of any entries equal to 'name'"
-    L = filter(lambda x, name=name: x == name,
-               self.list_attribute)
-    return L
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The readability of Python code written in a strongly functional style
-suffers greatly as a result.
-
-The most significant change to Python 2.1 is that static scoping has
-been added to the language to fix this problem.  As a first effect,
-the \code{name=name} default argument is now unnecessary in the above
-example.  Put simply, when a given variable name is not assigned a
-value within a function (by an assignment, or the \keyword{def},
-\keyword{class}, or \keyword{import} statements), references to the
-variable will be looked up in the local namespace of the enclosing
-scope.  A more detailed explanation of the rules, and a dissection of
-the implementation, can be found in the PEP.
-
-This change may cause some compatibility problems for code where the
-same variable name is used both at the module level and as a local
-variable within a function that contains further function definitions.
-This seems rather unlikely though, since such code would have been
-pretty confusing to read in the first place.  
-
-One side effect of the change is that the \code{from \var{module}
-import *} and \keyword{exec} statements have been made illegal inside
-a function scope under certain conditions.  The Python reference
-manual has said all along that \code{from \var{module} import *} is
-only legal at the top level of a module, but the CPython interpreter
-has never enforced this before.  As part of the implementation of
-nested scopes, the compiler which turns Python source into bytecodes
-has to generate different code to access variables in a containing
-scope.  \code{from \var{module} import *} and \keyword{exec} make it
-impossible for the compiler to figure this out, because they add names
-to the local namespace that are unknowable at compile time.
-Therefore, if a function contains function definitions or
-\keyword{lambda} expressions with free variables, the compiler will
-flag this by raising a \exception{SyntaxError} exception.
-
-To make the preceding explanation a bit clearer, here's an example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-x = 1
-def f():
-    # The next line is a syntax error
-    exec 'x=2'  
-    def g():
-        return x
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Line 4 containing the \keyword{exec} statement is a syntax error,
-since \keyword{exec} would define a new local variable named \samp{x}
-whose value should be accessed by \function{g()}.  
-
-This shouldn't be much of a limitation, since \keyword{exec} is rarely
-used in most Python code (and when it is used, it's often a sign of a
-poor design anyway).
-
-Compatibility concerns have led to nested scopes being introduced
-gradually; in Python 2.1, they aren't enabled by default, but can be
-turned on within a module by using a future statement as described in
-PEP 236.  (See the following section for further discussion of PEP
-236.)  In Python 2.2, nested scopes will become the default and there
-will be no way to turn them off, but users will have had all of 2.1's
-lifetime to fix any breakage resulting from their introduction.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{227}{Statically Nested Scopes}{Written and implemented by
-Jeremy Hylton.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 236: __future__ Directives}
-
-The reaction to nested scopes was widespread concern about the dangers
-of breaking code with the 2.1 release, and it was strong enough to
-make the Pythoneers take a more conservative approach.  This approach
-consists of introducing a convention for enabling optional
-functionality in release N that will become compulsory in release N+1.  
-
-The syntax uses a \code{from...import} statement using the reserved
-module name \module{__future__}.  Nested scopes can be enabled by the
-following statement:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-from __future__ import nested_scopes
-\end{verbatim}
-
-While it looks like a normal \keyword{import} statement, it's not;
-there are strict rules on where such a future statement can be put.
-They can only be at the top of a module, and must precede any Python
-code or regular \keyword{import} statements.  This is because such
-statements can affect how the Python bytecode compiler parses code and
-generates bytecode, so they must precede any statement that will
-result in bytecodes being produced.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{236}{Back to the \module{__future__}}{Written by Tim Peters,
-and primarily implemented by Jeremy Hylton.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 207: Rich Comparisons}
-
-In earlier versions, Python's support for implementing comparisons on
-user-defined classes and extension types was quite simple. Classes
-could implement a \method{__cmp__} method that was given two instances
-of a class, and could only return 0 if they were equal or +1 or -1 if
-they weren't; the method couldn't raise an exception or return
-anything other than a Boolean value.  Users of Numeric Python often
-found this model too weak and restrictive, because in the
-number-crunching programs that numeric Python is used for, it would be
-more useful to be able to perform elementwise comparisons of two
-matrices, returning a matrix containing the results of a given
-comparison for each element.  If the two matrices are of different
-sizes, then the compare has to be able to raise an exception to signal
-the error.
-
-In Python 2.1, rich comparisons were added in order to support this
-need.  Python classes can now individually overload each of the
-\code{<}, \code{<=}, \code{>}, \code{>=}, \code{==}, and \code{!=}
-operations.  The new magic method names are:
-
-\begin{tableii}{c|l}{code}{Operation}{Method name}
-  \lineii{<}{\method{__lt__}} \lineii{<=}{\method{__le__}}
-  \lineii{>}{\method{__gt__}} \lineii{>=}{\method{__ge__}}
-  \lineii{==}{\method{__eq__}} \lineii{!=}{\method{__ne__}}
-  \end{tableii}
-
-(The magic methods are named after the corresponding Fortran operators
-\code{.LT.}. \code{.LE.}, \&c.  Numeric programmers are almost
-certainly quite familiar with these names and will find them easy to
-remember.)
- 
-Each of these magic methods is of the form \code{\var{method}(self,
-other)}, where \code{self} will be the object on the left-hand side of
-the operator, while \code{other} will be the object on the right-hand
-side.  For example, the expression \code{A < B} will cause
-\code{A.__lt__(B)} to be called.
-
-Each of these magic methods can return anything at all: a Boolean, a
-matrix, a list, or any other Python object.  Alternatively they can
-raise an exception if the comparison is impossible, inconsistent, or
-otherwise meaningless.
-
-The built-in \function{cmp(A,B)} function can use the rich comparison
-machinery, and now accepts an optional argument specifying which
-comparison operation to use; this is given as one of the strings
-\code{"<"}, \code{"<="}, \code{">"}, \code{">="}, \code{"=="}, or
-\code{"!="}.  If called without the optional third argument,
-\function{cmp()} will only return -1, 0, or +1 as in previous versions
-of Python; otherwise it will call the appropriate method and can
-return any Python object.
-
-There are also corresponding changes of interest to C programmers;
-there's a new slot \code{tp_richcmp} in type objects and an API for
-performing a given rich comparison.  I won't cover the C API here, but
-will refer you to PEP 207, or to 2.1's C API documentation, for the
-full list of related functions.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{207}{Rich Comparisions}{Written by Guido van Rossum, heavily
-based on earlier work by David Ascher, and implemented by Guido van
-Rossum.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 230: Warning Framework}
-
-Over its 10 years of existence, Python has accumulated a certain
-number of obsolete modules and features along the way.  It's difficult
-to know when a feature is safe to remove, since there's no way of
-knowing how much code uses it --- perhaps no programs depend on the
-feature, or perhaps many do.  To enable removing old features in a
-more structured way, a warning framework was added.  When the Python
-developers want to get rid of a feature, it will first trigger a
-warning in the next version of Python.  The following Python version
-can then drop the feature, and users will have had a full release
-cycle to remove uses of the old feature.
-
-Python 2.1 adds the warning framework to be used in this scheme.  It
-adds a \module{warnings} module that provide functions to issue
-warnings, and to filter out warnings that you don't want to be
-displayed. Third-party modules can also use this framework to
-deprecate old features that they no longer wish to support.
-
-For example, in Python 2.1 the \module{regex} module is deprecated, so
-importing it causes a warning to be printed:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> import regex
-__main__:1: DeprecationWarning: the regex module
-         is deprecated; please use the re module
->>>
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Warnings can be issued by calling the \function{warnings.warn}
-function:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-warnings.warn("feature X no longer supported")
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The first parameter is the warning message; an additional optional
-parameters can be used to specify a particular warning category.
-
-Filters can be added to disable certain warnings; a regular expression
-pattern can be applied to the message or to the module name in order
-to suppress a warning.  For example, you may have a program that uses
-the \module{regex} module and not want to spare the time to convert it
-to use the \module{re} module right now.  The warning can be
-suppressed by calling
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-import warnings
-warnings.filterwarnings(action = 'ignore',
-                        message='.*regex module is deprecated',
-                        category=DeprecationWarning,
-                        module = '__main__')
-\end{verbatim}
-
-This adds a filter that will apply only to warnings of the class
-\class{DeprecationWarning} triggered in the \module{__main__} module,
-and applies a regular expression to only match the message about the
-\module{regex} module being deprecated, and will cause such warnings
-to be ignored.  Warnings can also be printed only once, printed every
-time the offending code is executed, or turned into exceptions that
-will cause the program to stop (unless the exceptions are caught in
-the usual way, of course).
-
-Functions were also added to Python's C API for issuing warnings;
-refer to PEP 230 or to Python's API documentation for the details.
-
-\begin{seealso} 
-
-\seepep{5}{Guidelines for Language Evolution}{Written
-by Paul Prescod, to specify procedures to be followed when removing
-old features from Python.  The policy described in this PEP hasn't
-been officially adopted, but the eventual policy probably won't be too
-different from Prescod's proposal.}
-
-\seepep{230}{Warning Framework}{Written and implemented by Guido van
-Rossum.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-    
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 229: New Build System}
-
-When compiling Python, the user had to go in and edit the
-\file{Modules/Setup} file in order to enable various additional
-modules; the default set is relatively small and limited to modules
-that compile on most \UNIX{} platforms.  This means that on \Unix{}
-platforms with many more features, most notably Linux, Python
-installations often don't contain all useful modules they could.
-
-Python 2.0 added the Distutils, a set of modules for distributing and
-installing extensions.  In Python 2.1, the Distutils are used to
-compile much of the standard library of extension modules,
-autodetecting which ones are supported on the current machine.  It's
-hoped that this will make Python installations easier and more
-featureful.
-
-Instead of having to edit the \file{Modules/Setup} file in order to
-enable modules, a \file{setup.py} script in the top directory of the
-Python source distribution is run at build time, and attempts to
-discover which modules can be enabled by examining the modules and
-header files on the system.  If a module is configured in
-\file{Modules/Setup}, the \file{setup.py} script won't attempt to
-compile that module and will defer to the \file{Modules/Setup} file's
-contents.  This provides a way to specific any strange command-line
-flags or libraries that are required for a specific platform.
-
-In another far-reaching change to the build mechanism, Neil
-Schemenauer restructured things so Python now uses a single makefile
-that isn't recursive, instead of makefiles in the top directory and in
-each of the \file{Python/}, \file{Parser/}, \file{Objects/}, and
-\file{Modules/} subdirectories.  This makes building Python faster
-and also makes hacking the Makefiles clearer and simpler.
-
-\begin{seealso} 
-
-\seepep{229}{Using Distutils to Build Python}{Written
-and implemented by A.M. Kuchling.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 205: Weak References}
-
-Weak references, available through the \module{weakref} module, are a
-minor but useful new data type in the Python programmer's toolbox.
-
-Storing a reference to an object (say, in a dictionary or a list) has
-the side effect of keeping that object alive forever.  There are a few
-specific cases where this behaviour is undesirable, object caches
-being the most common one, and another being circular references in
-data structures such as trees.
-
-For example, consider a memoizing function that caches the results of
-another function \function{f(\var{x})} by storing the function's
-argument and its result in a dictionary:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-_cache = {}
-def memoize(x):
-    if _cache.has_key(x):
-        return _cache[x]
-
-    retval = f(x)
-
-    # Cache the returned object
-    _cache[x] = retval
-
-    return retval
-\end{verbatim}
-
-This version works for simple things such as integers, but it has a
-side effect; the \code{_cache} dictionary holds a reference to the
-return values, so they'll never be deallocated until the Python
-process exits and cleans up This isn't very noticeable for integers,
-but if \function{f()} returns an object, or a data structure that
-takes up a lot of memory, this can be a problem.
-
-Weak references provide a way to implement a cache that won't keep
-objects alive beyond their time.  If an object is only accessible
-through weak references, the object will be deallocated and the weak
-references will now indicate that the object it referred to no longer
-exists.  A weak reference to an object \var{obj} is created by calling
-\code{wr = weakref.ref(\var{obj})}.  The object being referred to is
-returned by calling the weak reference as if it were a function:
-\code{wr()}.  It will return the referenced object, or \code{None} if
-the object no longer exists. 
-
-This makes it possible to write a \function{memoize()} function whose
-cache doesn't keep objects alive, by storing weak references in the
-cache.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-_cache = {}
-def memoize(x):
-    if _cache.has_key(x):
-        obj = _cache[x]()
-        # If weak reference object still exists,
-        # return it
-        if obj is not None: return obj
- 
-    retval = f(x)
-
-    # Cache a weak reference
-    _cache[x] = weakref.ref(retval)
-
-    return retval
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The \module{weakref} module also allows creating proxy objects which
-behave like weak references --- an object referenced only by proxy
-objects is deallocated -- but instead of requiring an explicit call to
-retrieve the object, the proxy transparently forwards all operations
-to the object as long as the object still exists.  If the object is
-deallocated, attempting to use a proxy will cause a
-\exception{weakref.ReferenceError} exception to be raised.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-proxy = weakref.proxy(obj)
-proxy.attr   # Equivalent to obj.attr
-proxy.meth() # Equivalent to obj.meth()
-del obj
-proxy.attr   # raises weakref.ReferenceError
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{205}{Weak References}{Written and implemented by
-Fred~L. Drake,~Jr.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 232: Function Attributes}
-
-In Python 2.1, functions can now have arbitrary information attached
-to them.  People were often using docstrings to hold information about
-functions and methods, because the \code{__doc__} attribute was the
-only way of attaching any information to a function.  For example, in
-the Zope Web application server, functions are marked as safe for
-public access by having a docstring, and in John Aycock's SPARK
-parsing framework, docstrings hold parts of the BNF grammar to be
-parsed.  This overloading is unfortunate, since docstrings are really
-intended to hold a function's documentation; for example, it means you
-can't properly document functions intended for private use in Zope.
-
-Arbitrary attributes can now be set and retrieved on functions using the
-regular Python syntax:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def f(): pass
-
-f.publish = 1
-f.secure = 1
-f.grammar = "A ::= B (C D)*"
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The dictionary containing attributes can be accessed as the function's
-\member{__dict__}. Unlike the \member{__dict__} attribute of class
-instances, in functions you can actually assign a new dictionary to
-\member{__dict__}, though the new value is restricted to a regular
-Python dictionary; you \emph{can't} be tricky and set it to a
-\class{UserDict} instance, or any other random object that behaves
-like a mapping.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{232}{Function Attributes}{Written and implemented by Barry
-Warsaw.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-
-\section{PEP 235: Importing Modules on Case-Insensitive Platforms}
-
-Some operating systems have filesystems that are case-insensitive,
-MacOS and Windows being the primary examples; on these systems, it's
-impossible to distinguish the filenames \samp{FILE.PY} and
-\samp{file.py}, even though they do store the file's name 
-in its original case (they're case-preserving, too).
-
-In Python 2.1, the \keyword{import} statement will work to simulate
-case-sensitivity on case-insensitive platforms.  Python will now
-search for the first case-sensitive match by default, raising an
-\exception{ImportError} if no such file is found, so \code{import file}
-will not import a module named \samp{FILE.PY}.  Case-insensitive
-matching can be requested by setting the \envvar{PYTHONCASEOK} environment
-variable before starting the Python interpreter.
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 217: Interactive Display Hook}
-
-When using the Python interpreter interactively, the output of
-commands is displayed using the built-in \function{repr()} function.
-In Python 2.1, the variable \function{sys.displayhook} can be set to a
-callable object which will be called instead of \function{repr()}.
-For example, you can set it to a special pretty-printing function:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> # Create a recursive data structure
-... L = [1,2,3]
->>> L.append(L)
->>> L # Show Python's default output
-[1, 2, 3, [...]]
->>> # Use pprint.pprint() as the display function
-... import sys, pprint
->>> sys.displayhook = pprint.pprint
->>> L
-[1, 2, 3,  <Recursion on list with id=135143996>]
->>>
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{217}{Display Hook for Interactive Use}{Written and implemented
-by Moshe Zadka.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 208: New Coercion Model}
-
-How numeric coercion is done at the C level was significantly
-modified.  This will only affect the authors of C extensions to
-Python, allowing them more flexibility in writing extension types that
-support numeric operations.
-
-Extension types can now set the type flag \code{Py_TPFLAGS_CHECKTYPES}
-in their \code{PyTypeObject} structure to indicate that they support
-the new coercion model.  In such extension types, the numeric slot
-functions can no longer assume that they'll be passed two arguments of
-the same type; instead they may be passed two arguments of differing
-types, and can then perform their own internal coercion.  If the slot
-function is passed a type it can't handle, it can indicate the failure
-by returning a reference to the \code{Py_NotImplemented} singleton
-value.  The numeric functions of the other type will then be tried,
-and perhaps they can handle the operation; if the other type also
-returns \code{Py_NotImplemented}, then a \exception{TypeError} will be
-raised.  Numeric methods written in Python can also return
-\code{Py_NotImplemented}, causing the interpreter to act as if the
-method did not exist (perhaps raising a \exception{TypeError}, perhaps
-trying another object's numeric methods).
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{208}{Reworking the Coercion Model}{Written and implemented by
-Neil Schemenauer, heavily based upon earlier work by Marc-Andr\'e
-Lemburg.  Read this to understand the fine points of how numeric
-operations will now be processed at the C level.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 241: Metadata in Python Packages}
-
-A common complaint from Python users is that there's no single catalog
-of all the Python modules in existence.  T.~Middleton's Vaults of
-Parnassus at \url{http://www.vex.net/parnassus/} are the largest
-catalog of Python modules, but registering software at the Vaults is
-optional, and many people don't bother.
-
-As a first small step toward fixing the problem, Python software
-packaged using the Distutils \command{sdist} command will include a
-file named \file{PKG-INFO} containing information about the package
-such as its name, version, and author (metadata, in cataloguing
-terminology).  PEP 241 contains the full list of fields that can be
-present in the \file{PKG-INFO} file.  As people began to package their
-software using Python 2.1, more and more packages will include
-metadata, making it possible to build automated cataloguing systems
-and experiment with them.  With the result experience, perhaps it'll
-be possible to design a really good catalog and then build support for
-it into Python 2.2.  For example, the Distutils \command{sdist}
-and \command{bdist_*} commands could support a \option{upload} option
-that would automatically upload your package to a catalog server. 
-
-You can start creating packages containing \file{PKG-INFO} even if
-you're not using Python 2.1, since a new release of the Distutils will
-be made for users of earlier Python versions.  Version 1.0.2 of the
-Distutils includes the changes described in PEP 241, as well as
-various bugfixes and enhancements.  It will be available from 
-the Distutils SIG at \url{http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/}.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{241}{Metadata for Python Software Packages}{Written and
-implemented by A.M. Kuchling.}
-
-\seepep{243}{Module Repository Upload Mechanism}{Written by Sean
-Reifschneider, this draft PEP describes a proposed mechanism for uploading 
-Python packages to a central server.
-}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{New and Improved Modules}
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item Ka-Ping Yee contributed two new modules: \module{inspect.py}, a
-module for getting information about live Python code, and
-\module{pydoc.py}, a module for interactively converting docstrings to
-HTML or text.  As a bonus, \file{Tools/scripts/pydoc}, which is now
-automatically installed, uses \module{pydoc.py} to display
-documentation given a Python module, package, or class name.  For
-example, \samp{pydoc xml.dom} displays the following:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-Python Library Documentation: package xml.dom in xml
- 
-NAME
-    xml.dom - W3C Document Object Model implementation for Python.
- 
-FILE
-    /usr/local/lib/python2.1/xml/dom/__init__.pyc
- 
-DESCRIPTION
-    The Python mapping of the Document Object Model is documented in the
-    Python Library Reference in the section on the xml.dom package.
- 
-    This package contains the following modules:
-      ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\file{pydoc} also includes a Tk-based interactive help browser.  
-\file{pydoc} quickly becomes addictive; try it out!
-
-\item Two different modules for unit testing were added to the
-standard library.  The \module{doctest} module, contributed by Tim
-Peters, provides a testing framework based on running embedded
-examples in docstrings and comparing the results against the expected
-output.  PyUnit, contributed by Steve Purcell, is a unit testing
-framework inspired by JUnit, which was in turn an adaptation of Kent
-Beck's Smalltalk testing framework.  See
-\url{http://pyunit.sourceforge.net/} for more information about
-PyUnit.
-
-\item The \module{difflib} module contains a class,
-\class{SequenceMatcher}, which compares two sequences and computes the
-changes required to transform one sequence into the other.  For
-example, this module can be used to write a tool similar to the \UNIX{}
-\program{diff} program, and in fact the sample program
-\file{Tools/scripts/ndiff.py} demonstrates how to write such a script.  
-
-\item \module{curses.panel}, a wrapper for the panel library, part of
-ncurses and of SYSV curses, was contributed by Thomas Gellekum.  The
-panel library provides windows with the additional feature of depth.
-Windows can be moved higher or lower in the depth ordering, and the
-panel library figures out where panels overlap and which sections are
-visible.
-
-\item The PyXML package has gone through a few releases since Python
-2.0, and Python 2.1 includes an updated version of the \module{xml}
-package.  Some of the noteworthy changes include support for Expat 1.2
-and later versions, the ability for Expat parsers to handle files in
-any encoding supported by Python, and various bugfixes for SAX, DOM,
-and the \module{minidom} module.
-
-\item Ping also contributed another hook for handling uncaught
-exceptions.  \function{sys.excepthook} can be set to a callable
-object.  When an exception isn't caught by any
-\keyword{try}...\keyword{except} blocks, the exception will be passed
-to \function{sys.excepthook}, which can then do whatever it likes.  At
-the Ninth Python Conference, Ping demonstrated an application for this
-hook: printing an extended traceback that not only lists the stack
-frames, but also lists the function arguments and the local variables
-for each frame.  
-
-\item Various functions in the \module{time} module, such as
-\function{asctime()} and \function{localtime()}, require a floating
-point argument containing the time in seconds since the epoch.  The
-most common use of these functions is to work with the current time,
-so the floating point argument has been made optional; when a value
-isn't provided, the current time will be used.  For example, log file
-entries usually need a string containing the current time; in Python
-2.1, \code{time.asctime()} can be used, instead of the lengthier
-\code{time.asctime(time.localtime(time.time()))} that was previously
-required.
- 
-This change was proposed and implemented by Thomas Wouters.
-
-\item The \module{ftplib} module now defaults to retrieving files in
-passive mode, because passive mode is more likely to work from behind
-a firewall.  This request came from the Debian bug tracking system,
-since other Debian packages use \module{ftplib} to retrieve files and
-then don't work from behind a firewall.  It's deemed unlikely that
-this will cause problems for anyone, because Netscape defaults to
-passive mode and few people complain, but if passive mode is
-unsuitable for your application or network setup, call
-\method{set_pasv(0)} on FTP objects to disable passive mode.
-
-\item Support for raw socket access has been added to the
-\module{socket} module, contributed by Grant Edwards.
-
-\item The \module{pstats} module now contains a simple interactive
-statistics browser for displaying timing profiles for Python programs,
-invoked when the module is run as a script.  Contributed by 
-Eric S.\ Raymond.
-
-\item A new implementation-dependent function, \function{sys._getframe(\optional{depth})},
-has been added to return a given frame object from the current call stack.
-\function{sys._getframe()} returns the frame at the top of the call stack; 
-if the optional integer argument \var{depth} is supplied, the function returns the frame
-that is \var{depth} calls below the top of the stack.  For example, \code{sys._getframe(1)}
-returns the caller's frame object.
-
-This function is only present in CPython, not in Jython or the .NET
-implementation.  Use it for debugging, and resist the temptation to
-put it into production code.
-
-
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Other Changes and Fixes}
-
-There were relatively few smaller changes made in Python 2.1 due to
-the shorter release cycle.  A search through the CVS change logs turns
-up 117 patches applied, and 136 bugs fixed; both figures are likely to
-be underestimates.  Some of the more notable changes are:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-
-\item A specialized object allocator is now optionally available, that
-should be faster than the system \function{malloc()} and have less
-memory overhead.  The allocator uses C's \function{malloc()} function
-to get large pools of memory, and then fulfills smaller memory
-requests from these pools.  It can be enabled by providing the
-\longprogramopt{with-pymalloc} option to the \program{configure} script; see
-\file{Objects/obmalloc.c} for the implementation details.  
-
-Authors of C extension modules should test their code with the object
-allocator enabled, because some incorrect code may break, causing core
-dumps at runtime.  There are a bunch of memory allocation functions in
-Python's C API that have previously been just aliases for the C
-library's \function{malloc()} and \function{free()}, meaning that if
-you accidentally called mismatched functions, the error wouldn't be
-noticeable.  When the object allocator is enabled, these functions
-aren't aliases of \function{malloc()} and \function{free()} any more,
-and calling the wrong function to free memory will get you a core
-dump.  For example, if memory was allocated using
-\function{PyMem_New()}, it has to be freed using
-\function{PyMem_Del()}, not \function{free()}.  A few modules included
-with Python fell afoul of this and had to be fixed; doubtless there
-are more third-party modules that will have the same problem.
-
-The object allocator was contributed by Vladimir Marangozov.
-
-\item The speed of line-oriented file I/O has been improved because
-people often complain about its lack of speed, and because it's often
-been used as a na\"ive benchmark.  The \method{readline()} method of
-file objects has therefore been rewritten to be much faster.  The
-exact amount of the speedup will vary from platform to platform
-depending on how slow the C library's \function{getc()} was, but is
-around 66\%, and potentially much faster on some particular operating
-systems.  Tim Peters did much of the benchmarking and coding for this
-change, motivated by a discussion in comp.lang.python.
-
-A new module and method for file objects was also added, contributed
-by Jeff Epler. The new method, \method{xreadlines()}, is similar to
-the existing \function{xrange()} built-in.  \function{xreadlines()}
-returns an opaque sequence object that only supports being iterated
-over, reading a line on every iteration but not reading the entire
-file into memory as the existing \method{readlines()} method does.
-You'd use it like this:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-for line in sys.stdin.xreadlines():
-    # ... do something for each line ...
-    ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-For a fuller discussion of the line I/O changes, see the python-dev
-summary for January 1-15, 2001 at
-\url{http://www.python.org/dev/summary/2001-01-1.html}.
-
-\item A new method, \method{popitem()}, was added to dictionaries to
-enable destructively iterating through the contents of a dictionary;
-this can be faster for large dictionaries because there's no need to
-construct a list containing all the keys or values.
-\code{D.popitem()} removes a random \code{(\var{key}, \var{value})}
-pair from the dictionary~\code{D} and returns it as a 2-tuple.  This
-was implemented mostly by Tim Peters and Guido van Rossum, after a
-suggestion and preliminary patch by Moshe Zadka.
- 
-\item Modules can now control which names are imported when \code{from
-\var{module} import *} is used, by defining an \code{__all__}
-attribute containing a list of names that will be imported.  One
-common complaint is that if the module imports other modules such as
-\module{sys} or \module{string}, \code{from \var{module} import *}
-will add them to the importing module's namespace.  To fix this,
-simply list the public names in \code{__all__}:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-# List public names
-__all__ = ['Database', 'open']
-\end{verbatim}
-
-A stricter version of this patch was first suggested and implemented
-by Ben Wolfson, but after some python-dev discussion, a weaker final
-version was checked in.
-
-\item Applying \function{repr()} to strings previously used octal
-escapes for non-printable characters; for example, a newline was
-\code{'\e 012'}.  This was a vestigial trace of Python's C ancestry, but
-today octal is of very little practical use.  Ka-Ping Yee suggested
-using hex escapes instead of octal ones, and using the \code{\e n},
-\code{\e t}, \code{\e r} escapes for the appropriate characters, and
-implemented this new formatting.
-
-\item Syntax errors detected at compile-time can now raise exceptions
-containing the filename and line number of the error, a pleasant side
-effect of the compiler reorganization done by Jeremy Hylton.
-
-\item C extensions which import other modules have been changed to use
-\function{PyImport_ImportModule()}, which means that they will use any
-import hooks that have been installed.  This is also encouraged for
-third-party extensions that need to import some other module from C
-code.  
-
-\item The size of the Unicode character database was shrunk by another
-340K thanks to Fredrik Lundh.
-
-\item Some new ports were contributed: MacOS X (by Steven Majewski),
-Cygwin (by Jason Tishler); RISCOS (by Dietmar Schwertberger); Unixware~7 
-(by Billy G. Allie).
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-And there's the usual list of minor bugfixes, minor memory leaks,
-docstring edits, and other tweaks, too lengthy to be worth itemizing;
-see the CVS logs for the full details if you want them.
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Acknowledgements}
-
-The author would like to thank the following people for offering
-suggestions on various drafts of this article: Graeme Cross, David
-Goodger, Jay Graves, Michael Hudson, Marc-Andr\'e Lemburg, Fredrik
-Lundh, Neil Schemenauer, Thomas Wouters.
-
-\end{document}
diff --git a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew22.tex b/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew22.tex
deleted file mode 100644
index 82ff061..0000000
--- a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew22.tex
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,1466 +0,0 @@
-\documentclass{howto}
-
-% $Id$
-
-\title{What's New in Python 2.2}
-\release{1.02}
-\author{A.M. Kuchling}
-\authoraddress{
-	\strong{Python Software Foundation}\\
-	Email: \email{amk@amk.ca}
-}
-\begin{document}
-\maketitle\tableofcontents
-
-\section{Introduction}
-
-This article explains the new features in Python 2.2.2, released on
-October 14, 2002.  Python 2.2.2 is a bugfix release of Python 2.2,
-originally released on December 21, 2001.
-
-Python 2.2 can be thought of as the "cleanup release".  There are some
-features such as generators and iterators that are completely new, but
-most of the changes, significant and far-reaching though they may be,
-are aimed at cleaning up irregularities and dark corners of the
-language design.
-
-This article doesn't attempt to provide a complete specification of
-the new features, but instead provides a convenient overview.  For
-full details, you should refer to the documentation for Python 2.2,
-such as the
-\citetitle[http://www.python.org/doc/2.2/lib/lib.html]{Python
-Library Reference} and the
-\citetitle[http://www.python.org/doc/2.2/ref/ref.html]{Python
-Reference Manual}.  If you want to understand the complete
-implementation and design rationale for a change, refer to the PEP for
-a particular new feature.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seeurl{http://www.unixreview.com/documents/s=1356/urm0109h/0109h.htm}
-{``What's So Special About Python 2.2?'' is also about the new 2.2
-features, and was written by Cameron Laird and Kathryn Soraiz.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEPs 252 and 253: Type and Class Changes}
-
-The largest and most far-reaching changes in Python 2.2 are to
-Python's model of objects and classes.  The changes should be backward
-compatible, so it's likely that your code will continue to run
-unchanged, but the changes provide some amazing new capabilities.
-Before beginning this, the longest and most complicated section of
-this article, I'll provide an overview of the changes and offer some
-comments.
-
-A long time ago I wrote a Web page
-(\url{http://www.amk.ca/python/writing/warts.html}) listing flaws in
-Python's design.  One of the most significant flaws was that it's
-impossible to subclass Python types implemented in C.  In particular,
-it's not possible to subclass built-in types, so you can't just
-subclass, say, lists in order to add a single useful method to them.
-The \module{UserList} module provides a class that supports all of the
-methods of lists and that can be subclassed further, but there's lots
-of C code that expects a regular Python list and won't accept a
-\class{UserList} instance.
-
-Python 2.2 fixes this, and in the process adds some exciting new
-capabilities.  A brief summary:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item You can subclass built-in types such as lists and even integers,
-and your subclasses should work in every place that requires the
-original type.
-
-\item It's now possible to define static and class methods, in addition
-to the instance methods available in previous versions of Python.
-
-\item It's also possible to automatically call methods on accessing or
-setting an instance attribute by using a new mechanism called
-\dfn{properties}.  Many uses of \method{__getattr__} can be rewritten
-to use properties instead, making the resulting code simpler and
-faster.  As a small side benefit, attributes can now have docstrings,
-too.
-
-\item The list of legal attributes for an instance can be limited to a
-particular set using \dfn{slots}, making it possible to safeguard
-against typos and perhaps make more optimizations possible in future
-versions of Python.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-Some users have voiced concern about all these changes.  Sure, they
-say, the new features are neat and lend themselves to all sorts of
-tricks that weren't possible in previous versions of Python, but
-they also make the language more complicated.  Some people have said
-that they've always recommended Python for its simplicity, and feel
-that its simplicity is being lost.
-
-Personally, I think there's no need to worry.  Many of the new
-features are quite esoteric, and you can write a lot of Python code
-without ever needed to be aware of them.  Writing a simple class is no
-more difficult than it ever was, so you don't need to bother learning
-or teaching them unless they're actually needed.  Some very
-complicated tasks that were previously only possible from C will now
-be possible in pure Python, and to my mind that's all for the better.
-
-I'm not going to attempt to cover every single corner case and small
-change that were required to make the new features work.  Instead this
-section will paint only the broad strokes.  See section~\ref{sect-rellinks},
-``Related Links'', for further sources of information about Python 2.2's new
-object model.
-
-
-\subsection{Old and New Classes}
-
-First, you should know that Python 2.2 really has two kinds of
-classes: classic or old-style classes, and new-style classes.  The
-old-style class model is exactly the same as the class model in
-earlier versions of Python.  All the new features described in this
-section apply only to new-style classes. This divergence isn't
-intended to last forever; eventually old-style classes will be
-dropped, possibly in Python 3.0.
-
-So how do you define a new-style class?  You do it by subclassing an
-existing new-style class.  Most of Python's built-in types, such as
-integers, lists, dictionaries, and even files, are new-style classes
-now.  A new-style class named \class{object}, the base class for all
-built-in types, has also been added so if no built-in type is
-suitable, you can just subclass \class{object}:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-class C(object):
-    def __init__ (self):
-        ...
-    ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-This means that \keyword{class} statements that don't have any base
-classes are always classic classes in Python 2.2.  (Actually you can
-also change this by setting a module-level variable named
-\member{__metaclass__} --- see \pep{253} for the details --- but it's
-easier to just subclass \keyword{object}.)
-
-The type objects for the built-in types are available as built-ins,
-named using a clever trick.  Python has always had built-in functions
-named \function{int()}, \function{float()}, and \function{str()}.  In
-2.2, they aren't functions any more, but type objects that behave as
-factories when called.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> int
-<type 'int'>
->>> int('123')
-123
-\end{verbatim}
-
-To make the set of types complete, new type objects such as
-\function{dict} and \function{file} have been added.  Here's a
-more interesting example, adding a \method{lock()} method to file
-objects:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-class LockableFile(file):
-    def lock (self, operation, length=0, start=0, whence=0):
-        import fcntl
-        return fcntl.lockf(self.fileno(), operation,
-                           length, start, whence)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The now-obsolete \module{posixfile} module contained a class that
-emulated all of a file object's methods and also added a
-\method{lock()} method, but this class couldn't be passed to internal
-functions that expected a built-in file, something which is possible
-with our new \class{LockableFile}.
-
-
-\subsection{Descriptors}
-
-In previous versions of Python, there was no consistent way to
-discover what attributes and methods were supported by an object.
-There were some informal conventions, such as defining
-\member{__members__} and \member{__methods__} attributes that were
-lists of names, but often the author of an extension type or a class
-wouldn't bother to define them.  You could fall back on inspecting the
-\member{__dict__} of an object, but when class inheritance or an
-arbitrary \method{__getattr__} hook were in use this could still be
-inaccurate.
-
-The one big idea underlying the new class model is that an API for
-describing the attributes of an object using \dfn{descriptors} has
-been formalized.  Descriptors specify the value of an attribute,
-stating whether it's a method or a field.  With the descriptor API,
-static methods and class methods become possible, as well as more
-exotic constructs.
-
-Attribute descriptors are objects that live inside class objects, and
-have a few attributes of their own:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item \member{__name__} is the attribute's name.
-
-\item \member{__doc__} is the attribute's docstring.
-
-\item \method{__get__(\var{object})} is a method that retrieves the
-attribute value from \var{object}. 
-
-\item \method{__set__(\var{object}, \var{value})} sets the attribute
-on \var{object} to \var{value}.
-
-\item \method{__delete__(\var{object}, \var{value})} deletes the \var{value} 
-attribute of \var{object}.
-\end{itemize}
-
-For example, when you write \code{obj.x}, the steps that Python
-actually performs are:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-descriptor = obj.__class__.x
-descriptor.__get__(obj)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-For methods, \method{descriptor.__get__} returns a temporary object that's
-callable, and wraps up the instance and the method to be called on it.
-This is also why static methods and class methods are now possible;
-they have descriptors that wrap up just the method, or the method and
-the class.  As a brief explanation of these new kinds of methods,
-static methods aren't passed the instance, and therefore resemble
-regular functions.  Class methods are passed the class of the object,
-but not the object itself.  Static and class methods are defined like
-this:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-class C(object):
-    def f(arg1, arg2):
-        ...
-    f = staticmethod(f)
-
-    def g(cls, arg1, arg2):
-        ...
-    g = classmethod(g)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The \function{staticmethod()} function takes the function
-\function{f}, and returns it wrapped up in a descriptor so it can be
-stored in the class object.  You might expect there to be special
-syntax for creating such methods (\code{def static f()},
-\code{defstatic f()}, or something like that) but no such syntax has
-been defined yet; that's been left for future versions of Python.
-
-More new features, such as slots and properties, are also implemented
-as new kinds of descriptors, and it's not difficult to write a
-descriptor class that does something novel.  For example, it would be
-possible to write a descriptor class that made it possible to write
-Eiffel-style preconditions and postconditions for a method.  A class
-that used this feature might be defined like this:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-from eiffel import eiffelmethod
-
-class C(object):
-    def f(self, arg1, arg2):
-        # The actual function
-        ...
-    def pre_f(self):
-        # Check preconditions
-        ...
-    def post_f(self):
-        # Check postconditions
-        ...
-
-    f = eiffelmethod(f, pre_f, post_f)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Note that a person using the new \function{eiffelmethod()} doesn't
-have to understand anything about descriptors.  This is why I think
-the new features don't increase the basic complexity of the language.
-There will be a few wizards who need to know about it in order to
-write \function{eiffelmethod()} or the ZODB or whatever, but most
-users will just write code on top of the resulting libraries and
-ignore the implementation details.
-
-
-\subsection{Multiple Inheritance: The Diamond Rule}
-
-Multiple inheritance has also been made more useful through changing
-the rules under which names are resolved.  Consider this set of classes
-(diagram taken from \pep{253} by Guido van Rossum):
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-                class A:
-                  ^ ^  def save(self): ...
-                 /   \
-                /     \
-               /       \
-              /         \
-          class B     class C:
-              ^         ^  def save(self): ...
-               \       /
-                \     /
-                 \   /
-                  \ /
-                class D
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The lookup rule for classic classes is simple but not very smart; the
-base classes are searched depth-first, going from left to right.  A
-reference to \method{D.save} will search the classes \class{D},
-\class{B}, and then \class{A}, where \method{save()} would be found
-and returned.  \method{C.save()} would never be found at all.  This is
-bad, because if \class{C}'s \method{save()} method is saving some
-internal state specific to \class{C}, not calling it will result in
-that state never getting saved.
-
-New-style classes follow a different algorithm that's a bit more
-complicated to explain, but does the right thing in this situation.
-(Note that Python 2.3 changes this algorithm to one that produces the
-same results in most cases, but produces more useful results for
-really complicated inheritance graphs.)
-
-\begin{enumerate}
-
-\item List all the base classes, following the classic lookup rule and
-include a class multiple times if it's visited repeatedly.  In the
-above example, the list of visited classes is [\class{D}, \class{B},
-\class{A}, \class{C}, \class{A}].
-
-\item Scan the list for duplicated classes.  If any are found, remove
-all but one occurrence, leaving the \emph{last} one in the list.  In
-the above example, the list becomes [\class{D}, \class{B}, \class{C},
-\class{A}] after dropping duplicates.
-
-\end{enumerate}
-
-Following this rule, referring to \method{D.save()} will return
-\method{C.save()}, which is the behaviour we're after.  This lookup
-rule is the same as the one followed by Common Lisp.  A new built-in
-function, \function{super()}, provides a way to get at a class's
-superclasses without having to reimplement Python's algorithm.
-The most commonly used form will be 
-\function{super(\var{class}, \var{obj})}, which returns 
-a bound superclass object (not the actual class object).  This form
-will be used in methods to call a method in the superclass; for
-example, \class{D}'s \method{save()} method would look like this:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-class D (B,C):
-    def save (self):
-	# Call superclass .save()
-        super(D, self).save()
-        # Save D's private information here
-        ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\function{super()} can also return unbound superclass objects
-when called as \function{super(\var{class})} or
-\function{super(\var{class1}, \var{class2})}, but this probably won't
-often be useful.
-
-
-\subsection{Attribute Access}
-
-A fair number of sophisticated Python classes define hooks for
-attribute access using \method{__getattr__}; most commonly this is
-done for convenience, to make code more readable by automatically
-mapping an attribute access such as \code{obj.parent} into a method
-call such as \code{obj.get_parent()}.  Python 2.2 adds some new ways
-of controlling attribute access.
-
-First, \method{__getattr__(\var{attr_name})} is still supported by
-new-style classes, and nothing about it has changed.  As before, it
-will be called when an attempt is made to access \code{obj.foo} and no
-attribute named \samp{foo} is found in the instance's dictionary.
-
-New-style classes also support a new method,
-\method{__getattribute__(\var{attr_name})}.  The difference between
-the two methods is that \method{__getattribute__} is \emph{always}
-called whenever any attribute is accessed, while the old
-\method{__getattr__} is only called if \samp{foo} isn't found in the
-instance's dictionary.
-
-However, Python 2.2's support for \dfn{properties} will often be a
-simpler way to trap attribute references.  Writing a
-\method{__getattr__} method is complicated because to avoid recursion
-you can't use regular attribute accesses inside them, and instead have
-to mess around with the contents of \member{__dict__}.
-\method{__getattr__} methods also end up being called by Python when
-it checks for other methods such as \method{__repr__} or
-\method{__coerce__}, and so have to be written with this in mind.
-Finally, calling a function on every attribute access results in a
-sizable performance loss.
-
-\class{property} is a new built-in type that packages up three
-functions that get, set, or delete an attribute, and a docstring.  For
-example, if you want to define a \member{size} attribute that's
-computed, but also settable, you could write:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-class C(object):
-    def get_size (self):
-        result = ... computation ...
-        return result
-    def set_size (self, size):
-        ... compute something based on the size
-        and set internal state appropriately ...
-
-    # Define a property.  The 'delete this attribute'
-    # method is defined as None, so the attribute
-    # can't be deleted.
-    size = property(get_size, set_size,
-                    None,
-                    "Storage size of this instance")
-\end{verbatim}
-
-That is certainly clearer and easier to write than a pair of
-\method{__getattr__}/\method{__setattr__} methods that check for the
-\member{size} attribute and handle it specially while retrieving all
-other attributes from the instance's \member{__dict__}.  Accesses to
-\member{size} are also the only ones which have to perform the work of
-calling a function, so references to other attributes run at
-their usual speed.
-
-Finally, it's possible to constrain the list of attributes that can be
-referenced on an object using the new \member{__slots__} class attribute.
-Python objects are usually very dynamic; at any time it's possible to
-define a new attribute on an instance by just doing
-\code{obj.new_attr=1}.   A new-style class can define a class attribute named
-\member{__slots__} to limit the legal attributes 
-to a particular set of names.  An example will make this clear:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> class C(object):
-...     __slots__ = ('template', 'name')
-...
->>> obj = C()
->>> print obj.template
-None
->>> obj.template = 'Test'
->>> print obj.template
-Test
->>> obj.newattr = None
-Traceback (most recent call last):
-  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
-AttributeError: 'C' object has no attribute 'newattr'
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Note how you get an \exception{AttributeError} on the attempt to
-assign to an attribute not listed in \member{__slots__}.
-
-
-
-\subsection{Related Links}
-\label{sect-rellinks}
-
-This section has just been a quick overview of the new features,
-giving enough of an explanation to start you programming, but many
-details have been simplified or ignored.  Where should you go to get a
-more complete picture?
-
-\url{http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html} is a lengthy tutorial
-introduction to the descriptor features, written by Guido van Rossum.
-If my description has whetted your appetite, go read this tutorial
-next, because it goes into much more detail about the new features
-while still remaining quite easy to read.
-
-Next, there are two relevant PEPs, \pep{252} and \pep{253}.  \pep{252}
-is titled "Making Types Look More Like Classes", and covers the
-descriptor API.  \pep{253} is titled "Subtyping Built-in Types", and
-describes the changes to type objects that make it possible to subtype
-built-in objects.  \pep{253} is the more complicated PEP of the two,
-and at a few points the necessary explanations of types and meta-types
-may cause your head to explode.  Both PEPs were written and
-implemented by Guido van Rossum, with substantial assistance from the
-rest of the Zope Corp. team.
-
-Finally, there's the ultimate authority: the source code.  Most of the
-machinery for the type handling is in \file{Objects/typeobject.c}, but
-you should only resort to it after all other avenues have been
-exhausted, including posting a question to python-list or python-dev. 
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 234: Iterators}
-
-Another significant addition to 2.2 is an iteration interface at both
-the C and Python levels.  Objects can define how they can be looped
-over by callers.
-
-In Python versions up to 2.1, the usual way to make \code{for item in
-obj} work is to define a \method{__getitem__()} method that looks
-something like this:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-    def __getitem__(self, index):
-        return <next item>
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\method{__getitem__()} is more properly used to define an indexing
-operation on an object so that you can write \code{obj[5]} to retrieve
-the sixth element.  It's a bit misleading when you're using this only
-to support \keyword{for} loops.  Consider some file-like object that
-wants to be looped over; the \var{index} parameter is essentially
-meaningless, as the class probably assumes that a series of
-\method{__getitem__()} calls will be made with \var{index}
-incrementing by one each time.  In other words, the presence of the
-\method{__getitem__()} method doesn't mean that using \code{file[5]} 
-to randomly access the sixth element will work, though it really should.
-
-In Python 2.2, iteration can be implemented separately, and
-\method{__getitem__()} methods can be limited to classes that really
-do support random access.  The basic idea of iterators is 
-simple.  A new built-in function, \function{iter(obj)} or
-\code{iter(\var{C}, \var{sentinel})}, is used to get an iterator.
-\function{iter(obj)} returns an iterator for the object \var{obj},
-while \code{iter(\var{C}, \var{sentinel})} returns an iterator that
-will invoke the callable object \var{C} until it returns
-\var{sentinel} to signal that the iterator is done.  
-
-Python classes can define an \method{__iter__()} method, which should
-create and return a new iterator for the object; if the object is its
-own iterator, this method can just return \code{self}.  In particular,
-iterators will usually be their own iterators.  Extension types
-implemented in C can implement a \member{tp_iter} function in order to
-return an iterator, and extension types that want to behave as
-iterators can define a \member{tp_iternext} function.
-
-So, after all this, what do iterators actually do?  They have one
-required method, \method{next()}, which takes no arguments and returns
-the next value.  When there are no more values to be returned, calling
-\method{next()} should raise the \exception{StopIteration} exception.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> L = [1,2,3]
->>> i = iter(L)
->>> print i
-<iterator object at 0x8116870>
->>> i.next()
-1
->>> i.next()
-2
->>> i.next()
-3
->>> i.next()
-Traceback (most recent call last):
-  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
-StopIteration
->>>      
-\end{verbatim}
-
-In 2.2, Python's \keyword{for} statement no longer expects a sequence;
-it expects something for which \function{iter()} will return an iterator.
-For backward compatibility and convenience, an iterator is
-automatically constructed for sequences that don't implement
-\method{__iter__()} or a \member{tp_iter} slot, so \code{for i in
-[1,2,3]} will still work.  Wherever the Python interpreter loops over
-a sequence, it's been changed to use the iterator protocol.  This
-means you can do things like this:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> L = [1,2,3]
->>> i = iter(L)
->>> a,b,c = i
->>> a,b,c
-(1, 2, 3)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Iterator support has been added to some of Python's basic types.  
-Calling \function{iter()} on a dictionary will return an iterator
-which loops over its keys:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> m = {'Jan': 1, 'Feb': 2, 'Mar': 3, 'Apr': 4, 'May': 5, 'Jun': 6,
-...      'Jul': 7, 'Aug': 8, 'Sep': 9, 'Oct': 10, 'Nov': 11, 'Dec': 12}
->>> for key in m: print key, m[key]
-...
-Mar 3
-Feb 2
-Aug 8
-Sep 9
-May 5
-Jun 6
-Jul 7
-Jan 1
-Apr 4
-Nov 11
-Dec 12
-Oct 10
-\end{verbatim}          
-
-That's just the default behaviour.  If you want to iterate over keys,
-values, or key/value pairs, you can explicitly call the
-\method{iterkeys()}, \method{itervalues()}, or \method{iteritems()}
-methods to get an appropriate iterator.  In a minor related change,
-the \keyword{in} operator now works on dictionaries, so
-\code{\var{key} in dict} is now equivalent to
-\code{dict.has_key(\var{key})}.
-
-Files also provide an iterator, which calls the \method{readline()}
-method until there are no more lines in the file.  This means you can
-now read each line of a file using code like this:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-for line in file:
-    # do something for each line
-    ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Note that you can only go forward in an iterator; there's no way to
-get the previous element, reset the iterator, or make a copy of it.
-An iterator object could provide such additional capabilities, but the
-iterator protocol only requires a \method{next()} method.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{234}{Iterators}{Written by Ka-Ping Yee and GvR; implemented 
-by the Python Labs crew, mostly by GvR and Tim Peters.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 255: Simple Generators}
-
-Generators are another new feature, one that interacts with the
-introduction of iterators.
-
-You're doubtless familiar with how function calls work in Python or
-C.  When you call a function, it gets a private namespace where its local
-variables are created.  When the function reaches a \keyword{return}
-statement, the local variables are destroyed and the resulting value
-is returned to the caller.  A later call to the same function will get
-a fresh new set of local variables.  But, what if the local variables
-weren't thrown away on exiting a function?  What if you could later
-resume the function where it left off?  This is what generators
-provide; they can be thought of as resumable functions.
-
-Here's the simplest example of a generator function:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def generate_ints(N):
-    for i in range(N):
-        yield i
-\end{verbatim}
-
-A new keyword, \keyword{yield}, was introduced for generators.  Any
-function containing a \keyword{yield} statement is a generator
-function; this is detected by Python's bytecode compiler which
-compiles the function specially as a result.  Because a new keyword was
-introduced, generators must be explicitly enabled in a module by
-including a \code{from __future__ import generators} statement near
-the top of the module's source code.  In Python 2.3 this statement
-will become unnecessary.
-
-When you call a generator function, it doesn't return a single value;
-instead it returns a generator object that supports the iterator
-protocol.  On executing the \keyword{yield} statement, the generator
-outputs the value of \code{i}, similar to a \keyword{return}
-statement.  The big difference between \keyword{yield} and a
-\keyword{return} statement is that on reaching a \keyword{yield} the
-generator's state of execution is suspended and local variables are
-preserved.  On the next call to the generator's \code{next()} method,
-the function will resume executing immediately after the
-\keyword{yield} statement.  (For complicated reasons, the
-\keyword{yield} statement isn't allowed inside the \keyword{try} block
-of a \keyword{try}...\keyword{finally} statement; read \pep{255} for a full
-explanation of the interaction between \keyword{yield} and
-exceptions.)
-
-Here's a sample usage of the \function{generate_ints} generator:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> gen = generate_ints(3)
->>> gen
-<generator object at 0x8117f90>
->>> gen.next()
-0
->>> gen.next()
-1
->>> gen.next()
-2
->>> gen.next()
-Traceback (most recent call last):
-  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
-  File "<stdin>", line 2, in generate_ints
-StopIteration
-\end{verbatim}
-
-You could equally write \code{for i in generate_ints(5)}, or
-\code{a,b,c = generate_ints(3)}.
-
-Inside a generator function, the \keyword{return} statement can only
-be used without a value, and signals the end of the procession of
-values; afterwards the generator cannot return any further values.
-\keyword{return} with a value, such as \code{return 5}, is a syntax
-error inside a generator function.  The end of the generator's results
-can also be indicated by raising \exception{StopIteration} manually,
-or by just letting the flow of execution fall off the bottom of the
-function.
-
-You could achieve the effect of generators manually by writing your
-own class and storing all the local variables of the generator as
-instance variables.  For example, returning a list of integers could
-be done by setting \code{self.count} to 0, and having the
-\method{next()} method increment \code{self.count} and return it.
-However, for a moderately complicated generator, writing a
-corresponding class would be much messier.
-\file{Lib/test/test_generators.py} contains a number of more
-interesting examples.  The simplest one implements an in-order
-traversal of a tree using generators recursively.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-# A recursive generator that generates Tree leaves in in-order.
-def inorder(t):
-    if t:
-        for x in inorder(t.left):
-            yield x
-        yield t.label
-        for x in inorder(t.right):
-            yield x
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Two other examples in \file{Lib/test/test_generators.py} produce
-solutions for the N-Queens problem (placing $N$ queens on an $NxN$
-chess board so that no queen threatens another) and the Knight's Tour
-(a route that takes a knight to every square of an $NxN$ chessboard
-without visiting any square twice). 
-
-The idea of generators comes from other programming languages,
-especially Icon (\url{http://www.cs.arizona.edu/icon/}), where the
-idea of generators is central.  In Icon, every
-expression and function call behaves like a generator.  One example
-from ``An Overview of the Icon Programming Language'' at
-\url{http://www.cs.arizona.edu/icon/docs/ipd266.htm} gives an idea of
-what this looks like:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-sentence := "Store it in the neighboring harbor"
-if (i := find("or", sentence)) > 5 then write(i)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-In Icon the \function{find()} function returns the indexes at which the
-substring ``or'' is found: 3, 23, 33.  In the \keyword{if} statement,
-\code{i} is first assigned a value of 3, but 3 is less than 5, so the
-comparison fails, and Icon retries it with the second value of 23.  23
-is greater than 5, so the comparison now succeeds, and the code prints
-the value 23 to the screen.
-
-Python doesn't go nearly as far as Icon in adopting generators as a
-central concept.  Generators are considered a new part of the core
-Python language, but learning or using them isn't compulsory; if they
-don't solve any problems that you have, feel free to ignore them.
-One novel feature of Python's interface as compared to
-Icon's is that a generator's state is represented as a concrete object
-(the iterator) that can be passed around to other functions or stored
-in a data structure.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{255}{Simple Generators}{Written by Neil Schemenauer, Tim
-Peters, Magnus Lie Hetland.  Implemented mostly by Neil Schemenauer
-and Tim Peters, with other fixes from the Python Labs crew.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 237: Unifying Long Integers and Integers}
-
-In recent versions, the distinction between regular integers, which
-are 32-bit values on most machines, and long integers, which can be of
-arbitrary size, was becoming an annoyance.  For example, on platforms
-that support files larger than \code{2**32} bytes, the
-\method{tell()} method of file objects has to return a long integer.
-However, there were various bits of Python that expected plain
-integers and would raise an error if a long integer was provided
-instead.  For example, in Python 1.5, only regular integers
-could be used as a slice index, and \code{'abc'[1L:]} would raise a
-\exception{TypeError} exception with the message 'slice index must be
-int'.
-
-Python 2.2 will shift values from short to long integers as required.
-The 'L' suffix is no longer needed to indicate a long integer literal,
-as now the compiler will choose the appropriate type.  (Using the 'L'
-suffix will be discouraged in future 2.x versions of Python,
-triggering a warning in Python 2.4, and probably dropped in Python
-3.0.)  Many operations that used to raise an \exception{OverflowError}
-will now return a long integer as their result.  For example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> 1234567890123
-1234567890123L
->>> 2 ** 64
-18446744073709551616L
-\end{verbatim}
-
-In most cases, integers and long integers will now be treated
-identically.  You can still distinguish them with the
-\function{type()} built-in function, but that's rarely needed.  
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{237}{Unifying Long Integers and Integers}{Written by
-Moshe Zadka and Guido van Rossum.  Implemented mostly by Guido van
-Rossum.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 238: Changing the Division Operator}
-
-The most controversial change in Python 2.2 heralds the start of an effort
-to fix an old design flaw that's been in Python from the beginning.
-Currently Python's division operator, \code{/}, behaves like C's
-division operator when presented with two integer arguments: it
-returns an integer result that's truncated down when there would be
-a fractional part.  For example, \code{3/2} is 1, not 1.5, and
-\code{(-1)/2} is -1, not -0.5.  This means that the results of divison
-can vary unexpectedly depending on the type of the two operands and
-because Python is dynamically typed, it can be difficult to determine
-the possible types of the operands.
-
-(The controversy is over whether this is \emph{really} a design flaw,
-and whether it's worth breaking existing code to fix this.  It's
-caused endless discussions on python-dev, and in July 2001 erupted into an
-storm of acidly sarcastic postings on \newsgroup{comp.lang.python}. I
-won't argue for either side here and will stick to describing what's 
-implemented in 2.2.  Read \pep{238} for a summary of arguments and
-counter-arguments.)  
-
-Because this change might break code, it's being introduced very
-gradually.  Python 2.2 begins the transition, but the switch won't be
-complete until Python 3.0.
-
-First, I'll borrow some terminology from \pep{238}.  ``True division'' is the
-division that most non-programmers are familiar with: 3/2 is 1.5, 1/4
-is 0.25, and so forth.  ``Floor division'' is what Python's \code{/}
-operator currently does when given integer operands; the result is the
-floor of the value returned by true division.  ``Classic division'' is
-the current mixed behaviour of \code{/}; it returns the result of
-floor division when the operands are integers, and returns the result
-of true division when one of the operands is a floating-point number.
-
-Here are the changes 2.2 introduces:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item A new operator, \code{//}, is the floor division operator.
-(Yes, we know it looks like \Cpp's comment symbol.)  \code{//}
-\emph{always} performs floor division no matter what the types of
-its operands are, so \code{1 // 2} is 0 and \code{1.0 // 2.0} is also
-0.0.
-
-\code{//} is always available in Python 2.2; you don't need to enable
-it using a \code{__future__} statement.  
-
-\item By including a \code{from __future__ import division} in a
-module, the \code{/} operator will be changed to return the result of
-true division, so \code{1/2} is 0.5.  Without the \code{__future__}
-statement, \code{/} still means classic division.  The default meaning
-of \code{/} will not change until Python 3.0.  
-
-\item Classes can define methods called \method{__truediv__} and
-\method{__floordiv__} to overload the two division operators.  At the
-C level, there are also slots in the \ctype{PyNumberMethods} structure
-so extension types can define the two operators.
-
-\item Python 2.2 supports some command-line arguments for testing
-whether code will works with the changed division semantics.  Running
-python with \programopt{-Q warn} will cause a warning to be issued
-whenever division is applied to two integers.  You can use this to
-find code that's affected by the change and fix it.  By default,
-Python 2.2 will simply perform classic division without a warning; the
-warning will be turned on by default in Python 2.3.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{238}{Changing the Division Operator}{Written by Moshe Zadka and 
-Guido van Rossum.  Implemented by Guido van Rossum..}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Unicode Changes}
-
-Python's Unicode support has been enhanced a bit in 2.2.  Unicode
-strings are usually stored as UCS-2, as 16-bit unsigned integers.
-Python 2.2 can also be compiled to use UCS-4, 32-bit unsigned
-integers, as its internal encoding by supplying
-\longprogramopt{enable-unicode=ucs4} to the configure script.  
-(It's also possible to specify
-\longprogramopt{disable-unicode} to completely disable Unicode
-support.)
-
-When built to use UCS-4 (a ``wide Python''), the interpreter can
-natively handle Unicode characters from U+000000 to U+110000, so the
-range of legal values for the \function{unichr()} function is expanded
-accordingly.  Using an interpreter compiled to use UCS-2 (a ``narrow
-Python''), values greater than 65535 will still cause
-\function{unichr()} to raise a \exception{ValueError} exception.
-This is all described in \pep{261}, ``Support for `wide' Unicode
-characters''; consult it for further details.
-
-Another change is simpler to explain. Since their introduction,
-Unicode strings have supported an \method{encode()} method to convert
-the string to a selected encoding such as UTF-8 or Latin-1.  A
-symmetric \method{decode(\optional{\var{encoding}})} method has been
-added to 8-bit strings (though not to Unicode strings) in 2.2.
-\method{decode()} assumes that the string is in the specified encoding
-and decodes it, returning whatever is returned by the codec. 
-
-Using this new feature, codecs have been added for tasks not directly
-related to Unicode.  For example, codecs have been added for
-uu-encoding, MIME's base64 encoding, and compression with the
-\module{zlib} module:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> s = """Here is a lengthy piece of redundant, overly verbose,
-... and repetitive text.
-... """
->>> data = s.encode('zlib')
->>> data
-'x\x9c\r\xc9\xc1\r\x80 \x10\x04\xc0?Ul...'
->>> data.decode('zlib')
-'Here is a lengthy piece of redundant, overly verbose,\nand repetitive text.\n'
->>> print s.encode('uu')
-begin 666 <data>
-M2&5R92!I<R!A(&QE;F=T:'D@<&EE8V4@;V8@<F5D=6YD86YT+"!O=F5R;'D@
->=F5R8F]S92P*86YD(')E<&5T:71I=F4@=&5X="X*
-
-end
->>> "sheesh".encode('rot-13')
-'furrfu'
-\end{verbatim}
-
-To convert a class instance to Unicode, a \method{__unicode__} method
-can be defined by a class, analogous to \method{__str__}.
-
-\method{encode()}, \method{decode()}, and \method{__unicode__} were
-implemented by Marc-Andr\'e Lemburg.  The changes to support using
-UCS-4 internally were implemented by Fredrik Lundh and Martin von
-L\"owis.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{261}{Support for `wide' Unicode characters}{Written by
-Paul Prescod.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 227: Nested Scopes}
-
-In Python 2.1, statically nested scopes were added as an optional
-feature, to be enabled by a \code{from __future__ import
-nested_scopes} directive.  In 2.2 nested scopes no longer need to be
-specially enabled, and are now always present.  The rest of this section
-is a copy of the description of nested scopes from my ``What's New in
-Python 2.1'' document; if you read it when 2.1 came out, you can skip
-the rest of this section.
-
-The largest change introduced in Python 2.1, and made complete in 2.2,
-is to Python's scoping rules.  In Python 2.0, at any given time there
-are at most three namespaces used to look up variable names: local,
-module-level, and the built-in namespace.  This often surprised people
-because it didn't match their intuitive expectations.  For example, a
-nested recursive function definition doesn't work:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def f():
-    ...
-    def g(value):
-        ...
-        return g(value-1) + 1
-    ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The function \function{g()} will always raise a \exception{NameError}
-exception, because the binding of the name \samp{g} isn't in either
-its local namespace or in the module-level namespace.  This isn't much
-of a problem in practice (how often do you recursively define interior
-functions like this?), but this also made using the \keyword{lambda}
-statement clumsier, and this was a problem in practice.  In code which
-uses \keyword{lambda} you can often find local variables being copied
-by passing them as the default values of arguments.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def find(self, name):
-    "Return list of any entries equal to 'name'"
-    L = filter(lambda x, name=name: x == name,
-               self.list_attribute)
-    return L
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The readability of Python code written in a strongly functional style
-suffers greatly as a result.
-
-The most significant change to Python 2.2 is that static scoping has
-been added to the language to fix this problem.  As a first effect,
-the \code{name=name} default argument is now unnecessary in the above
-example.  Put simply, when a given variable name is not assigned a
-value within a function (by an assignment, or the \keyword{def},
-\keyword{class}, or \keyword{import} statements), references to the
-variable will be looked up in the local namespace of the enclosing
-scope.  A more detailed explanation of the rules, and a dissection of
-the implementation, can be found in the PEP.
-
-This change may cause some compatibility problems for code where the
-same variable name is used both at the module level and as a local
-variable within a function that contains further function definitions.
-This seems rather unlikely though, since such code would have been
-pretty confusing to read in the first place.  
-
-One side effect of the change is that the \code{from \var{module}
-import *} and \keyword{exec} statements have been made illegal inside
-a function scope under certain conditions.  The Python reference
-manual has said all along that \code{from \var{module} import *} is
-only legal at the top level of a module, but the CPython interpreter
-has never enforced this before.  As part of the implementation of
-nested scopes, the compiler which turns Python source into bytecodes
-has to generate different code to access variables in a containing
-scope.  \code{from \var{module} import *} and \keyword{exec} make it
-impossible for the compiler to figure this out, because they add names
-to the local namespace that are unknowable at compile time.
-Therefore, if a function contains function definitions or
-\keyword{lambda} expressions with free variables, the compiler will
-flag this by raising a \exception{SyntaxError} exception.
-
-To make the preceding explanation a bit clearer, here's an example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-x = 1
-def f():
-    # The next line is a syntax error
-    exec 'x=2'  
-    def g():
-        return x
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Line 4 containing the \keyword{exec} statement is a syntax error,
-since \keyword{exec} would define a new local variable named \samp{x}
-whose value should be accessed by \function{g()}.  
-
-This shouldn't be much of a limitation, since \keyword{exec} is rarely
-used in most Python code (and when it is used, it's often a sign of a
-poor design anyway).
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{227}{Statically Nested Scopes}{Written and implemented by
-Jeremy Hylton.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{New and Improved Modules}
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-  \item The \module{xmlrpclib} module was contributed to the standard
-  library by Fredrik Lundh, providing support for writing XML-RPC
-  clients.  XML-RPC is a simple remote procedure call protocol built on
-  top of HTTP and XML. For example, the following snippet retrieves a
-  list of RSS channels from the O'Reilly Network, and then 
-  lists the recent headlines for one channel:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-import xmlrpclib
-s = xmlrpclib.Server(
-      'http://www.oreillynet.com/meerkat/xml-rpc/server.php')
-channels = s.meerkat.getChannels()
-# channels is a list of dictionaries, like this:
-# [{'id': 4, 'title': 'Freshmeat Daily News'}
-#  {'id': 190, 'title': '32Bits Online'},
-#  {'id': 4549, 'title': '3DGamers'}, ... ]
-
-# Get the items for one channel
-items = s.meerkat.getItems( {'channel': 4} )
-
-# 'items' is another list of dictionaries, like this:
-# [{'link': 'http://freshmeat.net/releases/52719/', 
-#   'description': 'A utility which converts HTML to XSL FO.', 
-#   'title': 'html2fo 0.3 (Default)'}, ... ]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The \module{SimpleXMLRPCServer} module makes it easy to create
-straightforward XML-RPC servers.  See \url{http://www.xmlrpc.com/} for
-more information about XML-RPC.
-
-  \item The new \module{hmac} module implements the HMAC
-  algorithm described by \rfc{2104}.
-  (Contributed by Gerhard H\"aring.)
-
-  \item Several functions that originally returned lengthy tuples now
-  return pseudo-sequences that still behave like tuples but also have
-  mnemonic attributes such as member{st_mtime} or \member{tm_year}.
-  The enhanced functions include \function{stat()},
-  \function{fstat()}, \function{statvfs()}, and \function{fstatvfs()}
-  in the \module{os} module, and \function{localtime()},
-  \function{gmtime()}, and \function{strptime()} in the \module{time}
-  module.  
-  
-  For example, to obtain a file's size using the old tuples, you'd end
-  up writing something like \code{file_size =
-  os.stat(filename)[stat.ST_SIZE]}, but now this can be written more
-  clearly as \code{file_size = os.stat(filename).st_size}.
-
-   The original patch for this feature was contributed by Nick Mathewson.
-
-  \item The Python profiler has been extensively reworked and various
-  errors in its output have been corrected.  (Contributed by
-  Fred~L. Drake, Jr. and Tim Peters.)
- 
-  \item The \module{socket} module can be compiled to support IPv6;
-  specify the \longprogramopt{enable-ipv6} option to Python's configure
-  script.  (Contributed by Jun-ichiro ``itojun'' Hagino.)
-
-  \item Two new format characters were added to the \module{struct}
-  module for 64-bit integers on platforms that support the C
-  \ctype{long long} type.  \samp{q} is for a signed 64-bit integer,
-  and \samp{Q} is for an unsigned one.  The value is returned in
-  Python's long integer type.  (Contributed by Tim Peters.)
-
-  \item In the interpreter's interactive mode, there's a new built-in
-  function \function{help()} that uses the \module{pydoc} module
-  introduced in Python 2.1 to provide interactive help.
-  \code{help(\var{object})} displays any available help text about
-  \var{object}.  \function{help()} with no argument puts you in an online
-  help utility, where you can enter the names of functions, classes,
-  or modules to read their help text.
-  (Contributed by Guido van Rossum, using Ka-Ping Yee's \module{pydoc} module.)
-
-  \item Various bugfixes and performance improvements have been made
-  to the SRE engine underlying the \module{re} module.  For example,
-  the \function{re.sub()} and \function{re.split()} functions have
-  been rewritten in C.  Another contributed patch speeds up certain
-  Unicode character ranges by a factor of two, and a new \method{finditer()} 
-  method that returns an iterator over all the non-overlapping matches in 
-  a given string. 
-  (SRE is maintained by
-  Fredrik Lundh.  The BIGCHARSET patch was contributed by Martin von
-  L\"owis.)
-
-  \item The \module{smtplib} module now supports \rfc{2487}, ``Secure
-  SMTP over TLS'', so it's now possible to encrypt the SMTP traffic
-  between a Python program and the mail transport agent being handed a
-  message.  \module{smtplib} also supports SMTP authentication. 
-  (Contributed by Gerhard H\"aring.)
-
-  \item The \module{imaplib} module, maintained by Piers Lauder, has
-  support for several new extensions: the NAMESPACE extension defined
-  in \rfc{2342}, SORT, GETACL and SETACL.  (Contributed by Anthony
-  Baxter and Michel Pelletier.)
-
-  \item The \module{rfc822} module's parsing of email addresses is now
-  compliant with \rfc{2822}, an update to \rfc{822}.  (The module's
-  name is \emph{not} going to be changed to \samp{rfc2822}.)  A new
-  package, \module{email}, has also been added for parsing and
-  generating e-mail messages.  (Contributed by Barry Warsaw, and
-  arising out of his work on Mailman.)
-
-  \item The \module{difflib} module now contains a new \class{Differ}
-  class for producing human-readable lists of changes (a ``delta'')
-  between two sequences of lines of text.  There are also two
-  generator functions, \function{ndiff()} and \function{restore()},
-  which respectively return a delta from two sequences, or one of the
-  original sequences from a delta. (Grunt work contributed by David
-  Goodger, from ndiff.py code by Tim Peters who then did the
-  generatorization.)
-
-  \item New constants \constant{ascii_letters},
-  \constant{ascii_lowercase}, and \constant{ascii_uppercase} were
-  added to the \module{string} module.  There were several modules in
-  the standard library that used \constant{string.letters} to mean the
-  ranges A-Za-z, but that assumption is incorrect when locales are in
-  use, because \constant{string.letters} varies depending on the set
-  of legal characters defined by the current locale.  The buggy
-  modules have all been fixed to use \constant{ascii_letters} instead.
-  (Reported by an unknown person; fixed by Fred~L. Drake, Jr.)
-
-  \item The \module{mimetypes} module now makes it easier to use
-  alternative MIME-type databases by the addition of a
-  \class{MimeTypes} class, which takes a list of filenames to be
-  parsed.  (Contributed by Fred~L. Drake, Jr.)
-
-  \item A \class{Timer} class was added to the \module{threading}
-  module that allows scheduling an activity to happen at some future
-  time.  (Contributed by Itamar Shtull-Trauring.)
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Interpreter Changes and Fixes}
-
-Some of the changes only affect people who deal with the Python
-interpreter at the C level because they're writing Python extension modules,
-embedding the interpreter, or just hacking on the interpreter itself.
-If you only write Python code, none of the changes described here will
-affect you very much.
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-  \item Profiling and tracing functions can now be implemented in C,
-  which can operate at much higher speeds than Python-based functions
-  and should reduce the overhead of profiling and tracing.  This 
-  will be of interest to authors of development environments for
-  Python.  Two new C functions were added to Python's API,
-  \cfunction{PyEval_SetProfile()} and \cfunction{PyEval_SetTrace()}.
-  The existing \function{sys.setprofile()} and
-  \function{sys.settrace()} functions still exist, and have simply
-  been changed to use the new C-level interface.  (Contributed by Fred
-  L. Drake, Jr.)
-
-  \item Another low-level API, primarily of interest to implementors
-  of Python debuggers and development tools, was added.
-  \cfunction{PyInterpreterState_Head()} and
-  \cfunction{PyInterpreterState_Next()} let a caller walk through all
-  the existing interpreter objects;
-  \cfunction{PyInterpreterState_ThreadHead()} and
-  \cfunction{PyThreadState_Next()} allow looping over all the thread
-  states for a given interpreter.  (Contributed by David Beazley.)
-
-\item The C-level interface to the garbage collector has been changed
-to make it easier to write extension types that support garbage
-collection and to debug misuses of the functions.
-Various functions have slightly different semantics, so a bunch of
-functions had to be renamed.  Extensions that use the old API will
-still compile but will \emph{not} participate in garbage collection,
-so updating them for 2.2 should be considered fairly high priority.
-
-To upgrade an extension module to the new API, perform the following
-steps:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item Rename \cfunction{Py_TPFLAGS_GC} to \cfunction{PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC}.
-
-\item Use \cfunction{PyObject_GC_New} or \cfunction{PyObject_GC_NewVar} to
-allocate objects, and \cfunction{PyObject_GC_Del} to deallocate them.
-
-\item Rename \cfunction{PyObject_GC_Init} to \cfunction{PyObject_GC_Track} and
-\cfunction{PyObject_GC_Fini} to \cfunction{PyObject_GC_UnTrack}.
-
-\item Remove \cfunction{PyGC_HEAD_SIZE} from object size calculations.
-
-\item Remove calls to \cfunction{PyObject_AS_GC} and \cfunction{PyObject_FROM_GC}.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-  \item A new \samp{et} format sequence was added to
-  \cfunction{PyArg_ParseTuple}; \samp{et} takes both a parameter and
-  an encoding name, and converts the parameter to the given encoding
-  if the parameter turns out to be a Unicode string, or leaves it
-  alone if it's an 8-bit string, assuming it to already be in the
-  desired encoding.  This differs from the \samp{es} format character,
-  which assumes that 8-bit strings are in Python's default ASCII
-  encoding and converts them to the specified new encoding.
-  (Contributed by M.-A. Lemburg, and used for the MBCS support on
-  Windows described in the following section.)
-
-  \item A different argument parsing function,
-  \cfunction{PyArg_UnpackTuple()}, has been added that's simpler and
-  presumably faster.  Instead of specifying a format string, the
-  caller simply gives the minimum and maximum number of arguments
-  expected, and a set of pointers to \ctype{PyObject*} variables that
-  will be filled in with argument values.  
-
-  \item Two new flags \constant{METH_NOARGS} and \constant{METH_O} are
-   available in method definition tables to simplify implementation of
-   methods with no arguments or a single untyped argument. Calling
-   such methods is more efficient than calling a corresponding method
-   that uses \constant{METH_VARARGS}. 
-   Also, the old \constant{METH_OLDARGS} style of writing C methods is 
-   now officially deprecated.  
-
-\item
-   Two new wrapper functions, \cfunction{PyOS_snprintf()} and
-   \cfunction{PyOS_vsnprintf()} were added to provide 
-   cross-platform implementations for the relatively new
-   \cfunction{snprintf()} and \cfunction{vsnprintf()} C lib APIs. In
-   contrast to the standard \cfunction{sprintf()} and
-   \cfunction{vsprintf()} functions, the Python versions check the
-   bounds of the buffer used to protect against buffer overruns.
-   (Contributed by M.-A. Lemburg.)
-
-   \item The \cfunction{_PyTuple_Resize()} function has lost an unused
-   parameter, so now it takes 2 parameters instead of 3.  The third
-   argument was never used, and can simply be discarded when porting
-   code from earlier versions to Python 2.2.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Other Changes and Fixes}
-
-As usual there were a bunch of other improvements and bugfixes
-scattered throughout the source tree.  A search through the CVS change
-logs finds there were 527 patches applied and 683 bugs fixed between
-Python 2.1 and 2.2; 2.2.1 applied 139 patches and fixed 143 bugs;
-2.2.2 applied 106 patches and fixed 82 bugs.  These figures are likely
-to be underestimates.
-
-Some of the more notable changes are:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-  \item The code for the MacOS port for Python, maintained by Jack
-  Jansen, is now kept in the main Python CVS tree, and many changes
-  have been made to support MacOS~X.
-
-The most significant change is the ability to build Python as a
-framework, enabled by supplying the \longprogramopt{enable-framework}
-option to the configure script when compiling Python.  According to
-Jack Jansen, ``This installs a self-contained Python installation plus
-the OS~X framework "glue" into
-\file{/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework} (or another location of
-choice).  For now there is little immediate added benefit to this
-(actually, there is the disadvantage that you have to change your PATH
-to be able to find Python), but it is the basis for creating a
-full-blown Python application, porting the MacPython IDE, possibly
-using Python as a standard OSA scripting language and much more.''
-
-Most of the MacPython toolbox modules, which interface to MacOS APIs
-such as windowing, QuickTime, scripting, etc. have been ported to OS~X,
-but they've been left commented out in \file{setup.py}.  People who want
-to experiment with these modules can uncomment them manually.
-
-% Jack's original comments:
-%The main change is the possibility to build Python as a
-%framework. This installs a self-contained Python installation plus the
-%OSX framework "glue" into /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework (or
-%another location of choice). For now there is little immedeate added
-%benefit to this (actually, there is the disadvantage that you have to
-%change your PATH to be able to find Python), but it is the basis for
-%creating a fullblown Python application, porting the MacPython IDE,
-%possibly using Python as a standard OSA scripting language and much
-%more. You enable this with "configure --enable-framework".
- 
-%The other change is that most MacPython toolbox modules, which
-%interface to all the MacOS APIs such as windowing, quicktime,
-%scripting, etc. have been ported. Again, most of these are not of
-%immedeate use, as they need a full application to be really useful, so
-%they have been commented out in setup.py. People wanting to experiment
-%can uncomment them. Gestalt and Internet Config modules are enabled by
-%default.
-  
-  \item Keyword arguments passed to builtin functions that don't take them
-  now cause a \exception{TypeError} exception to be raised, with the
-  message "\var{function} takes no keyword arguments".
-  
-  \item Weak references, added in Python 2.1 as an extension module,
-  are now part of the core because they're used in the implementation
-  of new-style classes.  The \exception{ReferenceError} exception has
-  therefore moved from the \module{weakref} module to become a
-  built-in exception.
-
-  \item A new script, \file{Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py} by Tim
-  Peters, automatically removes obsolete \code{__future__} statements
-  from Python source code.
-
-  \item An additional \var{flags} argument has been added to the
-  built-in function \function{compile()}, so the behaviour of
-  \code{__future__} statements can now be correctly observed in
-  simulated shells, such as those presented by IDLE and other
-  development environments.  This is described in \pep{264}.
-  (Contributed by Michael Hudson.)
-
-  \item The new license introduced with Python 1.6 wasn't
-  GPL-compatible.  This is fixed by some minor textual changes to the
-  2.2 license, so it's now legal to embed Python inside a GPLed
-  program again.  Note that Python itself is not GPLed, but instead is
-  under a license that's essentially equivalent to the BSD license,
-  same as it always was.  The license changes were also applied to the
-  Python 2.0.1 and 2.1.1 releases.
-
-  \item When presented with a Unicode filename on Windows, Python will
-  now convert it to an MBCS encoded string, as used by the Microsoft
-  file APIs.  As MBCS is explicitly used by the file APIs, Python's
-  choice of ASCII as the default encoding turns out to be an
-  annoyance.  On \UNIX, the locale's character set is used if
-  \function{locale.nl_langinfo(CODESET)} is available.  (Windows
-  support was contributed by Mark Hammond with assistance from
-  Marc-Andr\'e Lemburg. \UNIX{} support was added by Martin von L\"owis.)
-
-  \item Large file support is now enabled on Windows.  (Contributed by
-  Tim Peters.)
-
-  \item The \file{Tools/scripts/ftpmirror.py} script
-  now parses a \file{.netrc} file, if you have one.
-  (Contributed by Mike Romberg.) 
-
-  \item Some features of the object returned by the
-  \function{xrange()} function are now deprecated, and trigger
-  warnings when they're accessed; they'll disappear in Python 2.3.
-  \class{xrange} objects tried to pretend they were full sequence
-  types by supporting slicing, sequence multiplication, and the
-  \keyword{in} operator, but these features were rarely used and
-  therefore buggy.  The \method{tolist()} method and the
-  \member{start}, \member{stop}, and \member{step} attributes are also
-  being deprecated.  At the C level, the fourth argument to the
-  \cfunction{PyRange_New()} function, \samp{repeat}, has also been
-  deprecated.
-
-  \item There were a bunch of patches to the dictionary
-  implementation, mostly to fix potential core dumps if a dictionary
-  contains objects that sneakily changed their hash value, or mutated
-  the dictionary they were contained in. For a while python-dev fell
-  into a gentle rhythm of Michael Hudson finding a case that dumped
-  core, Tim Peters fixing the bug, Michael finding another case, and round
-  and round it went.   
-
-  \item On Windows, Python can now be compiled with Borland C thanks
-  to a number of patches contributed by Stephen Hansen, though the
-  result isn't fully functional yet.  (But this \emph{is} progress...)
-  
-  \item Another Windows enhancement: Wise Solutions generously offered
-  PythonLabs use of their InstallerMaster 8.1 system.  Earlier
-  PythonLabs Windows installers used Wise 5.0a, which was beginning to
-  show its age.  (Packaged up by Tim Peters.)
-
-  \item Files ending in \samp{.pyw} can now be imported on Windows.
-  \samp{.pyw} is a Windows-only thing, used to indicate that a script
-  needs to be run using PYTHONW.EXE instead of PYTHON.EXE in order to
-  prevent a DOS console from popping up to display the output.  This
-  patch makes it possible to import such scripts, in case they're also
-  usable as modules.  (Implemented by David Bolen.)
-
-  \item On platforms where Python uses the C \cfunction{dlopen()} function 
-  to load extension modules, it's now possible to set the flags used 
-  by \cfunction{dlopen()} using the \function{sys.getdlopenflags()} and
-  \function{sys.setdlopenflags()} functions.    (Contributed by Bram Stolk.)
-
-  \item The \function{pow()} built-in function no longer supports 3
-  arguments when floating-point numbers are supplied.
-  \code{pow(\var{x}, \var{y}, \var{z})} returns \code{(x**y) \% z}, but
-  this is never useful for floating point numbers, and the final
-  result varies unpredictably depending on the platform.  A call such
-  as \code{pow(2.0, 8.0, 7.0)} will now raise a \exception{TypeError}
-  exception.
-  
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Acknowledgements}
-
-The author would like to thank the following people for offering
-suggestions, corrections and assistance with various drafts of this
-article: Fred Bremmer, Keith Briggs, Andrew Dalke, Fred~L. Drake, Jr.,
-Carel Fellinger, David Goodger, Mark Hammond, Stephen Hansen, Michael
-Hudson, Jack Jansen, Marc-Andr\'e Lemburg, Martin von L\"owis, Fredrik
-Lundh, Michael McLay, Nick Mathewson, Paul Moore, Gustavo Niemeyer,
-Don O'Donnell, Joonas Paalasma, Tim Peters, Jens Quade, Tom Reinhardt, Neil
-Schemenauer, Guido van Rossum, Greg Ward, Edward Welbourne.
-
-\end{document}
diff --git a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew23.tex b/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew23.tex
deleted file mode 100644
index 7c92be2..0000000
--- a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew23.tex
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,2380 +0,0 @@
-\documentclass{howto}
-\usepackage{distutils}
-% $Id$
-
-\title{What's New in Python 2.3}
-\release{1.01}
-\author{A.M.\ Kuchling}
-\authoraddress{
-	\strong{Python Software Foundation}\\
-	Email: \email{amk@amk.ca}
-}
-
-\begin{document}
-\maketitle
-\tableofcontents
-
-This article explains the new features in Python 2.3.  Python 2.3 was
-released on July 29, 2003.
-
-The main themes for Python 2.3 are polishing some of the features
-added in 2.2, adding various small but useful enhancements to the core
-language, and expanding the standard library.  The new object model
-introduced in the previous version has benefited from 18 months of
-bugfixes and from optimization efforts that have improved the
-performance of new-style classes.  A few new built-in functions have
-been added such as \function{sum()} and \function{enumerate()}.  The
-\keyword{in} operator can now be used for substring searches (e.g.
-\code{"ab" in "abc"} returns \constant{True}).
-
-Some of the many new library features include Boolean, set, heap, and
-date/time data types, the ability to import modules from ZIP-format
-archives, metadata support for the long-awaited Python catalog, an
-updated version of IDLE, and modules for logging messages, wrapping
-text, parsing CSV files, processing command-line options, using BerkeleyDB
-databases...  the list of new and enhanced modules is lengthy.
-
-This article doesn't attempt to provide a complete specification of
-the new features, but instead provides a convenient overview.  For
-full details, you should refer to the documentation for Python 2.3,
-such as the \citetitle[../lib/lib.html]{Python Library Reference} and
-the \citetitle[../ref/ref.html]{Python Reference Manual}.  If you want
-to understand the complete implementation and design rationale, 
-refer to the PEP for a particular new feature.
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 218: A Standard Set Datatype}
-
-The new \module{sets} module contains an implementation of a set
-datatype.  The \class{Set} class is for mutable sets, sets that can
-have members added and removed.  The \class{ImmutableSet} class is for
-sets that can't be modified, and instances of \class{ImmutableSet} can
-therefore be used as dictionary keys.  Sets are built on top of
-dictionaries, so the elements within a set must be hashable.
-
-Here's a simple example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> import sets
->>> S = sets.Set([1,2,3])
->>> S
-Set([1, 2, 3])
->>> 1 in S
-True
->>> 0 in S
-False
->>> S.add(5)
->>> S.remove(3)
->>> S
-Set([1, 2, 5])
->>>
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The union and intersection of sets can be computed with the
-\method{union()} and \method{intersection()} methods; an alternative
-notation uses the bitwise operators \code{\&} and \code{|}.
-Mutable sets also have in-place versions of these methods,
-\method{union_update()} and \method{intersection_update()}.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> S1 = sets.Set([1,2,3])
->>> S2 = sets.Set([4,5,6])
->>> S1.union(S2)
-Set([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6])
->>> S1 | S2                  # Alternative notation
-Set([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6])
->>> S1.intersection(S2)
-Set([])
->>> S1 & S2                  # Alternative notation
-Set([])
->>> S1.union_update(S2)
->>> S1
-Set([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6])
->>>
-\end{verbatim}
-
-It's also possible to take the symmetric difference of two sets.  This
-is the set of all elements in the union that aren't in the
-intersection.  Another way of putting it is that the symmetric
-difference contains all elements that are in exactly one
-set.  Again, there's an alternative notation (\code{\^}), and an
-in-place version with the ungainly name
-\method{symmetric_difference_update()}.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> S1 = sets.Set([1,2,3,4])
->>> S2 = sets.Set([3,4,5,6])
->>> S1.symmetric_difference(S2)
-Set([1, 2, 5, 6])
->>> S1 ^ S2
-Set([1, 2, 5, 6])
->>>
-\end{verbatim}
-
-There are also \method{issubset()} and \method{issuperset()} methods
-for checking whether one set is a subset or superset of another:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> S1 = sets.Set([1,2,3])
->>> S2 = sets.Set([2,3])
->>> S2.issubset(S1)
-True
->>> S1.issubset(S2)
-False
->>> S1.issuperset(S2)
-True
->>>
-\end{verbatim}
-
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{218}{Adding a Built-In Set Object Type}{PEP written by Greg V. Wilson.
-Implemented by Greg V. Wilson, Alex Martelli, and GvR.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 255: Simple Generators\label{section-generators}}
-
-In Python 2.2, generators were added as an optional feature, to be
-enabled by a \code{from __future__ import generators} directive.  In
-2.3 generators no longer need to be specially enabled, and are now
-always present; this means that \keyword{yield} is now always a
-keyword.  The rest of this section is a copy of the description of
-generators from the ``What's New in Python 2.2'' document; if you read
-it back when Python 2.2 came out, you can skip the rest of this section.
-
-You're doubtless familiar with how function calls work in Python or C.
-When you call a function, it gets a private namespace where its local
-variables are created.  When the function reaches a \keyword{return}
-statement, the local variables are destroyed and the resulting value
-is returned to the caller.  A later call to the same function will get
-a fresh new set of local variables. But, what if the local variables
-weren't thrown away on exiting a function?  What if you could later
-resume the function where it left off?  This is what generators
-provide; they can be thought of as resumable functions.
-
-Here's the simplest example of a generator function:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def generate_ints(N):
-    for i in range(N):
-        yield i
-\end{verbatim}
-
-A new keyword, \keyword{yield}, was introduced for generators.  Any
-function containing a \keyword{yield} statement is a generator
-function; this is detected by Python's bytecode compiler which
-compiles the function specially as a result.
-
-When you call a generator function, it doesn't return a single value;
-instead it returns a generator object that supports the iterator
-protocol.  On executing the \keyword{yield} statement, the generator
-outputs the value of \code{i}, similar to a \keyword{return}
-statement.  The big difference between \keyword{yield} and a
-\keyword{return} statement is that on reaching a \keyword{yield} the
-generator's state of execution is suspended and local variables are
-preserved.  On the next call to the generator's \code{.next()} method,
-the function will resume executing immediately after the
-\keyword{yield} statement.  (For complicated reasons, the
-\keyword{yield} statement isn't allowed inside the \keyword{try} block
-of a \keyword{try}...\keyword{finally} statement; read \pep{255} for a full
-explanation of the interaction between \keyword{yield} and
-exceptions.)
-
-Here's a sample usage of the \function{generate_ints()} generator:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> gen = generate_ints(3)
->>> gen
-<generator object at 0x8117f90>
->>> gen.next()
-0
->>> gen.next()
-1
->>> gen.next()
-2
->>> gen.next()
-Traceback (most recent call last):
-  File "stdin", line 1, in ?
-  File "stdin", line 2, in generate_ints
-StopIteration
-\end{verbatim}
-
-You could equally write \code{for i in generate_ints(5)}, or
-\code{a,b,c = generate_ints(3)}.
-
-Inside a generator function, the \keyword{return} statement can only
-be used without a value, and signals the end of the procession of
-values; afterwards the generator cannot return any further values.
-\keyword{return} with a value, such as \code{return 5}, is a syntax
-error inside a generator function.  The end of the generator's results
-can also be indicated by raising \exception{StopIteration} manually,
-or by just letting the flow of execution fall off the bottom of the
-function.
-
-You could achieve the effect of generators manually by writing your
-own class and storing all the local variables of the generator as
-instance variables.  For example, returning a list of integers could
-be done by setting \code{self.count} to 0, and having the
-\method{next()} method increment \code{self.count} and return it.
-However, for a moderately complicated generator, writing a
-corresponding class would be much messier.
-\file{Lib/test/test_generators.py} contains a number of more
-interesting examples.  The simplest one implements an in-order
-traversal of a tree using generators recursively.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-# A recursive generator that generates Tree leaves in in-order.
-def inorder(t):
-    if t:
-        for x in inorder(t.left):
-            yield x
-        yield t.label
-        for x in inorder(t.right):
-            yield x
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Two other examples in \file{Lib/test/test_generators.py} produce
-solutions for the N-Queens problem (placing $N$ queens on an $NxN$
-chess board so that no queen threatens another) and the Knight's Tour
-(a route that takes a knight to every square of an $NxN$ chessboard
-without visiting any square twice).
-
-The idea of generators comes from other programming languages,
-especially Icon (\url{http://www.cs.arizona.edu/icon/}), where the
-idea of generators is central.  In Icon, every
-expression and function call behaves like a generator.  One example
-from ``An Overview of the Icon Programming Language'' at
-\url{http://www.cs.arizona.edu/icon/docs/ipd266.htm} gives an idea of
-what this looks like:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-sentence := "Store it in the neighboring harbor"
-if (i := find("or", sentence)) > 5 then write(i)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-In Icon the \function{find()} function returns the indexes at which the
-substring ``or'' is found: 3, 23, 33.  In the \keyword{if} statement,
-\code{i} is first assigned a value of 3, but 3 is less than 5, so the
-comparison fails, and Icon retries it with the second value of 23.  23
-is greater than 5, so the comparison now succeeds, and the code prints
-the value 23 to the screen.
-
-Python doesn't go nearly as far as Icon in adopting generators as a
-central concept.  Generators are considered part of the core
-Python language, but learning or using them isn't compulsory; if they
-don't solve any problems that you have, feel free to ignore them.
-One novel feature of Python's interface as compared to
-Icon's is that a generator's state is represented as a concrete object
-(the iterator) that can be passed around to other functions or stored
-in a data structure.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{255}{Simple Generators}{Written by Neil Schemenauer, Tim
-Peters, Magnus Lie Hetland.  Implemented mostly by Neil Schemenauer
-and Tim Peters, with other fixes from the Python Labs crew.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 263: Source Code Encodings \label{section-encodings}}
-
-Python source files can now be declared as being in different
-character set encodings.  Encodings are declared by including a
-specially formatted comment in the first or second line of the source
-file.  For example, a UTF-8 file can be declared with:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-#!/usr/bin/env python
-# -*- coding: UTF-8 -*-
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Without such an encoding declaration, the default encoding used is
-7-bit ASCII.  Executing or importing modules that contain string
-literals with 8-bit characters and have no encoding declaration will result
-in a \exception{DeprecationWarning} being signalled by Python 2.3; in
-2.4 this will be a syntax error.
-
-The encoding declaration only affects Unicode string literals, which
-will be converted to Unicode using the specified encoding.  Note that
-Python identifiers are still restricted to ASCII characters, so you
-can't have variable names that use characters outside of the usual
-alphanumerics.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{263}{Defining Python Source Code Encodings}{Written by
-Marc-Andr\'e Lemburg and Martin von~L\"owis; implemented by Suzuki
-Hisao and Martin von~L\"owis.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 273: Importing Modules from ZIP Archives}
-
-The new \module{zipimport} module adds support for importing
-modules from a ZIP-format archive.  You don't need to import the
-module explicitly; it will be automatically imported if a ZIP
-archive's filename is added to \code{sys.path}.  For example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-amk@nyman:~/src/python$ unzip -l /tmp/example.zip
-Archive:  /tmp/example.zip
-  Length     Date   Time    Name
- --------    ----   ----    ----
-     8467  11-26-02 22:30   jwzthreading.py
- --------                   -------
-     8467                   1 file
-amk@nyman:~/src/python$ ./python
-Python 2.3 (#1, Aug 1 2003, 19:54:32) 
->>> import sys
->>> sys.path.insert(0, '/tmp/example.zip')  # Add .zip file to front of path
->>> import jwzthreading
->>> jwzthreading.__file__
-'/tmp/example.zip/jwzthreading.py'
->>>
-\end{verbatim}
-
-An entry in \code{sys.path} can now be the filename of a ZIP archive.
-The ZIP archive can contain any kind of files, but only files named
-\file{*.py}, \file{*.pyc}, or \file{*.pyo} can be imported.  If an
-archive only contains \file{*.py} files, Python will not attempt to
-modify the archive by adding the corresponding \file{*.pyc} file, meaning
-that if a ZIP archive doesn't contain \file{*.pyc} files, importing may be
-rather slow.
-
-A path within the archive can also be specified to only import from a
-subdirectory; for example, the path \file{/tmp/example.zip/lib/}
-would only import from the \file{lib/} subdirectory within the
-archive.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{273}{Import Modules from Zip Archives}{Written by James C. Ahlstrom, 
-who also provided an implementation.
-Python 2.3 follows the specification in \pep{273}, 
-but uses an implementation written by Just van~Rossum 
-that uses the import hooks described in \pep{302}.
-See section~\ref{section-pep302} for a description of the new import hooks.
-}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 277: Unicode file name support for Windows NT}
-
-On Windows NT, 2000, and XP, the system stores file names as Unicode
-strings. Traditionally, Python has represented file names as byte
-strings, which is inadequate because it renders some file names
-inaccessible.
-
-Python now allows using arbitrary Unicode strings (within the
-limitations of the file system) for all functions that expect file
-names, most notably the \function{open()} built-in function. If a Unicode
-string is passed to \function{os.listdir()}, Python now returns a list
-of Unicode strings.  A new function, \function{os.getcwdu()}, returns
-the current directory as a Unicode string.
-
-Byte strings still work as file names, and on Windows Python will
-transparently convert them to Unicode using the \code{mbcs} encoding.
-
-Other systems also allow Unicode strings as file names but convert
-them to byte strings before passing them to the system, which can
-cause a \exception{UnicodeError} to be raised. Applications can test
-whether arbitrary Unicode strings are supported as file names by
-checking \member{os.path.supports_unicode_filenames}, a Boolean value.
-
-Under MacOS, \function{os.listdir()} may now return Unicode filenames.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{277}{Unicode file name support for Windows NT}{Written by Neil
-Hodgson; implemented by Neil Hodgson, Martin von~L\"owis, and Mark
-Hammond.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 278: Universal Newline Support}
-
-The three major operating systems used today are Microsoft Windows,
-Apple's Macintosh OS, and the various \UNIX\ derivatives.  A minor
-irritation of cross-platform work 
-is that these three platforms all use different characters
-to mark the ends of lines in text files.  \UNIX\ uses the linefeed
-(ASCII character 10), MacOS uses the carriage return (ASCII
-character 13), and Windows uses a two-character sequence of a
-carriage return plus a newline.
-
-Python's file objects can now support end of line conventions other
-than the one followed by the platform on which Python is running.
-Opening a file with the mode \code{'U'} or \code{'rU'} will open a file
-for reading in universal newline mode.  All three line ending
-conventions will be translated to a \character{\e n} in the strings
-returned by the various file methods such as \method{read()} and
-\method{readline()}.
-
-Universal newline support is also used when importing modules and when
-executing a file with the \function{execfile()} function.  This means
-that Python modules can be shared between all three operating systems
-without needing to convert the line-endings.
-
-This feature can be disabled when compiling Python by specifying
-the \longprogramopt{without-universal-newlines} switch when running Python's
-\program{configure} script.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{278}{Universal Newline Support}{Written
-and implemented by Jack Jansen.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 279: enumerate()\label{section-enumerate}}
-
-A new built-in function, \function{enumerate()}, will make
-certain loops a bit clearer.  \code{enumerate(thing)}, where
-\var{thing} is either an iterator or a sequence, returns a iterator
-that will return \code{(0, \var{thing}[0])}, \code{(1,
-\var{thing}[1])}, \code{(2, \var{thing}[2])}, and so forth.  
-
-A common idiom to change every element of a list looks like this:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-for i in range(len(L)):
-    item = L[i]
-    # ... compute some result based on item ...
-    L[i] = result
-\end{verbatim}
-
-This can be rewritten using \function{enumerate()} as:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-for i, item in enumerate(L):
-    # ... compute some result based on item ...
-    L[i] = result
-\end{verbatim}
-
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{279}{The enumerate() built-in function}{Written
-and implemented by Raymond D. Hettinger.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 282: The logging Package}
-
-A standard package for writing logs, \module{logging}, has been added
-to Python 2.3.  It provides a powerful and flexible mechanism for
-generating logging output which can then be filtered and processed in
-various ways.  A configuration file written in a standard format can
-be used to control the logging behavior of a program.  Python
-includes handlers that will write log records to
-standard error or to a file or socket, send them to the system log, or
-even e-mail them to a particular address; of course, it's also
-possible to write your own handler classes.
-
-The \class{Logger} class is the primary class.
-Most application code will deal with one or more \class{Logger}
-objects, each one used by a particular subsystem of the application.
-Each \class{Logger} is identified by a name, and names are organized
-into a hierarchy using \samp{.}  as the component separator.  For
-example, you might have \class{Logger} instances named \samp{server},
-\samp{server.auth} and \samp{server.network}.  The latter two
-instances are below \samp{server} in the hierarchy.  This means that
-if you turn up the verbosity for \samp{server} or direct \samp{server}
-messages to a different handler, the changes will also apply to
-records logged to \samp{server.auth} and \samp{server.network}.
-There's also a root \class{Logger} that's the parent of all other
-loggers.
-
-For simple uses, the \module{logging} package contains some
-convenience functions that always use the root log:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-import logging
-
-logging.debug('Debugging information')
-logging.info('Informational message')
-logging.warning('Warning:config file %s not found', 'server.conf')
-logging.error('Error occurred')
-logging.critical('Critical error -- shutting down')
-\end{verbatim}
-
-This produces the following output:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-WARNING:root:Warning:config file server.conf not found
-ERROR:root:Error occurred
-CRITICAL:root:Critical error -- shutting down
-\end{verbatim}
-
-In the default configuration, informational and debugging messages are
-suppressed and the output is sent to standard error.  You can enable
-the display of informational and debugging messages by calling the
-\method{setLevel()} method on the root logger.
-
-Notice the \function{warning()} call's use of string formatting
-operators; all of the functions for logging messages take the
-arguments \code{(\var{msg}, \var{arg1}, \var{arg2}, ...)} and log the
-string resulting from \code{\var{msg} \% (\var{arg1}, \var{arg2},
-...)}.
-
-There's also an \function{exception()} function that records the most
-recent traceback.  Any of the other functions will also record the
-traceback if you specify a true value for the keyword argument
-\var{exc_info}.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def f():
-    try:    1/0
-    except: logging.exception('Problem recorded')
-
-f()
-\end{verbatim}
-
-This produces the following output:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-ERROR:root:Problem recorded
-Traceback (most recent call last):
-  File "t.py", line 6, in f
-    1/0
-ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo by zero
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Slightly more advanced programs will use a logger other than the root
-logger.  The \function{getLogger(\var{name})} function is used to get
-a particular log, creating it if it doesn't exist yet.
-\function{getLogger(None)} returns the root logger.
-
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-log = logging.getLogger('server')
- ...
-log.info('Listening on port %i', port)
- ...
-log.critical('Disk full')
- ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Log records are usually propagated up the hierarchy, so a message
-logged to \samp{server.auth} is also seen by \samp{server} and
-\samp{root}, but a \class{Logger} can prevent this by setting its
-\member{propagate} attribute to \constant{False}.
-
-There are more classes provided by the \module{logging} package that
-can be customized.  When a \class{Logger} instance is told to log a
-message, it creates a \class{LogRecord} instance that is sent to any
-number of different \class{Handler} instances.  Loggers and handlers
-can also have an attached list of filters, and each filter can cause
-the \class{LogRecord} to be ignored or can modify the record before
-passing it along.  When they're finally output, \class{LogRecord}
-instances are converted to text by a \class{Formatter} class.  All of
-these classes can be replaced by your own specially-written classes.
-
-With all of these features the \module{logging} package should provide
-enough flexibility for even the most complicated applications.  This
-is only an incomplete overview of its features, so please see the
-\ulink{package's reference documentation}{../lib/module-logging.html}
-for all of the details.  Reading \pep{282} will also be helpful.
-
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{282}{A Logging System}{Written by Vinay Sajip and Trent Mick;
-implemented by Vinay Sajip.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 285: A Boolean Type\label{section-bool}}
-
-A Boolean type was added to Python 2.3.  Two new constants were added
-to the \module{__builtin__} module, \constant{True} and
-\constant{False}.  (\constant{True} and
-\constant{False} constants were added to the built-ins
-in Python 2.2.1, but the 2.2.1 versions are simply set to integer values of
-1 and 0 and aren't a different type.)
-
-The type object for this new type is named
-\class{bool}; the constructor for it takes any Python value and
-converts it to \constant{True} or \constant{False}.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> bool(1)
-True
->>> bool(0)
-False
->>> bool([])
-False
->>> bool( (1,) )
-True
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Most of the standard library modules and built-in functions have been
-changed to return Booleans.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> obj = []
->>> hasattr(obj, 'append')
-True
->>> isinstance(obj, list)
-True
->>> isinstance(obj, tuple)
-False
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Python's Booleans were added with the primary goal of making code
-clearer.  For example, if you're reading a function and encounter the
-statement \code{return 1}, you might wonder whether the \code{1}
-represents a Boolean truth value, an index, or a
-coefficient that multiplies some other quantity.  If the statement is
-\code{return True}, however, the meaning of the return value is quite
-clear.
-
-Python's Booleans were \emph{not} added for the sake of strict
-type-checking.  A very strict language such as Pascal would also
-prevent you performing arithmetic with Booleans, and would require
-that the expression in an \keyword{if} statement always evaluate to a
-Boolean result.  Python is not this strict and never will be, as
-\pep{285} explicitly says.  This means you can still use any
-expression in an \keyword{if} statement, even ones that evaluate to a
-list or tuple or some random object.  The Boolean type is a
-subclass of the \class{int} class so that arithmetic using a Boolean
-still works.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> True + 1
-2
->>> False + 1
-1
->>> False * 75
-0
->>> True * 75
-75
-\end{verbatim}
-
-To sum up \constant{True} and \constant{False} in a sentence: they're
-alternative ways to spell the integer values 1 and 0, with the single
-difference that \function{str()} and \function{repr()} return the
-strings \code{'True'} and \code{'False'} instead of \code{'1'} and
-\code{'0'}.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{285}{Adding a bool type}{Written and implemented by GvR.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 293: Codec Error Handling Callbacks}
-
-When encoding a Unicode string into a byte string, unencodable
-characters may be encountered.  So far, Python has allowed specifying
-the error processing as either ``strict'' (raising
-\exception{UnicodeError}), ``ignore'' (skipping the character), or
-``replace'' (using a question mark in the output string), with
-``strict'' being the default behavior. It may be desirable to specify
-alternative processing of such errors, such as inserting an XML
-character reference or HTML entity reference into the converted
-string.
-
-Python now has a flexible framework to add different processing
-strategies.  New error handlers can be added with
-\function{codecs.register_error}, and codecs then can access the error
-handler with \function{codecs.lookup_error}. An equivalent C API has
-been added for codecs written in C. The error handler gets the
-necessary state information such as the string being converted, the
-position in the string where the error was detected, and the target
-encoding.  The handler can then either raise an exception or return a
-replacement string.
-
-Two additional error handlers have been implemented using this
-framework: ``backslashreplace'' uses Python backslash quoting to
-represent unencodable characters and ``xmlcharrefreplace'' emits
-XML character references.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{293}{Codec Error Handling Callbacks}{Written and implemented by
-Walter D\"orwald.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 301: Package Index and Metadata for
-Distutils\label{section-pep301}}
-
-Support for the long-requested Python catalog makes its first
-appearance in 2.3.
-
-The heart of the catalog is the new Distutils \command{register} command.
-Running \code{python setup.py register} will collect the metadata
-describing a package, such as its name, version, maintainer,
-description, \&c., and send it to a central catalog server.  The
-resulting catalog is available from \url{http://www.python.org/pypi}.
-
-To make the catalog a bit more useful, a new optional
-\var{classifiers} keyword argument has been added to the Distutils
-\function{setup()} function.  A list of
-\ulink{Trove}{http://catb.org/\textasciitilde esr/trove/}-style
-strings can be supplied to help classify the software.
-
-Here's an example \file{setup.py} with classifiers, written to be compatible 
-with older versions of the Distutils:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-from distutils import core
-kw = {'name': "Quixote",
-      'version': "0.5.1",
-      'description': "A highly Pythonic Web application framework",
-      # ...
-      }
-
-if (hasattr(core, 'setup_keywords') and 
-    'classifiers' in core.setup_keywords):
-    kw['classifiers'] = \
-        ['Topic :: Internet :: WWW/HTTP :: Dynamic Content',
-         'Environment :: No Input/Output (Daemon)',
-         'Intended Audience :: Developers'],
-
-core.setup(**kw)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The full list of classifiers can be obtained by running 
-\verb|python setup.py register --list-classifiers|.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{301}{Package Index and Metadata for Distutils}{Written and
-implemented by Richard Jones.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 302: New Import Hooks \label{section-pep302}}
-
-While it's been possible to write custom import hooks ever since the
-\module{ihooks} module was introduced in Python 1.3, no one has ever
-been really happy with it because writing new import hooks is
-difficult and messy.  There have been various proposed alternatives
-such as the \module{imputil} and \module{iu} modules, but none of them
-has ever gained much acceptance, and none of them were easily usable
-from \C{} code.
-
-\pep{302} borrows ideas from its predecessors, especially from
-Gordon McMillan's \module{iu} module.  Three new items 
-are added to the \module{sys} module:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-  \item \code{sys.path_hooks} is a list of callable objects; most 
-  often they'll be classes.  Each callable takes a string containing a
-  path and either returns an importer object that will handle imports
-  from this path or raises an \exception{ImportError} exception if it
-  can't handle this path.
-
-  \item \code{sys.path_importer_cache} caches importer objects for
-  each path, so \code{sys.path_hooks} will only need to be traversed
-  once for each path.
-
-  \item \code{sys.meta_path} is a list of importer objects that will
-  be traversed before \code{sys.path} is checked.  This list is
-  initially empty, but user code can add objects to it.  Additional
-  built-in and frozen modules can be imported by an object added to
-  this list.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-Importer objects must have a single method,
-\method{find_module(\var{fullname}, \var{path}=None)}.  \var{fullname}
-will be a module or package name, e.g. \samp{string} or
-\samp{distutils.core}.  \method{find_module()} must return a loader object
-that has a single method, \method{load_module(\var{fullname})}, that
-creates and returns the corresponding module object.
-
-Pseudo-code for Python's new import logic, therefore, looks something
-like this (simplified a bit; see \pep{302} for the full details):
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-for mp in sys.meta_path:
-    loader = mp(fullname)
-    if loader is not None:
-        <module> = loader.load_module(fullname)
-        
-for path in sys.path:
-    for hook in sys.path_hooks:
-        try:
-            importer = hook(path)
-        except ImportError:
-            # ImportError, so try the other path hooks
-            pass
-        else:
-            loader = importer.find_module(fullname)
-            <module> = loader.load_module(fullname)
-
-# Not found!
-raise ImportError
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{302}{New Import Hooks}{Written by Just van~Rossum and Paul Moore.
-Implemented by Just van~Rossum.
-}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 305: Comma-separated Files \label{section-pep305}}
-
-Comma-separated files are a format frequently used for exporting data
-from databases and spreadsheets.  Python 2.3 adds a parser for
-comma-separated files.
-
-Comma-separated format is deceptively simple at first glance:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-Costs,150,200,3.95
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Read a line and call \code{line.split(',')}: what could be simpler?
-But toss in string data that can contain commas, and things get more
-complicated:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-"Costs",150,200,3.95,"Includes taxes, shipping, and sundry items"
-\end{verbatim}
-
-A big ugly regular expression can parse this, but using the new 
-\module{csv} package is much simpler:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-import csv
-
-input = open('datafile', 'rb')
-reader = csv.reader(input)
-for line in reader:
-    print line
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The \function{reader} function takes a number of different options.
-The field separator isn't limited to the comma and can be changed to
-any character, and so can the quoting and line-ending characters.
-
-Different dialects of comma-separated files can be defined and
-registered; currently there are two dialects, both used by Microsoft Excel.
-A separate \class{csv.writer} class will generate comma-separated files
-from a succession of tuples or lists, quoting strings that contain the
-delimiter.  
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{305}{CSV File API}{Written and implemented 
-by Kevin Altis, Dave Cole, Andrew McNamara, Skip Montanaro, Cliff Wells.
-}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 307: Pickle Enhancements \label{section-pep307}}
-
-The \module{pickle} and \module{cPickle} modules received some
-attention during the 2.3 development cycle.  In 2.2, new-style classes
-could be pickled without difficulty, but they weren't pickled very
-compactly; \pep{307} quotes a trivial example where a new-style class
-results in a pickled string three times longer than that for a classic
-class.
-
-The solution was to invent a new pickle protocol.  The
-\function{pickle.dumps()} function has supported a text-or-binary flag 
-for a long time.  In 2.3, this flag is redefined from a Boolean to an
-integer: 0 is the old text-mode pickle format, 1 is the old binary
-format, and now 2 is a new 2.3-specific format.  A new constant,
-\constant{pickle.HIGHEST_PROTOCOL}, can be used to select the fanciest
-protocol available.
-
-Unpickling is no longer considered a safe operation.  2.2's
-\module{pickle} provided hooks for trying to prevent unsafe classes
-from being unpickled (specifically, a
-\member{__safe_for_unpickling__} attribute), but none of this code
-was ever audited and therefore it's all been ripped out in 2.3.  You
-should not unpickle untrusted data in any version of Python.
-
-To reduce the pickling overhead for new-style classes, a new interface
-for customizing pickling was added using three special methods:
-\method{__getstate__}, \method{__setstate__}, and
-\method{__getnewargs__}.  Consult \pep{307} for the full semantics 
-of these methods.
-
-As a way to compress pickles yet further, it's now possible to use
-integer codes instead of long strings to identify pickled classes.
-The Python Software Foundation will maintain a list of standardized
-codes; there's also a range of codes for private use.  Currently no
-codes have been specified.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{307}{Extensions to the pickle protocol}{Written and implemented 
-by Guido van Rossum and Tim Peters.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Extended Slices\label{section-slices}}
-
-Ever since Python 1.4, the slicing syntax has supported an optional
-third ``step'' or ``stride'' argument.  For example, these are all
-legal Python syntax: \code{L[1:10:2]}, \code{L[:-1:1]},
-\code{L[::-1]}.  This was added to Python at the request of
-the developers of Numerical Python, which uses the third argument
-extensively.  However, Python's built-in list, tuple, and string
-sequence types have never supported this feature, raising a
-\exception{TypeError} if you tried it.  Michael Hudson contributed a
-patch to fix this shortcoming.
-
-For example, you can now easily extract the elements of a list that
-have even indexes:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> L = range(10)
->>> L[::2]
-[0, 2, 4, 6, 8]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Negative values also work to make a copy of the same list in reverse
-order:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> L[::-1]
-[9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-This also works for tuples, arrays, and strings:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> s='abcd'
->>> s[::2]
-'ac'
->>> s[::-1]
-'dcba'
-\end{verbatim}
-
-If you have a mutable sequence such as a list or an array you can
-assign to or delete an extended slice, but there are some differences
-between assignment to extended and regular slices.  Assignment to a
-regular slice can be used to change the length of the sequence:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> a = range(3)
->>> a
-[0, 1, 2]
->>> a[1:3] = [4, 5, 6]
->>> a
-[0, 4, 5, 6]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Extended slices aren't this flexible.  When assigning to an extended
-slice, the list on the right hand side of the statement must contain
-the same number of items as the slice it is replacing:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> a = range(4)
->>> a
-[0, 1, 2, 3]
->>> a[::2]
-[0, 2]
->>> a[::2] = [0, -1]
->>> a
-[0, 1, -1, 3]
->>> a[::2] = [0,1,2]
-Traceback (most recent call last):
-  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
-ValueError: attempt to assign sequence of size 3 to extended slice of size 2
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Deletion is more straightforward:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> a = range(4)
->>> a
-[0, 1, 2, 3]
->>> a[::2]
-[0, 2]
->>> del a[::2]
->>> a
-[1, 3]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-One can also now pass slice objects to the
-\method{__getitem__} methods of the built-in sequences:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> range(10).__getitem__(slice(0, 5, 2))
-[0, 2, 4]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Or use slice objects directly in subscripts:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> range(10)[slice(0, 5, 2)]
-[0, 2, 4]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-To simplify implementing sequences that support extended slicing,
-slice objects now have a method \method{indices(\var{length})} which,
-given the length of a sequence, returns a \code{(\var{start},
-\var{stop}, \var{step})} tuple that can be passed directly to
-\function{range()}.
-\method{indices()} handles omitted and out-of-bounds indices in a
-manner consistent with regular slices (and this innocuous phrase hides
-a welter of confusing details!).  The method is intended to be used
-like this:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-class FakeSeq:
-    ...
-    def calc_item(self, i):
-        ...
-    def __getitem__(self, item):
-        if isinstance(item, slice):
-            indices = item.indices(len(self))
-            return FakeSeq([self.calc_item(i) for i in range(*indices)])
-        else:
-            return self.calc_item(i)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-From this example you can also see that the built-in \class{slice}
-object is now the type object for the slice type, and is no longer a
-function.  This is consistent with Python 2.2, where \class{int},
-\class{str}, etc., underwent the same change.
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Other Language Changes}
-
-Here are all of the changes that Python 2.3 makes to the core Python
-language.
-
-\begin{itemize}
-\item The \keyword{yield} statement is now always a keyword, as
-described in section~\ref{section-generators} of this document.
-
-\item A new built-in function \function{enumerate()}
-was added, as described in section~\ref{section-enumerate} of this
-document.
-
-\item Two new constants, \constant{True} and \constant{False} were
-added along with the built-in \class{bool} type, as described in
-section~\ref{section-bool} of this document.
-
-\item The \function{int()} type constructor will now return a long
-integer instead of raising an \exception{OverflowError} when a string
-or floating-point number is too large to fit into an integer.  This
-can lead to the paradoxical result that
-\code{isinstance(int(\var{expression}), int)} is false, but that seems
-unlikely to cause problems in practice.
-
-\item Built-in types now support the extended slicing syntax,
-as described in section~\ref{section-slices} of this document.
-
-\item A new built-in function, \function{sum(\var{iterable}, \var{start}=0)}, 
-adds up the numeric items in the iterable object and returns their sum. 
-\function{sum()} only accepts numbers, meaning that you can't use it
-to concatenate a bunch of strings.   (Contributed by Alex
-Martelli.)
-
-\item \code{list.insert(\var{pos}, \var{value})} used to 
-insert \var{value} at the front of the list when \var{pos} was
-negative.  The behaviour has now been changed to be consistent with
-slice indexing, so when \var{pos} is -1 the value will be inserted
-before the last element, and so forth.
-
-\item \code{list.index(\var{value})}, which searches for \var{value} 
-within the list and returns its index, now takes optional 
-\var{start} and \var{stop} arguments to limit the search to 
-only part of the list.
-
-\item Dictionaries have a new method, \method{pop(\var{key}\optional{,
-\var{default}})}, that returns the value corresponding to \var{key}
-and removes that key/value pair from the dictionary.  If the requested
-key isn't present in the dictionary, \var{default} is returned if it's
-specified and \exception{KeyError} raised if it isn't.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> d = {1:2}
->>> d
-{1: 2}
->>> d.pop(4)
-Traceback (most recent call last):
-  File "stdin", line 1, in ?
-KeyError: 4
->>> d.pop(1)
-2
->>> d.pop(1)
-Traceback (most recent call last):
-  File "stdin", line 1, in ?
-KeyError: 'pop(): dictionary is empty'
->>> d
-{}
->>>
-\end{verbatim}
-
-There's also a new class method, 
-\method{dict.fromkeys(\var{iterable}, \var{value})}, that 
-creates a dictionary with keys taken from the supplied iterator
-\var{iterable} and all values set to \var{value}, defaulting to
-\code{None}.  
-
-(Patches contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-Also, the \function{dict()} constructor now accepts keyword arguments to
-simplify creating small dictionaries:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> dict(red=1, blue=2, green=3, black=4)
-{'blue': 2, 'black': 4, 'green': 3, 'red': 1}    
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Contributed by Just van~Rossum.)       
-
-\item The \keyword{assert} statement no longer checks the \code{__debug__}
-flag, so you can no longer disable assertions by assigning to \code{__debug__}.
-Running Python with the \programopt{-O} switch will still generate
-code that doesn't execute any assertions.
-
-\item Most type objects are now callable, so you can use them
-to create new objects such as functions, classes, and modules.  (This
-means that the \module{new} module can be deprecated in a future
-Python version, because you can now use the type objects available in
-the \module{types} module.)
-% XXX should new.py use PendingDeprecationWarning?
-For example, you can create a new module object with the following code:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> import types
->>> m = types.ModuleType('abc','docstring')
->>> m
-<module 'abc' (built-in)>
->>> m.__doc__
-'docstring'
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\item
-A new warning, \exception{PendingDeprecationWarning} was added to
-indicate features which are in the process of being
-deprecated.  The warning will \emph{not} be printed by default.  To
-check for use of features that will be deprecated in the future,
-supply \programopt{-Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::} on the
-command line or use \function{warnings.filterwarnings()}.
-
-\item The process of deprecating string-based exceptions, as
-in \code{raise "Error occurred"}, has begun.  Raising a string will
-now trigger \exception{PendingDeprecationWarning}.
-
-\item Using \code{None} as a variable name will now result in a
-\exception{SyntaxWarning} warning.  In a future version of Python,
-\code{None} may finally become a keyword.
-
-\item The \method{xreadlines()} method of file objects, introduced in
-Python 2.1, is no longer necessary because files now behave as their
-own iterator.  \method{xreadlines()} was originally introduced as a
-faster way to loop over all the lines in a file, but now you can
-simply write \code{for line in file_obj}.  File objects also have a
-new read-only \member{encoding} attribute that gives the encoding used
-by the file; Unicode strings written to the file will be automatically 
-converted to bytes using the given encoding.
-
-\item The method resolution order used by new-style classes has
-changed, though you'll only notice the difference if you have a really
-complicated inheritance hierarchy.  Classic classes are unaffected by
-this change.  Python 2.2 originally used a topological sort of a
-class's ancestors, but 2.3 now uses the C3 algorithm as described in
-the paper \ulink{``A Monotonic Superclass Linearization for
-Dylan''}{http://www.webcom.com/haahr/dylan/linearization-oopsla96.html}.
-To understand the motivation for this change, 
-read Michele Simionato's article 
-\ulink{``Python 2.3 Method Resolution Order''}
-      {http://www.python.org/2.3/mro.html}, or
-read the thread on python-dev starting with the message at
-\url{http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2002-October/029035.html}.
-Samuele Pedroni first pointed out the problem and also implemented the
-fix by coding the C3 algorithm.
-
-\item Python runs multithreaded programs by switching between threads
-after executing N bytecodes.  The default value for N has been
-increased from 10 to 100 bytecodes, speeding up single-threaded
-applications by reducing the switching overhead.  Some multithreaded
-applications may suffer slower response time, but that's easily fixed
-by setting the limit back to a lower number using
-\function{sys.setcheckinterval(\var{N})}.
-The limit can be retrieved with the new 
-\function{sys.getcheckinterval()} function.
-
-\item One minor but far-reaching change is that the names of extension
-types defined by the modules included with Python now contain the
-module and a \character{.} in front of the type name.  For example, in
-Python 2.2, if you created a socket and printed its
-\member{__class__}, you'd get this output:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> s = socket.socket()
->>> s.__class__
-<type 'socket'>
-\end{verbatim}
-
-In 2.3, you get this:
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> s.__class__
-<type '_socket.socket'>
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\item One of the noted incompatibilities between old- and new-style
-  classes has been removed: you can now assign to the
-  \member{__name__} and \member{__bases__} attributes of new-style
-  classes.  There are some restrictions on what can be assigned to
-  \member{__bases__} along the lines of those relating to assigning to
-  an instance's \member{__class__} attribute.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\subsection{String Changes}
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item The \keyword{in} operator now works differently for strings.
-Previously, when evaluating \code{\var{X} in \var{Y}} where \var{X}
-and \var{Y} are strings, \var{X} could only be a single character.
-That's now changed; \var{X} can be a string of any length, and
-\code{\var{X} in \var{Y}} will return \constant{True} if \var{X} is a
-substring of \var{Y}.  If \var{X} is the empty string, the result is
-always \constant{True}.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> 'ab' in 'abcd'
-True
->>> 'ad' in 'abcd'
-False
->>> '' in 'abcd'
-True
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Note that this doesn't tell you where the substring starts; if you
-need that information, use the \method{find()} string method.
-
-\item The \method{strip()}, \method{lstrip()}, and \method{rstrip()}
-string methods now have an optional argument for specifying the
-characters to strip.  The default is still to remove all whitespace
-characters:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> '   abc '.strip()
-'abc'
->>> '><><abc<><><>'.strip('<>')
-'abc'
->>> '><><abc<><><>\n'.strip('<>')
-'abc<><><>\n'
->>> u'\u4000\u4001abc\u4000'.strip(u'\u4000')
-u'\u4001abc'
->>>
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Suggested by Simon Brunning and implemented by Walter D\"orwald.)
-
-\item The \method{startswith()} and \method{endswith()}
-string methods now accept negative numbers for the \var{start} and \var{end}
-parameters.
-
-\item Another new string method is \method{zfill()}, originally a
-function in the \module{string} module.  \method{zfill()} pads a
-numeric string with zeros on the left until it's the specified width.
-Note that the \code{\%} operator is still more flexible and powerful
-than \method{zfill()}.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> '45'.zfill(4)
-'0045'
->>> '12345'.zfill(4)
-'12345'
->>> 'goofy'.zfill(6)
-'0goofy'
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Contributed by Walter D\"orwald.)
-
-\item A new type object, \class{basestring}, has been added.
-   Both 8-bit strings and Unicode strings inherit from this type, so
-   \code{isinstance(obj, basestring)} will return \constant{True} for
-   either kind of string.  It's a completely abstract type, so you
-   can't create \class{basestring} instances.
-
-\item Interned strings are no longer immortal and will now be
-garbage-collected in the usual way when the only reference to them is
-from the internal dictionary of interned strings.  (Implemented by
-Oren Tirosh.)
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\subsection{Optimizations}
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item The creation of new-style class instances has been made much
-faster; they're now faster than classic classes!
-
-\item The \method{sort()} method of list objects has been extensively
-rewritten by Tim Peters, and the implementation is significantly
-faster.
-
-\item Multiplication of large long integers is now much faster thanks
-to an implementation of Karatsuba multiplication, an algorithm that
-scales better than the O(n*n) required for the grade-school
-multiplication algorithm.  (Original patch by Christopher A. Craig,
-and significantly reworked by Tim Peters.)
-
-\item The \code{SET_LINENO} opcode is now gone.  This may provide a
-small speed increase, depending on your compiler's idiosyncrasies.
-See section~\ref{section-other} for a longer explanation.
-(Removed by Michael Hudson.)
-
-\item \function{xrange()} objects now have their own iterator, making
-\code{for i in xrange(n)} slightly faster than
-\code{for i in range(n)}.  (Patch by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item A number of small rearrangements have been made in various
-hotspots to improve performance, such as inlining a function or removing
-some code.  (Implemented mostly by GvR, but lots of people have
-contributed single changes.)    
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-The net result of the 2.3 optimizations is that Python 2.3 runs the 
-pystone benchmark around 25\% faster than Python 2.2.
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{New, Improved, and Deprecated Modules}
-
-As usual, Python's standard library received a number of enhancements and
-bug fixes.  Here's a partial list of the most notable changes, sorted
-alphabetically by module name. Consult the
-\file{Misc/NEWS} file in the source tree for a more
-complete list of changes, or look through the CVS logs for all the
-details.
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item The \module{array} module now supports arrays of Unicode
-characters using the \character{u} format character.  Arrays also now
-support using the \code{+=} assignment operator to add another array's
-contents, and the \code{*=} assignment operator to repeat an array.
-(Contributed by Jason Orendorff.)
-
-\item The \module{bsddb} module has been replaced by version 4.1.6
-of the \ulink{PyBSDDB}{http://pybsddb.sourceforge.net} package,
-providing a more complete interface to the transactional features of
-the BerkeleyDB library.
-
-The old version of the module has been renamed to 
-\module{bsddb185} and is no longer built automatically; you'll 
-have to edit \file{Modules/Setup} to enable it.  Note that the new
-\module{bsddb} package is intended to be compatible with the 
-old module, so be sure to file bugs if you discover any
-incompatibilities.  When upgrading to Python 2.3, if the new interpreter is compiled
-with a new version of 
-the underlying BerkeleyDB library, you will almost certainly have to
-convert your database files to the new version.  You can do this
-fairly easily with the new scripts \file{db2pickle.py} and
-\file{pickle2db.py} which you will find in the distribution's
-\file{Tools/scripts} directory.  If you've already been using the PyBSDDB
-package and importing it as \module{bsddb3}, you will have to change your
-\code{import} statements to import it as \module{bsddb}.
-
-\item The new \module{bz2} module is an interface to the bz2 data
-compression library.  bz2-compressed data is usually smaller than 
-corresponding \module{zlib}-compressed data. (Contributed by Gustavo Niemeyer.)
- 
-\item A set of standard date/time types has been added in the new \module{datetime}
-module.  See the following section for more details.
-
-\item The Distutils \class{Extension} class now supports
-an extra constructor argument named \var{depends} for listing
-additional source files that an extension depends on.  This lets
-Distutils recompile the module if any of the dependency files are
-modified.  For example, if \file{sampmodule.c} includes the header
-file \file{sample.h}, you would create the \class{Extension} object like
-this:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-ext = Extension("samp",
-                sources=["sampmodule.c"],
-                depends=["sample.h"])
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Modifying \file{sample.h} would then cause the module to be recompiled.
-(Contributed by Jeremy Hylton.)
-
-\item Other minor changes to Distutils:
-it now checks for the \envvar{CC}, \envvar{CFLAGS}, \envvar{CPP},
-\envvar{LDFLAGS}, and \envvar{CPPFLAGS} environment variables, using
-them to override the settings in Python's configuration (contributed
-by Robert Weber).
-
-\item Previously the \module{doctest} module would only search the
-docstrings of public methods and functions for test cases, but it now
-also examines private ones as well.  The \function{DocTestSuite(}
-function creates a \class{unittest.TestSuite} object from a set of
-\module{doctest} tests.
-
-\item The new \function{gc.get_referents(\var{object})} function returns a
-list of all the objects referenced by \var{object}.
-
-\item The \module{getopt} module gained a new function,
-\function{gnu_getopt()}, that supports the same arguments as the existing
-\function{getopt()} function but uses GNU-style scanning mode.
-The existing \function{getopt()} stops processing options as soon as a
-non-option argument is encountered, but in GNU-style mode processing
-continues, meaning that options and arguments can be mixed.  For
-example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> getopt.getopt(['-f', 'filename', 'output', '-v'], 'f:v')
-([('-f', 'filename')], ['output', '-v'])
->>> getopt.gnu_getopt(['-f', 'filename', 'output', '-v'], 'f:v')
-([('-f', 'filename'), ('-v', '')], ['output'])
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Contributed by Peter \AA{strand}.)
-
-\item The \module{grp}, \module{pwd}, and \module{resource} modules
-now return enhanced tuples:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> import grp
->>> g = grp.getgrnam('amk')
->>> g.gr_name, g.gr_gid
-('amk', 500)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\item The \module{gzip} module can now handle files exceeding 2~GiB.  
-
-\item The new \module{heapq} module contains an implementation of a
-heap queue algorithm.  A heap is an array-like data structure that
-keeps items in a partially sorted order such that, for every index
-\var{k}, \code{heap[\var{k}] <= heap[2*\var{k}+1]} and
-\code{heap[\var{k}] <= heap[2*\var{k}+2]}.  This makes it quick to
-remove the smallest item, and inserting a new item while maintaining
-the heap property is O(lg~n).  (See
-\url{http://www.nist.gov/dads/HTML/priorityque.html} for more
-information about the priority queue data structure.)
-
-The \module{heapq} module provides \function{heappush()} and
-\function{heappop()} functions for adding and removing items while
-maintaining the heap property on top of some other mutable Python
-sequence type.  Here's an example that uses a Python list:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> import heapq
->>> heap = []
->>> for item in [3, 7, 5, 11, 1]:
-...    heapq.heappush(heap, item)
-...
->>> heap
-[1, 3, 5, 11, 7]
->>> heapq.heappop(heap)
-1
->>> heapq.heappop(heap)
-3
->>> heap
-[5, 7, 11]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Contributed by Kevin O'Connor.)
-
-\item The IDLE integrated development environment has been updated
-using the code from the IDLEfork project
-(\url{http://idlefork.sf.net}).  The most notable feature is that the
-code being developed is now executed in a subprocess, meaning that
-there's no longer any need for manual \code{reload()} operations.
-IDLE's core code has been incorporated into the standard library as the
-\module{idlelib} package.
-
-\item The \module{imaplib} module now supports IMAP over SSL.
-(Contributed by Piers Lauder and Tino Lange.)
-
-\item The \module{itertools} contains a number of useful functions for
-use with iterators, inspired by various functions provided by the ML
-and Haskell languages.  For example,
-\code{itertools.ifilter(predicate, iterator)} returns all elements in
-the iterator for which the function \function{predicate()} returns
-\constant{True}, and \code{itertools.repeat(obj, \var{N})} returns
-\code{obj} \var{N} times.  There are a number of other functions in
-the module; see the \ulink{package's reference
-documentation}{../lib/module-itertools.html} for details.
-(Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item Two new functions in the \module{math} module,
-\function{degrees(\var{rads})} and \function{radians(\var{degs})},
-convert between radians and degrees.  Other functions in the
-\module{math} module such as \function{math.sin()} and
-\function{math.cos()} have always required input values measured in
-radians.  Also, an optional \var{base} argument was added to
-\function{math.log()} to make it easier to compute logarithms for
-bases other than \code{e} and \code{10}.  (Contributed by Raymond
-Hettinger.)
-
-\item Several new POSIX functions (\function{getpgid()}, \function{killpg()},
-\function{lchown()}, \function{loadavg()}, \function{major()}, \function{makedev()},
-\function{minor()}, and \function{mknod()}) were added to the
-\module{posix} module that underlies the \module{os} module.
-(Contributed by Gustavo Niemeyer, Geert Jansen, and Denis S. Otkidach.)
-
-\item In the \module{os} module, the \function{*stat()} family of
-functions can now report fractions of a second in a timestamp.  Such
-time stamps are represented as floats, similar to
-the value returned by \function{time.time()}.
-
-During testing, it was found that some applications will break if time
-stamps are floats.  For compatibility, when using the tuple interface
-of the \class{stat_result} time stamps will be represented as integers.
-When using named fields (a feature first introduced in Python 2.2),
-time stamps are still represented as integers, unless
-\function{os.stat_float_times()} is invoked to enable float return
-values:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> os.stat("/tmp").st_mtime
-1034791200
->>> os.stat_float_times(True)
->>> os.stat("/tmp").st_mtime
-1034791200.6335014
-\end{verbatim}
-
-In Python 2.4, the default will change to always returning floats.
-
-Application developers should enable this feature only if all their
-libraries work properly when confronted with floating point time
-stamps, or if they use the tuple API. If used, the feature should be
-activated on an application level instead of trying to enable it on a
-per-use basis.
-
-\item The \module{optparse} module contains a new parser for command-line arguments 
-that can convert option values to a particular Python type 
-and will automatically generate a usage message.  See the following section for 
-more details.
-
-\item The old and never-documented \module{linuxaudiodev} module has
-been deprecated, and a new version named \module{ossaudiodev} has been
-added.  The module was renamed because the OSS sound drivers can be
-used on platforms other than Linux, and the interface has also been
-tidied and brought up to date in various ways. (Contributed by Greg
-Ward and Nicholas FitzRoy-Dale.)
-
-\item The new \module{platform} module contains a number of functions
-that try to determine various properties of the platform you're
-running on.  There are functions for getting the architecture, CPU
-type, the Windows OS version, and even the Linux distribution version.
-(Contributed by Marc-Andr\'e Lemburg.)
-
-\item The parser objects provided by the \module{pyexpat} module
-can now optionally buffer character data, resulting in fewer calls to
-your character data handler and therefore faster performance.  Setting
-the parser object's \member{buffer_text} attribute to \constant{True}
-will enable buffering.
-
-\item The \function{sample(\var{population}, \var{k})} function was
-added to the \module{random} module.  \var{population} is a sequence or
-\class{xrange} object containing the elements of a population, and
-\function{sample()} chooses \var{k} elements from the population without
-replacing chosen elements.  \var{k} can be any value up to
-\code{len(\var{population})}. For example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> days = ['Mo', 'Tu', 'We', 'Th', 'Fr', 'St', 'Sn']
->>> random.sample(days, 3)      # Choose 3 elements
-['St', 'Sn', 'Th']
->>> random.sample(days, 7)      # Choose 7 elements
-['Tu', 'Th', 'Mo', 'We', 'St', 'Fr', 'Sn']
->>> random.sample(days, 7)      # Choose 7 again
-['We', 'Mo', 'Sn', 'Fr', 'Tu', 'St', 'Th']
->>> random.sample(days, 8)      # Can't choose eight
-Traceback (most recent call last):
-  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
-  File "random.py", line 414, in sample
-      raise ValueError, "sample larger than population"
-ValueError: sample larger than population
->>> random.sample(xrange(1,10000,2), 10)   # Choose ten odd nos. under 10000
-[3407, 3805, 1505, 7023, 2401, 2267, 9733, 3151, 8083, 9195]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The \module{random} module now uses a new algorithm, the Mersenne
-Twister, implemented in C.  It's faster and more extensively studied
-than the previous algorithm.
-
-(All changes contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item The \module{readline} module also gained a number of new
-functions: \function{get_history_item()},
-\function{get_current_history_length()}, and \function{redisplay()}.
-
-\item The \module{rexec} and \module{Bastion} modules have been
-declared dead, and attempts to import them will fail with a
-\exception{RuntimeError}.  New-style classes provide new ways to break
-out of the restricted execution environment provided by
-\module{rexec}, and no one has interest in fixing them or time to do
-so.  If you have applications using \module{rexec}, rewrite them to
-use something else.
-
-(Sticking with Python 2.2 or 2.1 will not make your applications any
-safer because there are known bugs in the \module{rexec} module in
-those versions.  To repeat: if you're using \module{rexec}, stop using
-it immediately.)
-
-\item The \module{rotor} module has been deprecated because the 
-  algorithm it uses for encryption is not believed to be secure.  If
-  you need encryption, use one of the several AES Python modules
-  that are available separately.
-
-\item The \module{shutil} module gained a \function{move(\var{src},
-\var{dest})} function that recursively moves a file or directory to a new
-location.
-
-\item Support for more advanced POSIX signal handling was added
-to the \module{signal} but then removed again as it proved impossible
-to make it work reliably across platforms.
-
-\item The \module{socket} module now supports timeouts.  You
-can call the \method{settimeout(\var{t})} method on a socket object to
-set a timeout of \var{t} seconds.  Subsequent socket operations that
-take longer than \var{t} seconds to complete will abort and raise a
-\exception{socket.timeout} exception.
-
-The original timeout implementation was by Tim O'Malley.  Michael
-Gilfix integrated it into the Python \module{socket} module and
-shepherded it through a lengthy review.  After the code was checked
-in, Guido van~Rossum rewrote parts of it.  (This is a good example of
-a collaborative development process in action.)
-
-\item On Windows, the \module{socket} module now ships with Secure 
-Sockets Layer (SSL) support.
-
-\item The value of the C \constant{PYTHON_API_VERSION} macro is now
-exposed at the Python level as \code{sys.api_version}.  The current
-exception can be cleared by calling the new \function{sys.exc_clear()}
-function.
-
-\item The new \module{tarfile} module 
-allows reading from and writing to \program{tar}-format archive files.
-(Contributed by Lars Gust\"abel.)
-
-\item The new \module{textwrap} module contains functions for wrapping
-strings containing paragraphs of text.  The \function{wrap(\var{text},
-\var{width})} function takes a string and returns a list containing
-the text split into lines of no more than the chosen width.  The
-\function{fill(\var{text}, \var{width})} function returns a single
-string, reformatted to fit into lines no longer than the chosen width.
-(As you can guess, \function{fill()} is built on top of
-\function{wrap()}.  For example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> import textwrap
->>> paragraph = "Not a whit, we defy augury: ... more text ..."
->>> textwrap.wrap(paragraph, 60)
-["Not a whit, we defy augury: there's a special providence in",
- "the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it",
- ...]
->>> print textwrap.fill(paragraph, 35)
-Not a whit, we defy augury: there's
-a special providence in the fall of
-a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not
-to come; if it be not to come, it
-will be now; if it be not now, yet
-it will come: the readiness is all.
->>>
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The module also contains a \class{TextWrapper} class that actually
-implements the text wrapping strategy.   Both the
-\class{TextWrapper} class and the \function{wrap()} and
-\function{fill()} functions support a number of additional keyword
-arguments for fine-tuning the formatting; consult the \ulink{module's
-documentation}{../lib/module-textwrap.html} for details.
-(Contributed by Greg Ward.)
-
-\item The \module{thread} and \module{threading} modules now have
-companion modules, \module{dummy_thread} and \module{dummy_threading},
-that provide a do-nothing implementation of the \module{thread}
-module's interface for platforms where threads are not supported.  The
-intention is to simplify thread-aware modules (ones that \emph{don't}
-rely on threads to run) by putting the following code at the top:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-try:
-    import threading as _threading
-except ImportError:
-    import dummy_threading as _threading
-\end{verbatim}
-
-In this example, \module{_threading} is used as the module name to make
-it clear that the module being used is not necessarily the actual
-\module{threading} module. Code can call functions and use classes in
-\module{_threading} whether or not threads are supported, avoiding an
-\keyword{if} statement and making the code slightly clearer.  This
-module will not magically make multithreaded code run without threads;
-code that waits for another thread to return or to do something will
-simply hang forever. 
-
-\item The \module{time} module's \function{strptime()} function has
-long been an annoyance because it uses the platform C library's
-\function{strptime()} implementation, and different platforms
-sometimes have odd bugs.  Brett Cannon contributed a portable
-implementation that's written in pure Python and should behave
-identically on all platforms.
-
-\item The new \module{timeit} module helps measure how long snippets
-of Python code take to execute.  The \file{timeit.py} file can be run
-directly from the command line, or the module's \class{Timer} class
-can be imported and used directly.  Here's a short example that
-figures out whether it's faster to convert an 8-bit string to Unicode
-by appending an empty Unicode string to it or by using the
-\function{unicode()} function:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-import timeit
-
-timer1 = timeit.Timer('unicode("abc")')
-timer2 = timeit.Timer('"abc" + u""')
-
-# Run three trials
-print timer1.repeat(repeat=3, number=100000)
-print timer2.repeat(repeat=3, number=100000)
-
-# On my laptop this outputs:
-# [0.36831796169281006, 0.37441694736480713, 0.35304892063140869]
-# [0.17574405670166016, 0.18193507194519043, 0.17565798759460449]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\item The \module{Tix} module has received various bug fixes and
-updates for the current version of the Tix package.
-
-\item The \module{Tkinter} module now works with a thread-enabled 
-version of Tcl.  Tcl's threading model requires that widgets only be
-accessed from the thread in which they're created; accesses from
-another thread can cause Tcl to panic.  For certain Tcl interfaces,
-\module{Tkinter} will now automatically avoid this 
-when a widget is accessed from a different thread by marshalling a
-command, passing it to the correct thread, and waiting for the
-results.  Other interfaces can't be handled automatically but
-\module{Tkinter} will now raise an exception on such an access so that
-you can at least find out about the problem.  See
-\url{http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2002-December/031107.html} %
-for a more detailed explanation of this change.  (Implemented by
-Martin von~L\"owis.)
-
-\item Calling Tcl methods through \module{_tkinter} no longer 
-returns only strings. Instead, if Tcl returns other objects those
-objects are converted to their Python equivalent, if one exists, or
-wrapped with a \class{_tkinter.Tcl_Obj} object if no Python equivalent
-exists. This behavior can be controlled through the
-\method{wantobjects()} method of \class{tkapp} objects.
-
-When using \module{_tkinter} through the \module{Tkinter} module (as
-most Tkinter applications will), this feature is always activated. It
-should not cause compatibility problems, since Tkinter would always
-convert string results to Python types where possible.
-
-If any incompatibilities are found, the old behavior can be restored
-by setting the \member{wantobjects} variable in the \module{Tkinter}
-module to false before creating the first \class{tkapp} object.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-import Tkinter
-Tkinter.wantobjects = 0
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Any breakage caused by this change should be reported as a bug.
-
-\item The \module{UserDict} module has a new \class{DictMixin} class which
-defines all dictionary methods for classes that already have a minimum
-mapping interface.  This greatly simplifies writing classes that need
-to be substitutable for dictionaries, such as the classes in 
-the \module{shelve} module.
- 
-Adding the mix-in as a superclass provides the full dictionary
-interface whenever the class defines \method{__getitem__},
-\method{__setitem__}, \method{__delitem__}, and \method{keys}.
-For example:
- 
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> import UserDict
->>> class SeqDict(UserDict.DictMixin):
-...     """Dictionary lookalike implemented with lists."""
-...     def __init__(self):
-...         self.keylist = []
-...         self.valuelist = []
-...     def __getitem__(self, key):
-...         try:
-...             i = self.keylist.index(key)
-...         except ValueError:
-...             raise KeyError
-...         return self.valuelist[i]
-...     def __setitem__(self, key, value):
-...         try:
-...             i = self.keylist.index(key)
-...             self.valuelist[i] = value
-...         except ValueError:
-...             self.keylist.append(key)
-...             self.valuelist.append(value)
-...     def __delitem__(self, key):
-...         try:
-...             i = self.keylist.index(key)
-...         except ValueError:
-...             raise KeyError
-...         self.keylist.pop(i)
-...         self.valuelist.pop(i)
-...     def keys(self):
-...         return list(self.keylist)
-... 
->>> s = SeqDict()
->>> dir(s)      # See that other dictionary methods are implemented
-['__cmp__', '__contains__', '__delitem__', '__doc__', '__getitem__',
- '__init__', '__iter__', '__len__', '__module__', '__repr__',
- '__setitem__', 'clear', 'get', 'has_key', 'items', 'iteritems',
- 'iterkeys', 'itervalues', 'keylist', 'keys', 'pop', 'popitem',
- 'setdefault', 'update', 'valuelist', 'values']
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item The DOM implementation
-in \module{xml.dom.minidom} can now generate XML output in a
-particular encoding by providing an optional encoding argument to
-the \method{toxml()} and \method{toprettyxml()} methods of DOM nodes.
-
-\item The \module{xmlrpclib} module now supports an XML-RPC extension
-for handling nil data values such as Python's \code{None}.  Nil values
-are always supported on unmarshalling an XML-RPC response.  To
-generate requests containing \code{None}, you must supply a true value
-for the \var{allow_none} parameter when creating a \class{Marshaller}
-instance.
-
-\item The new \module{DocXMLRPCServer} module allows writing
-self-documenting XML-RPC servers. Run it in demo mode (as a program)
-to see it in action.   Pointing the Web browser to the RPC server
-produces pydoc-style documentation; pointing xmlrpclib to the
-server allows invoking the actual methods.
-(Contributed by Brian Quinlan.)
-
-\item Support for internationalized domain names (RFCs 3454, 3490,
-3491, and 3492) has been added. The ``idna'' encoding can be used
-to convert between a Unicode domain name and the ASCII-compatible
-encoding (ACE) of that name.
-
-\begin{alltt}
->{}>{}> u"www.Alliancefran\c caise.nu".encode("idna")
-'www.xn--alliancefranaise-npb.nu'
-\end{alltt}
-
-The \module{socket} module has also been extended to transparently
-convert Unicode hostnames to the ACE version before passing them to
-the C library.  Modules that deal with hostnames such as
-\module{httplib} and \module{ftplib}) also support Unicode host names;
-\module{httplib} also sends HTTP \samp{Host} headers using the ACE
-version of the domain name.  \module{urllib} supports Unicode URLs
-with non-ASCII host names as long as the \code{path} part of the URL
-is ASCII only.
-
-To implement this change, the \module{stringprep} module, the 
-\code{mkstringprep} tool and the \code{punycode} encoding have been added.  
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\subsection{Date/Time Type}
-
-Date and time types suitable for expressing timestamps were added as
-the \module{datetime} module.  The types don't support different
-calendars or many fancy features, and just stick to the basics of
-representing time.
-
-The three primary types are: \class{date}, representing a day, month,
-and year; \class{time}, consisting of hour, minute, and second; and
-\class{datetime}, which contains all the attributes of both
-\class{date} and \class{time}.  There's also a
-\class{timedelta} class representing differences between two points
-in time, and time zone logic is implemented by classes inheriting from
-the abstract \class{tzinfo} class.
-
-You can create instances of \class{date} and \class{time} by either
-supplying keyword arguments to the appropriate constructor,
-e.g. \code{datetime.date(year=1972, month=10, day=15)}, or by using
-one of a number of class methods.  For example, the \method{date.today()}
-class method returns the current local date.
-
-Once created, instances of the date/time classes are all immutable.
-There are a number of methods for producing formatted strings from
-objects:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> import datetime
->>> now = datetime.datetime.now()
->>> now.isoformat()
-'2002-12-30T21:27:03.994956'
->>> now.ctime()  # Only available on date, datetime
-'Mon Dec 30 21:27:03 2002'
->>> now.strftime('%Y %d %b')
-'2002 30 Dec'
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The \method{replace()} method allows modifying one or more fields 
-of a \class{date} or \class{datetime} instance, returning a new instance:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> d = datetime.datetime.now()
->>> d
-datetime.datetime(2002, 12, 30, 22, 15, 38, 827738)
->>> d.replace(year=2001, hour = 12)
-datetime.datetime(2001, 12, 30, 12, 15, 38, 827738)
->>>
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Instances can be compared, hashed, and converted to strings (the
-result is the same as that of \method{isoformat()}).  \class{date} and
-\class{datetime} instances can be subtracted from each other, and
-added to \class{timedelta} instances.  The largest missing feature is
-that there's no standard library support for parsing strings and getting back a
-\class{date} or \class{datetime}.
-
-For more information, refer to the \ulink{module's reference
-documentation}{../lib/module-datetime.html}.
-(Contributed by Tim Peters.)
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\subsection{The optparse Module}
-
-The \module{getopt} module provides simple parsing of command-line
-arguments.  The new \module{optparse} module (originally named Optik)
-provides more elaborate command-line parsing that follows the \UNIX{}
-conventions, automatically creates the output for \longprogramopt{help},
-and can perform different actions for different options.
-
-You start by creating an instance of \class{OptionParser} and telling
-it what your program's options are.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-import sys
-from optparse import OptionParser
-
-op = OptionParser()
-op.add_option('-i', '--input',
-              action='store', type='string', dest='input',
-              help='set input filename')
-op.add_option('-l', '--length',
-              action='store', type='int', dest='length',
-              help='set maximum length of output')
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Parsing a command line is then done by calling the \method{parse_args()}
-method.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-options, args = op.parse_args(sys.argv[1:])
-print options
-print args
-\end{verbatim}
-
-This returns an object containing all of the option values,
-and a list of strings containing the remaining arguments. 
-
-Invoking the script with the various arguments now works as you'd
-expect it to.  Note that the length argument is automatically
-converted to an integer.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-$ ./python opt.py -i data arg1
-<Values at 0x400cad4c: {'input': 'data', 'length': None}>
-['arg1']
-$ ./python opt.py --input=data --length=4
-<Values at 0x400cad2c: {'input': 'data', 'length': 4}>
-[]
-$
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The help message is automatically generated for you:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-$ ./python opt.py --help
-usage: opt.py [options]
-
-options:
-  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
-  -iINPUT, --input=INPUT
-                        set input filename
-  -lLENGTH, --length=LENGTH
-                        set maximum length of output
-$ 
-\end{verbatim}
-% $ prevent Emacs tex-mode from getting confused
-
-See the \ulink{module's documentation}{../lib/module-optparse.html}
-for more details.
-
-Optik was written by Greg Ward, with suggestions from the readers of
-the Getopt SIG.
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Pymalloc: A Specialized Object Allocator\label{section-pymalloc}}
-
-Pymalloc, a specialized object allocator written by Vladimir
-Marangozov, was a feature added to Python 2.1.  Pymalloc is intended
-to be faster than the system \cfunction{malloc()} and to have less
-memory overhead for allocation patterns typical of Python programs.
-The allocator uses C's \cfunction{malloc()} function to get large
-pools of memory and then fulfills smaller memory requests from these
-pools.
-
-In 2.1 and 2.2, pymalloc was an experimental feature and wasn't
-enabled by default; you had to explicitly enable it when compiling
-Python by providing the
-\longprogramopt{with-pymalloc} option to the \program{configure}
-script.  In 2.3, pymalloc has had further enhancements and is now
-enabled by default; you'll have to supply
-\longprogramopt{without-pymalloc} to disable it.
-
-This change is transparent to code written in Python; however,
-pymalloc may expose bugs in C extensions.  Authors of C extension
-modules should test their code with pymalloc enabled,
-because some incorrect code may cause core dumps at runtime.  
-
-There's one particularly common error that causes problems.  There are
-a number of memory allocation functions in Python's C API that have
-previously just been aliases for the C library's \cfunction{malloc()}
-and \cfunction{free()}, meaning that if you accidentally called
-mismatched functions the error wouldn't be noticeable.  When the
-object allocator is enabled, these functions aren't aliases of
-\cfunction{malloc()} and \cfunction{free()} any more, and calling the
-wrong function to free memory may get you a core dump.  For example,
-if memory was allocated using \cfunction{PyObject_Malloc()}, it has to
-be freed using \cfunction{PyObject_Free()}, not \cfunction{free()}.  A
-few modules included with Python fell afoul of this and had to be
-fixed; doubtless there are more third-party modules that will have the
-same problem.
-
-As part of this change, the confusing multiple interfaces for
-allocating memory have been consolidated down into two API families.
-Memory allocated with one family must not be manipulated with
-functions from the other family.  There is one family for allocating
-chunks of memory and another family of functions specifically for
-allocating Python objects.
-
-\begin{itemize}
-  \item To allocate and free an undistinguished chunk of memory use
-  the ``raw memory'' family: \cfunction{PyMem_Malloc()},
-  \cfunction{PyMem_Realloc()}, and \cfunction{PyMem_Free()}.
-
-  \item The ``object memory'' family is the interface to the pymalloc
-  facility described above and is biased towards a large number of
-  ``small'' allocations: \cfunction{PyObject_Malloc},
-  \cfunction{PyObject_Realloc}, and \cfunction{PyObject_Free}.
-
-  \item To allocate and free Python objects, use the ``object'' family
-  \cfunction{PyObject_New()}, \cfunction{PyObject_NewVar()}, and
-  \cfunction{PyObject_Del()}.
-\end{itemize}
-
-Thanks to lots of work by Tim Peters, pymalloc in 2.3 also provides
-debugging features to catch memory overwrites and doubled frees in
-both extension modules and in the interpreter itself.  To enable this
-support, compile a debugging version of the Python interpreter by
-running \program{configure} with \longprogramopt{with-pydebug}.
-
-To aid extension writers, a header file \file{Misc/pymemcompat.h} is
-distributed with the source to Python 2.3 that allows Python
-extensions to use the 2.3 interfaces to memory allocation while
-compiling against any version of Python since 1.5.2.  You would copy
-the file from Python's source distribution and bundle it with the
-source of your extension.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seeurl{http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/python/python/dist/src/Objects/obmalloc.c}
-{For the full details of the pymalloc implementation, see
-the comments at the top of the file \file{Objects/obmalloc.c} in the
-Python source code.  The above link points to the file within the
-SourceForge CVS browser.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{Build and C API Changes}
-
-Changes to Python's build process and to the C API include:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item The cycle detection implementation used by the garbage collection
-has proven to be stable, so it's now been made mandatory.  You can no
-longer compile Python without it, and the
-\longprogramopt{with-cycle-gc} switch to \program{configure} has been removed.
-
-\item Python can now optionally be built as a shared library
-(\file{libpython2.3.so}) by supplying \longprogramopt{enable-shared}
-when running Python's \program{configure} script.  (Contributed by Ondrej
-Palkovsky.)
-
-\item The \csimplemacro{DL_EXPORT} and \csimplemacro{DL_IMPORT} macros
-are now deprecated.  Initialization functions for Python extension
-modules should now be declared using the new macro
-\csimplemacro{PyMODINIT_FUNC}, while the Python core will generally
-use the \csimplemacro{PyAPI_FUNC} and \csimplemacro{PyAPI_DATA}
-macros.
-
-\item The interpreter can be compiled without any docstrings for
-the built-in functions and modules by supplying
-\longprogramopt{without-doc-strings} to the \program{configure} script.
-This makes the Python executable about 10\% smaller, but will also
-mean that you can't get help for Python's built-ins.  (Contributed by
-Gustavo Niemeyer.)
-
-\item The \cfunction{PyArg_NoArgs()} macro is now deprecated, and code
-that uses it should be changed.  For Python 2.2 and later, the method
-definition table can specify the
-\constant{METH_NOARGS} flag, signalling that there are no arguments, and
-the argument checking can then be removed.  If compatibility with
-pre-2.2 versions of Python is important, the code could use
-\code{PyArg_ParseTuple(\var{args}, "")} instead, but this will be slower
-than using \constant{METH_NOARGS}.
-
-\item \cfunction{PyArg_ParseTuple()} accepts new format characters for various sizes of unsigned integers: \samp{B} for \ctype{unsigned char},
-\samp{H} for \ctype{unsigned short int}, 
-\samp{I} for \ctype{unsigned int}, 
-and \samp{K} for \ctype{unsigned long long}.
-
-\item A new function, \cfunction{PyObject_DelItemString(\var{mapping},
-char *\var{key})} was added as shorthand for
-\code{PyObject_DelItem(\var{mapping}, PyString_New(\var{key}))}.
-
-\item File objects now manage their internal string buffer
-differently, increasing it exponentially when needed.  This results in
-the benchmark tests in \file{Lib/test/test_bufio.py} speeding up
-considerably (from 57 seconds to 1.7 seconds, according to one
-measurement).
-
-\item It's now possible to define class and static methods for a C
-extension type by setting either the \constant{METH_CLASS} or
-\constant{METH_STATIC} flags in a method's \ctype{PyMethodDef}
-structure.
-
-\item Python now includes a copy of the Expat XML parser's source code,
-removing any dependence on a system version or local installation of
-Expat.
-
-\item If you dynamically allocate type objects in your extension, you
-should be aware of a change in the rules relating to the
-\member{__module__} and \member{__name__} attributes.  In summary,
-you will want to ensure the type's dictionary contains a
-\code{'__module__'} key; making the module name the part of the type
-name leading up to the final period will no longer have the desired
-effect.  For more detail, read the API reference documentation or the 
-source.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\subsection{Port-Specific Changes}
-
-Support for a port to IBM's OS/2 using the EMX runtime environment was
-merged into the main Python source tree.  EMX is a POSIX emulation
-layer over the OS/2 system APIs.  The Python port for EMX tries to
-support all the POSIX-like capability exposed by the EMX runtime, and
-mostly succeeds; \function{fork()} and \function{fcntl()} are
-restricted by the limitations of the underlying emulation layer.  The
-standard OS/2 port, which uses IBM's Visual Age compiler, also gained
-support for case-sensitive import semantics as part of the integration
-of the EMX port into CVS.  (Contributed by Andrew MacIntyre.)
-
-On MacOS, most toolbox modules have been weaklinked to improve
-backward compatibility.  This means that modules will no longer fail
-to load if a single routine is missing on the current OS version.
-Instead calling the missing routine will raise an exception.
-(Contributed by Jack Jansen.)
-
-The RPM spec files, found in the \file{Misc/RPM/} directory in the
-Python source distribution, were updated for 2.3.  (Contributed by
-Sean Reifschneider.)
-
-Other new platforms now supported by Python include AtheOS
-(\url{http://www.atheos.cx/}), GNU/Hurd, and OpenVMS.
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Other Changes and Fixes \label{section-other}}
-
-As usual, there were a bunch of other improvements and bugfixes
-scattered throughout the source tree.  A search through the CVS change
-logs finds there were 523 patches applied and 514 bugs fixed between
-Python 2.2 and 2.3.  Both figures are likely to be underestimates.
-
-Some of the more notable changes are:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item If the \envvar{PYTHONINSPECT} environment variable is set, the
-Python interpreter will enter the interactive prompt after running a
-Python program, as if Python had been invoked with the \programopt{-i}
-option. The environment variable can be set before running the Python
-interpreter, or it can be set by the Python program as part of its
-execution.
-
-\item The \file{regrtest.py} script now provides a way to allow ``all
-resources except \var{foo}.''  A resource name passed to the
-\programopt{-u} option can now be prefixed with a hyphen
-(\character{-}) to mean ``remove this resource.''  For example, the
-option `\code{\programopt{-u}all,-bsddb}' could be used to enable the
-use of all resources except \code{bsddb}.
-
-\item The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin
-as well as \UNIX.
-
-\item The \code{SET_LINENO} opcode has been removed.  Back in the
-mists of time, this opcode was needed to produce line numbers in
-tracebacks and support trace functions (for, e.g., \module{pdb}).
-Since Python 1.5, the line numbers in tracebacks have been computed
-using a different mechanism that works with ``python -O''.  For Python
-2.3 Michael Hudson implemented a similar scheme to determine when to
-call the trace function, removing the need for \code{SET_LINENO}
-entirely.
-
-It would be difficult to detect any resulting difference from Python
-code, apart from a slight speed up when Python is run without
-\programopt{-O}.
-
-C extensions that access the \member{f_lineno} field of frame objects
-should instead call \code{PyCode_Addr2Line(f->f_code, f->f_lasti)}.
-This will have the added effect of making the code work as desired
-under ``python -O'' in earlier versions of Python.
-
-A nifty new feature is that trace functions can now assign to the
-\member{f_lineno} attribute of frame objects, changing the line that
-will be executed next.  A \samp{jump} command has been added to the
-\module{pdb} debugger taking advantage of this new feature.
-(Implemented by Richie Hindle.)
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Porting to Python 2.3}
-
-This section lists previously described changes that may require
-changes to your code:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item \keyword{yield} is now always a keyword; if it's used as a
-variable name in your code, a different name must be chosen.
-
-\item For strings \var{X} and \var{Y}, \code{\var{X} in \var{Y}} now works
-if \var{X} is more than one character long.
-
-\item The \function{int()} type constructor will now return a long
-integer instead of raising an \exception{OverflowError} when a string
-or floating-point number is too large to fit into an integer.
-
-\item If you have Unicode strings that contain 8-bit characters, you
-must declare the file's encoding (UTF-8, Latin-1, or whatever) by
-adding a comment to the top of the file.  See
-section~\ref{section-encodings} for more information.
-
-\item Calling Tcl methods through \module{_tkinter} no longer 
-returns only strings. Instead, if Tcl returns other objects those
-objects are converted to their Python equivalent, if one exists, or
-wrapped with a \class{_tkinter.Tcl_Obj} object if no Python equivalent
-exists.
-
-\item Large octal and hex literals such as
-\code{0xffffffff} now trigger a \exception{FutureWarning}. Currently
-they're stored as 32-bit numbers and result in a negative value, but
-in Python 2.4 they'll become positive long integers. 
-
-% The empty groups below prevent conversion to guillemets.
-There are a few ways to fix this warning.  If you really need a
-positive number, just add an \samp{L} to the end of the literal.  If
-you're trying to get a 32-bit integer with low bits set and have
-previously used an expression such as \code{\textasciitilde(1 <{}< 31)},
-it's probably
-clearest to start with all bits set and clear the desired upper bits.
-For example, to clear just the top bit (bit 31), you could write
-\code{0xffffffffL {\&}{\textasciitilde}(1L<{}<31)}.
-
-\item You can no longer disable assertions by assigning to \code{__debug__}.
-
-\item The Distutils \function{setup()} function has gained various new
-keyword arguments such as \var{depends}.  Old versions of the
-Distutils will abort if passed unknown keywords.  A solution is to check
-for the presence of the new \function{get_distutil_options()} function
-in your \file{setup.py} and only uses the new keywords
-with a version of the Distutils that supports them:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-from distutils import core
-
-kw = {'sources': 'foo.c', ...}
-if hasattr(core, 'get_distutil_options'):
-    kw['depends'] = ['foo.h']
-ext = Extension(**kw)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\item Using \code{None} as a variable name will now result in a
-\exception{SyntaxWarning} warning.
-
-\item Names of extension types defined by the modules included with
-Python now contain the module and a \character{.} in front of the type
-name.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Acknowledgements \label{acks}}
-
-The author would like to thank the following people for offering
-suggestions, corrections and assistance with various drafts of this
-article: Jeff Bauer, Simon Brunning, Brett Cannon, Michael Chermside,
-Andrew Dalke, Scott David Daniels, Fred~L. Drake, Jr., David Fraser, 
-Kelly Gerber,
-Raymond Hettinger, Michael Hudson, Chris Lambert, Detlef Lannert,
-Martin von~L\"owis, Andrew MacIntyre, Lalo Martins, Chad Netzer,
-Gustavo Niemeyer, Neal Norwitz, Hans Nowak, Chris Reedy, Francesco
-Ricciardi, Vinay Sajip, Neil Schemenauer, Roman Suzi, Jason Tishler,
-Just van~Rossum.
-
-\end{document}
diff --git a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew24.tex b/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew24.tex
deleted file mode 100644
index 399bc0e..0000000
--- a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew24.tex
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,1757 +0,0 @@
-\documentclass{howto}
-\usepackage{distutils}
-% $Id$
-
-% Don't write extensive text for new sections; I'll do that.  
-% Feel free to add commented-out reminders of things that need
-% to be covered.  --amk
-
-\title{What's New in Python 2.4}
-\release{1.02}
-\author{A.M.\ Kuchling}
-\authoraddress{
-	\strong{Python Software Foundation}\\
-	Email: \email{amk@amk.ca}
-}
-
-\begin{document}
-\maketitle
-\tableofcontents
-
-This article explains the new features in Python 2.4.1, released on
-March~30, 2005.
-
-Python 2.4 is a medium-sized release.  It doesn't introduce as many
-changes as the radical Python 2.2, but introduces more features than
-the conservative 2.3 release.  The most significant new language
-features are function decorators and generator expressions; most other
-changes are to the standard library.
-
-According to the CVS change logs, there were 481 patches applied and
-502 bugs fixed between Python 2.3 and 2.4.  Both figures are likely to
-be underestimates.
-
-This article doesn't attempt to provide a complete specification of
-every single new feature, but instead provides a brief introduction to
-each feature.  For full details, you should refer to the documentation
-for Python 2.4, such as the \citetitle[../lib/lib.html]{Python Library
-Reference} and the \citetitle[../ref/ref.html]{Python Reference
-Manual}.  Often you will be referred to the PEP for a particular new
-feature for explanations of the implementation and design rationale.
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 218: Built-In Set Objects}
-
-Python 2.3 introduced the \module{sets} module.  C implementations of
-set data types have now been added to the Python core as two new
-built-in types, \function{set(\var{iterable})} and
-\function{frozenset(\var{iterable})}.  They provide high speed
-operations for membership testing, for eliminating duplicates from
-sequences, and for mathematical operations like unions, intersections,
-differences, and symmetric differences.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> a = set('abracadabra')              # form a set from a string
->>> 'z' in a                            # fast membership testing
-False
->>> a                                   # unique letters in a
-set(['a', 'r', 'b', 'c', 'd'])
->>> ''.join(a)                          # convert back into a string
-'arbcd'
-
->>> b = set('alacazam')                 # form a second set
->>> a - b                               # letters in a but not in b
-set(['r', 'd', 'b'])
->>> a | b                               # letters in either a or b
-set(['a', 'c', 'r', 'd', 'b', 'm', 'z', 'l'])
->>> a & b                               # letters in both a and b
-set(['a', 'c'])
->>> a ^ b                               # letters in a or b but not both
-set(['r', 'd', 'b', 'm', 'z', 'l'])
-
->>> a.add('z')                          # add a new element
->>> a.update('wxy')                     # add multiple new elements
->>> a
-set(['a', 'c', 'b', 'd', 'r', 'w', 'y', 'x', 'z'])       
->>> a.remove('x')                       # take one element out
->>> a
-set(['a', 'c', 'b', 'd', 'r', 'w', 'y', 'z'])       
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The \function{frozenset} type is an immutable version of \function{set}.
-Since it is immutable and hashable, it may be used as a dictionary key or
-as a member of another set.  
-
-The \module{sets} module remains in the standard library, and may be
-useful if you wish to subclass the \class{Set} or \class{ImmutableSet}
-classes.  There are currently no plans to deprecate the module.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-\seepep{218}{Adding a Built-In Set Object Type}{Originally proposed by
-Greg Wilson and ultimately implemented by Raymond Hettinger.}
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 237: Unifying Long Integers and Integers}
-
-The lengthy transition process for this PEP, begun in Python 2.2,
-takes another step forward in Python 2.4.  In 2.3, certain integer
-operations that would behave differently after int/long unification
-triggered \exception{FutureWarning} warnings and returned values
-limited to 32 or 64 bits (depending on your platform).  In 2.4, these
-expressions no longer produce a warning and instead produce a
-different result that's usually a long integer.
-
-The problematic expressions are primarily left shifts and lengthy
-hexadecimal and octal constants.  For example,
-\code{2 \textless{}\textless{} 32} results
-in a warning in 2.3, evaluating to 0 on 32-bit platforms.  In Python
-2.4, this expression now returns the correct answer, 8589934592.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-\seepep{237}{Unifying Long Integers and Integers}{Original PEP
-written by Moshe Zadka and GvR.  The changes for 2.4 were implemented by 
-Kalle Svensson.}
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 289: Generator Expressions}
-
-The iterator feature introduced in Python 2.2 and the
-\module{itertools} module make it easier to write programs that loop
-through large data sets without having the entire data set in memory
-at one time.  List comprehensions don't fit into this picture very
-well because they produce a Python list object containing all of the
-items.  This unavoidably pulls all of the objects into memory, which
-can be a problem if your data set is very large.  When trying to write
-a functionally-styled program, it would be natural to write something
-like:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-links = [link for link in get_all_links() if not link.followed]
-for link in links:
-    ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-instead of 
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-for link in get_all_links():
-    if link.followed:
-        continue
-    ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The first form is more concise and perhaps more readable, but if
-you're dealing with a large number of link objects you'd have to write
-the second form to avoid having all link objects in memory at the same
-time.
-
-Generator expressions work similarly to list comprehensions but don't
-materialize the entire list; instead they create a generator that will
-return elements one by one.  The above example could be written as:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-links = (link for link in get_all_links() if not link.followed)
-for link in links:
-    ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Generator expressions always have to be written inside parentheses, as
-in the above example.  The parentheses signalling a function call also
-count, so if you want to create an iterator that will be immediately
-passed to a function you could write:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-print sum(obj.count for obj in list_all_objects())
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Generator expressions differ from list comprehensions in various small
-ways.  Most notably, the loop variable (\var{obj} in the above
-example) is not accessible outside of the generator expression.  List
-comprehensions leave the variable assigned to its last value; future
-versions of Python will change this, making list comprehensions match
-generator expressions in this respect.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-\seepep{289}{Generator Expressions}{Proposed by Raymond Hettinger and
-implemented by Jiwon Seo with early efforts steered by Hye-Shik Chang.}
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 292: Simpler String Substitutions}
-
-Some new classes in the standard library provide an alternative
-mechanism for substituting variables into strings; this style of
-substitution may be better for applications where untrained
-users need to edit templates.
-
-The usual way of substituting variables by name is the \code{\%}
-operator:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> '%(page)i: %(title)s' % {'page':2, 'title': 'The Best of Times'}
-'2: The Best of Times'
-\end{verbatim}
-
-When writing the template string, it can be easy to forget the
-\samp{i} or \samp{s} after the closing parenthesis.  This isn't a big
-problem if the template is in a Python module, because you run the
-code, get an ``Unsupported format character'' \exception{ValueError},
-and fix the problem.  However, consider an application such as Mailman
-where template strings or translations are being edited by users who
-aren't aware of the Python language.  The format string's syntax is
-complicated to explain to such users, and if they make a mistake, it's
-difficult to provide helpful feedback to them.
-
-PEP 292 adds a \class{Template} class to the \module{string} module
-that uses \samp{\$} to indicate a substitution:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> import string
->>> t = string.Template('$page: $title')
->>> t.substitute({'page':2, 'title': 'The Best of Times'})
-'2: The Best of Times'
-\end{verbatim}
-
-% $ Terminate $-mode for Emacs
-
-If a key is missing from the dictionary, the \method{substitute} method
-will raise a \exception{KeyError}.  There's also a \method{safe_substitute}
-method that ignores missing keys:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> t = string.Template('$page: $title')
->>> t.safe_substitute({'page':3})
-'3: $title'
-\end{verbatim}
-
-% $ Terminate math-mode for Emacs
-
-
-\begin{seealso}
-\seepep{292}{Simpler String Substitutions}{Written and implemented 
-by Barry Warsaw.}
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 318: Decorators for Functions and Methods}
-
-Python 2.2 extended Python's object model by adding static methods and
-class methods, but it didn't extend Python's syntax to provide any new
-way of defining static or class methods.  Instead, you had to write a
-\keyword{def} statement in the usual way, and pass the resulting
-method to a \function{staticmethod()} or \function{classmethod()}
-function that would wrap up the function as a method of the new type.
-Your code would look like this:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-class C:
-   def meth (cls):
-       ...
-   
-   meth = classmethod(meth)   # Rebind name to wrapped-up class method
-\end{verbatim}
-
-If the method was very long, it would be easy to miss or forget the
-\function{classmethod()} invocation after the function body.  
-
-The intention was always to add some syntax to make such definitions
-more readable, but at the time of 2.2's release a good syntax was not
-obvious.  Today a good syntax \emph{still} isn't obvious but users are
-asking for easier access to the feature; a new syntactic feature has
-been added to meet this need.
-
-The new feature is called ``function decorators''.  The name comes
-from the idea that \function{classmethod}, \function{staticmethod},
-and friends are storing additional information on a function object;
-they're \emph{decorating} functions with more details.
-
-The notation borrows from Java and uses the \character{@} character as an
-indicator.  Using the new syntax, the example above would be written:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-class C:
-
-   @classmethod
-   def meth (cls):
-       ...
-   
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The \code{@classmethod} is shorthand for the
-\code{meth=classmethod(meth)} assignment.  More generally, if you have
-the following:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-@A
-@B
-@C
-def f ():
-    ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-It's equivalent to the following pre-decorator code:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def f(): ...
-f = A(B(C(f)))
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Decorators must come on the line before a function definition, one decorator
-per line, and can't be on the same line as the def statement, meaning that
-\code{@A def f(): ...} is illegal.  You can only decorate function
-definitions, either at the module level or inside a class; you can't
-decorate class definitions.
-
-A decorator is just a function that takes the function to be decorated as an
-argument and returns either the same function or some new object.  The
-return value of the decorator need not be callable (though it typically is),
-unless further decorators will be applied to the result.  It's easy to write
-your own decorators.  The following simple example just sets an attribute on
-the function object:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> def deco(func):
-...    func.attr = 'decorated'
-...    return func
-...
->>> @deco
-... def f(): pass
-...
->>> f
-<function f at 0x402ef0d4>
->>> f.attr
-'decorated'
->>>
-\end{verbatim}
-
-As a slightly more realistic example, the following decorator checks
-that the supplied argument is an integer:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def require_int (func):
-    def wrapper (arg):
-        assert isinstance(arg, int)
-        return func(arg)
-
-    return wrapper
-
-@require_int
-def p1 (arg):
-    print arg
-
-@require_int
-def p2(arg):
-    print arg*2
-\end{verbatim}
-
-An example in \pep{318} contains a fancier version of this idea that
-lets you both specify the required type and check the returned type.
-
-Decorator functions can take arguments.  If arguments are supplied,
-your decorator function is called with only those arguments and must
-return a new decorator function; this function must take a single
-function and return a function, as previously described.  In other
-words, \code{@A @B @C(args)} becomes:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def f(): ...
-_deco = C(args)
-f = A(B(_deco(f)))
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Getting this right can be slightly brain-bending, but it's not too
-difficult.
-
-A small related change makes the \member{func_name} attribute of
-functions writable.  This attribute is used to display function names
-in tracebacks, so decorators should change the name of any new
-function that's constructed and returned.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-\seepep{318}{Decorators for Functions, Methods and Classes}{Written 
-by Kevin D. Smith, Jim Jewett, and Skip Montanaro.  Several people
-wrote patches implementing function decorators, but the one that was
-actually checked in was patch \#979728, written by Mark Russell.}
-
-\seeurl{http://www.python.org/moin/PythonDecoratorLibrary}
-{This Wiki page contains several examples of decorators.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 322: Reverse Iteration}
-
-A new built-in function, \function{reversed(\var{seq})}, takes a sequence
-and returns an iterator that loops over the elements of the sequence 
-in reverse order.  
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> for i in reversed(xrange(1,4)):
-...    print i
-... 
-3
-2
-1
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Compared to extended slicing, such as \code{range(1,4)[::-1]},
-\function{reversed()} is easier to read, runs faster, and uses
-substantially less memory.
-
-Note that \function{reversed()} only accepts sequences, not arbitrary
-iterators.  If you want to reverse an iterator, first convert it to 
-a list with \function{list()}.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> input = open('/etc/passwd', 'r')
->>> for line in reversed(list(input)):
-...   print line
-... 
-root:*:0:0:System Administrator:/var/root:/bin/tcsh
-  ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\begin{seealso}
-\seepep{322}{Reverse Iteration}{Written and implemented by Raymond Hettinger.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 324: New subprocess Module}
-
-The standard library provides a number of ways to execute a
-subprocess, offering different features and different levels of
-complexity.  \function{os.system(\var{command})} is easy to use, but
-slow (it runs a shell process which executes the command) and
-dangerous (you have to be careful about escaping the shell's
-metacharacters).  The \module{popen2} module offers classes that can
-capture standard output and standard error from the subprocess, but
-the naming is confusing.  The \module{subprocess} module cleans 
-this up, providing a unified interface that offers all the features
-you might need.
-
-Instead of \module{popen2}'s collection of classes,
-\module{subprocess} contains a single class called \class{Popen} 
-whose constructor supports a number of different keyword arguments.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-class Popen(args, bufsize=0, executable=None,
-	    stdin=None, stdout=None, stderr=None,
-	    preexec_fn=None, close_fds=False, shell=False,
-	    cwd=None, env=None, universal_newlines=False,
-	    startupinfo=None, creationflags=0):
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\var{args} is commonly a sequence of strings that will be the
-arguments to the program executed as the subprocess.  (If the
-\var{shell} argument is true, \var{args} can be a string which will
-then be passed on to the shell for interpretation, just as
-\function{os.system()} does.)
-
-\var{stdin}, \var{stdout}, and \var{stderr} specify what the
-subprocess's input, output, and error streams will be.  You can
-provide a file object or a file descriptor, or you can use the
-constant \code{subprocess.PIPE} to create a pipe between the
-subprocess and the parent.
-
-The constructor has a number of handy options:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-  \item \var{close_fds} requests that all file descriptors be closed
-  before running the subprocess.
-
-  \item \var{cwd} specifies the working directory in which the
-  subprocess will be executed (defaulting to whatever the parent's
-  working directory is).
-
-  \item \var{env} is a dictionary specifying environment variables.
-
-  \item \var{preexec_fn} is a function that gets called before the
-  child is started.
-
-  \item \var{universal_newlines} opens the child's input and output
-  using Python's universal newline feature.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-Once you've created the \class{Popen} instance, 
-you can call its \method{wait()} method to pause until the subprocess
-has exited, \method{poll()} to check if it's exited without pausing, 
-or \method{communicate(\var{data})} to send the string \var{data} to
-the subprocess's standard input.   \method{communicate(\var{data})} 
-then reads any data that the subprocess has sent to its standard output 
-or standard error, returning a tuple \code{(\var{stdout_data},
-\var{stderr_data})}.
-
-\function{call()} is a shortcut that passes its arguments along to the
-\class{Popen} constructor, waits for the command to complete, and
-returns the status code of the subprocess.  It can serve as a safer
-analog to \function{os.system()}:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-sts = subprocess.call(['dpkg', '-i', '/tmp/new-package.deb'])
-if sts == 0:
-    # Success
-    ...
-else:
-    # dpkg returned an error
-    ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The command is invoked without use of the shell.  If you really do want to 
-use the shell, you can add \code{shell=True} as a keyword argument and provide
-a string instead of a sequence:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-sts = subprocess.call('dpkg -i /tmp/new-package.deb', shell=True)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The PEP takes various examples of shell and Python code and shows how
-they'd be translated into Python code that uses \module{subprocess}. 
-Reading this section of the PEP is highly recommended.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-\seepep{324}{subprocess - New process module}{Written and implemented by Peter {\AA}strand, with assistance from Fredrik Lundh and others.}
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 327: Decimal Data Type}
-
-Python has always supported floating-point (FP) numbers, based on the
-underlying C \ctype{double} type, as a data type.  However, while most
-programming languages provide a floating-point type, many people (even
-programmers) are unaware that floating-point numbers don't represent
-certain decimal fractions accurately.  The new \class{Decimal} type
-can represent these fractions accurately, up to a user-specified
-precision limit.
-
-
-\subsection{Why is Decimal needed?}
-
-The limitations arise from the representation used for floating-point numbers.
-FP numbers are made up of three components:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-\item The sign, which is positive or negative.
-\item The mantissa, which is a single-digit binary number  
-followed by a fractional part.  For example, \code{1.01} in base-2 notation
-is \code{1 + 0/2 + 1/4}, or 1.25 in decimal notation.
-\item The exponent, which tells where the decimal point is located in the number represented.  
-\end{itemize}
-
-For example, the number 1.25 has positive sign, a mantissa value of
-1.01 (in binary), and an exponent of 0 (the decimal point doesn't need
-to be shifted).  The number 5 has the same sign and mantissa, but the
-exponent is 2 because the mantissa is multiplied by 4 (2 to the power
-of the exponent 2); 1.25 * 4 equals 5.
-
-Modern systems usually provide floating-point support that conforms to
-a standard called IEEE 754.  C's \ctype{double} type is usually
-implemented as a 64-bit IEEE 754 number, which uses 52 bits of space
-for the mantissa.  This means that numbers can only be specified to 52
-bits of precision.  If you're trying to represent numbers whose
-expansion repeats endlessly, the expansion is cut off after 52 bits.
-Unfortunately, most software needs to produce output in base 10, and
-common fractions in base 10 are often repeating decimals in binary.
-For example, 1.1 decimal is binary \code{1.0001100110011 ...}; .1 =
-1/16 + 1/32 + 1/256 plus an infinite number of additional terms.  IEEE
-754 has to chop off that infinitely repeated decimal after 52 digits,
-so the representation is slightly inaccurate.
-
-Sometimes you can see this inaccuracy when the number is printed:
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> 1.1
-1.1000000000000001
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The inaccuracy isn't always visible when you print the number because
-the FP-to-decimal-string conversion is provided by the C library, and
-most C libraries try to produce sensible output.  Even if it's not
-displayed, however, the inaccuracy is still there and subsequent
-operations can magnify the error.
-
-For many applications this doesn't matter.  If I'm plotting points and
-displaying them on my monitor, the difference between 1.1 and
-1.1000000000000001 is too small to be visible.  Reports often limit
-output to a certain number of decimal places, and if you round the
-number to two or three or even eight decimal places, the error is
-never apparent.  However, for applications where it does matter, 
-it's a lot of work to implement your own custom arithmetic routines.
-
-Hence, the \class{Decimal} type was created.
-
-\subsection{The \class{Decimal} type}
-
-A new module, \module{decimal}, was added to Python's standard
-library.  It contains two classes, \class{Decimal} and
-\class{Context}.  \class{Decimal} instances represent numbers, and
-\class{Context} instances are used to wrap up various settings such as
-the precision and default rounding mode.
-
-\class{Decimal} instances are immutable, like regular Python integers
-and FP numbers; once it's been created, you can't change the value an
-instance represents.  \class{Decimal} instances can be created from
-integers or strings:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> import decimal
->>> decimal.Decimal(1972)
-Decimal("1972")
->>> decimal.Decimal("1.1")
-Decimal("1.1")
-\end{verbatim}
-
-You can also provide tuples containing the sign, the mantissa represented 
-as a tuple of decimal digits, and the exponent:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> decimal.Decimal((1, (1, 4, 7, 5), -2))
-Decimal("-14.75")
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Cautionary note: the sign bit is a Boolean value, so 0 is positive and
-1 is negative. 
-
-Converting from floating-point numbers poses a bit of a problem:
-should the FP number representing 1.1 turn into the decimal number for
-exactly 1.1, or for 1.1 plus whatever inaccuracies are introduced?
-The decision was to dodge the issue and leave such a conversion out of
-the API.  Instead, you should convert the floating-point number into a
-string using the desired precision and pass the string to the
-\class{Decimal} constructor:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> f = 1.1
->>> decimal.Decimal(str(f))
-Decimal("1.1")
->>> decimal.Decimal('%.12f' % f)
-Decimal("1.100000000000")
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Once you have \class{Decimal} instances, you can perform the usual
-mathematical operations on them.  One limitation: exponentiation
-requires an integer exponent:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> a = decimal.Decimal('35.72')
->>> b = decimal.Decimal('1.73')
->>> a+b
-Decimal("37.45")
->>> a-b
-Decimal("33.99")
->>> a*b
-Decimal("61.7956")
->>> a/b
-Decimal("20.64739884393063583815028902")
->>> a ** 2
-Decimal("1275.9184")
->>> a**b
-Traceback (most recent call last):
-  ...
-decimal.InvalidOperation: x ** (non-integer)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-You can combine \class{Decimal} instances with integers, but not with
-floating-point numbers:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> a + 4
-Decimal("39.72")
->>> a + 4.5
-Traceback (most recent call last):
-  ...
-TypeError: You can interact Decimal only with int, long or Decimal data types.
->>>
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\class{Decimal} numbers can be used with the \module{math} and
-\module{cmath} modules, but note that they'll be immediately converted to 
-floating-point numbers before the operation is performed, resulting in
-a possible loss of precision and accuracy.  You'll also get back a
-regular floating-point number and not a \class{Decimal}.  
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> import math, cmath
->>> d = decimal.Decimal('123456789012.345')
->>> math.sqrt(d)
-351364.18288201344
->>> cmath.sqrt(-d)
-351364.18288201344j
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\class{Decimal} instances have a \method{sqrt()} method that
-returns a \class{Decimal}, but if you need other things such as
-trigonometric functions you'll have to implement them.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> d.sqrt()
-Decimal("351364.1828820134592177245001")
-\end{verbatim}
-
-
-\subsection{The \class{Context} type}
-
-Instances of the \class{Context} class encapsulate several settings for 
-decimal operations:
-
-\begin{itemize}
- \item \member{prec} is the precision, the number of decimal places.
- \item \member{rounding} specifies the rounding mode.  The \module{decimal}
-       module has constants for the various possibilities:
-       \constant{ROUND_DOWN}, \constant{ROUND_CEILING}, 
-       \constant{ROUND_HALF_EVEN}, and various others.
- \item \member{traps} is a dictionary specifying what happens on
-encountering certain error conditions: either  an exception is raised or 
-a value is returned.  Some examples of error conditions are
-division by zero, loss of precision, and overflow.
-\end{itemize}
-
-There's a thread-local default context available by calling
-\function{getcontext()}; you can change the properties of this context
-to alter the default precision, rounding, or trap handling.  The
-following example shows the effect of changing the precision of the default
-context:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> decimal.getcontext().prec
-28
->>> decimal.Decimal(1) / decimal.Decimal(7)
-Decimal("0.1428571428571428571428571429")
->>> decimal.getcontext().prec = 9 
->>> decimal.Decimal(1) / decimal.Decimal(7)
-Decimal("0.142857143")
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The default action for error conditions is selectable; the module can
-either return a special value such as infinity or not-a-number, or
-exceptions can be raised:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> decimal.Decimal(1) / decimal.Decimal(0)
-Traceback (most recent call last):
-  ...
-decimal.DivisionByZero: x / 0
->>> decimal.getcontext().traps[decimal.DivisionByZero] = False
->>> decimal.Decimal(1) / decimal.Decimal(0)
-Decimal("Infinity")
->>> 
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The \class{Context} instance also has various methods for formatting 
-numbers such as \method{to_eng_string()} and \method{to_sci_string()}.
-
-For more information, see the documentation for the \module{decimal}
-module, which includes a quick-start tutorial and a reference.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-\seepep{327}{Decimal Data Type}{Written by Facundo Batista and implemented
-  by Facundo Batista, Eric Price, Raymond Hettinger, Aahz, and Tim Peters.}
-
-\seeurl{http://research.microsoft.com/\textasciitilde hollasch/cgindex/coding/ieeefloat.html}
-{A more detailed overview of the IEEE-754 representation.}
-
-\seeurl{http://www.lahey.com/float.htm}
-{The article uses Fortran code to illustrate many of the problems
-that floating-point inaccuracy can cause.}
-
-\seeurl{http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/decimal/}
-{A description of a decimal-based representation.  This representation
-is being proposed as a standard, and underlies the new Python decimal
-type.  Much of this material was written by Mike Cowlishaw, designer of the
-Rexx language.}
-
-\end{seealso}      
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 328: Multi-line Imports}
-
-One language change is a small syntactic tweak aimed at making it
-easier to import many names from a module.  In a
-\code{from \var{module} import \var{names}} statement, 
-\var{names} is a sequence of names separated by commas.  If the sequence is 
-very long, you can either write multiple imports from the same module,
-or you can use backslashes to escape the line endings like this:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-from SimpleXMLRPCServer import SimpleXMLRPCServer,\
-            SimpleXMLRPCRequestHandler,\
-            CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler,\
-            resolve_dotted_attribute
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The syntactic change in Python 2.4 simply allows putting the names
-within parentheses.  Python ignores newlines within a parenthesized
-expression, so the backslashes are no longer needed:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-from SimpleXMLRPCServer import (SimpleXMLRPCServer,
-                                SimpleXMLRPCRequestHandler,
-                                CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler,
-                                resolve_dotted_attribute)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The PEP also proposes that all \keyword{import} statements be absolute
-imports, with a leading \samp{.} character to indicate a relative
-import.  This part of the PEP was not implemented for Python 2.4,
-but was completed for Python 2.5.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-\seepep{328}{Imports: Multi-Line and Absolute/Relative}
-            {Written by Aahz.  Multi-line imports were implemented by
-             Dima Dorfman.}
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 331: Locale-Independent Float/String Conversions}
-
-The \module{locale} modules lets Python software select various
-conversions and display conventions that are localized to a particular
-country or language.  However, the module was careful to not change
-the numeric locale because various functions in Python's
-implementation required that the numeric locale remain set to the
-\code{'C'} locale.  Often this was because the code was using the C library's
-\cfunction{atof()} function.  
-
-Not setting the numeric locale caused trouble for extensions that used
-third-party C libraries, however, because they wouldn't have the
-correct locale set.  The motivating example was GTK+, whose user
-interface widgets weren't displaying numbers in the current locale.
-
-The solution described in the PEP is to add three new functions to the
-Python API that perform ASCII-only conversions, ignoring the locale
-setting:
-
-\begin{itemize}
- \item \cfunction{PyOS_ascii_strtod(\var{str}, \var{ptr})} 
-and \cfunction{PyOS_ascii_atof(\var{str}, \var{ptr})} 
-both convert a string to a C \ctype{double}.
- \item \cfunction{PyOS_ascii_formatd(\var{buffer}, \var{buf_len}, \var{format}, \var{d})} converts a \ctype{double} to an ASCII string.
-\end{itemize}
-
-The code for these functions came from the GLib library
-(\url{http://developer.gnome.org/arch/gtk/glib.html}), whose
-developers kindly relicensed the relevant functions and donated them
-to the Python Software Foundation.  The \module{locale} module 
-can now change the numeric locale, letting extensions such as GTK+ 
-produce the correct results.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-\seepep{331}{Locale-Independent Float/String Conversions}
-{Written by Christian R. Reis, and implemented by Gustavo Carneiro.}
-\end{seealso}      
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Other Language Changes}
-
-Here are all of the changes that Python 2.4 makes to the core Python
-language.
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item Decorators for functions and methods were added (\pep{318}).
-
-\item Built-in \function{set} and \function{frozenset} types were 
-added (\pep{218}).  Other new built-ins include the \function{reversed(\var{seq})} function (\pep{322}).
-
-\item Generator expressions were added (\pep{289}).
-
-\item Certain numeric expressions no longer return values restricted to 32 or 64 bits (\pep{237}).
-
-\item You can now put parentheses around the list of names in a
-\code{from \var{module} import \var{names}} statement (\pep{328}).
-
-\item The \method{dict.update()} method now accepts the same
-argument forms as the \class{dict} constructor.  This includes any
-mapping, any iterable of key/value pairs, and keyword arguments.
-(Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item The string methods \method{ljust()}, \method{rjust()}, and
-\method{center()} now take an optional argument for specifying a
-fill character other than a space.
-(Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item Strings also gained an \method{rsplit()} method that
-works like the \method{split()} method but splits from the end of
-the string.  
-(Contributed by Sean Reifschneider.)
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> 'www.python.org'.split('.', 1)
-['www', 'python.org']
-'www.python.org'.rsplit('.', 1)
-['www.python', 'org']        
-\end{verbatim}      
-
-\item Three keyword parameters, \var{cmp}, \var{key}, and
-\var{reverse}, were added to the \method{sort()} method of lists.
-These parameters make some common usages of \method{sort()} simpler.
-All of these parameters are optional.
-
-For the \var{cmp} parameter, the value should be a comparison function
-that takes two parameters and returns -1, 0, or +1 depending on how
-the parameters compare.  This function will then be used to sort the
-list.  Previously this was the only parameter that could be provided
-to \method{sort()}.
-
-\var{key} should be a single-parameter function that takes a list
-element and returns a comparison key for the element.  The list is
-then sorted using the comparison keys.  The following example sorts a
-list case-insensitively:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> L = ['A', 'b', 'c', 'D']
->>> L.sort()                 # Case-sensitive sort
->>> L
-['A', 'D', 'b', 'c']
->>> # Using 'key' parameter to sort list
->>> L.sort(key=lambda x: x.lower())
->>> L
-['A', 'b', 'c', 'D']
->>> # Old-fashioned way
->>> L.sort(cmp=lambda x,y: cmp(x.lower(), y.lower()))
->>> L
-['A', 'b', 'c', 'D']
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The last example, which uses the \var{cmp} parameter, is the old way
-to perform a case-insensitive sort.  It works but is slower than using
-a \var{key} parameter.  Using \var{key} calls \method{lower()} method
-once for each element in the list while using \var{cmp} will call it
-twice for each comparison, so using \var{key} saves on invocations of
-the \method{lower()} method.
-
-For simple key functions and comparison functions, it is often
-possible to avoid a \keyword{lambda} expression by using an unbound
-method instead.  For example, the above case-insensitive sort is best
-written as:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> L.sort(key=str.lower)
->>> L
-['A', 'b', 'c', 'D']
-\end{verbatim}       
-
-Finally, the \var{reverse} parameter takes a Boolean value.  If the
-value is true, the list will be sorted into reverse order.
-Instead of \code{L.sort() ; L.reverse()}, you can now write
-\code{L.sort(reverse=True)}.
-
-The results of sorting are now guaranteed to be stable.  This means
-that two entries with equal keys will be returned in the same order as
-they were input.  For example, you can sort a list of people by name,
-and then sort the list by age, resulting in a list sorted by age where
-people with the same age are in name-sorted order.
-
-(All changes to \method{sort()} contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item There is a new built-in function
-\function{sorted(\var{iterable})} that works like the in-place
-\method{list.sort()} method but can be used in
-expressions.  The differences are:
-  \begin{itemize}
-  \item the input may be any iterable;
-  \item a newly formed copy is sorted, leaving the original intact; and
-  \item the expression returns the new sorted copy
-  \end{itemize}
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> L = [9,7,8,3,2,4,1,6,5]
->>> [10+i for i in sorted(L)]       # usable in a list comprehension
-[11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19]
->>> L                               # original is left unchanged
-[9,7,8,3,2,4,1,6,5]
->>> sorted('Monty Python')          # any iterable may be an input
-[' ', 'M', 'P', 'h', 'n', 'n', 'o', 'o', 't', 't', 'y', 'y']
-
->>> # List the contents of a dict sorted by key values
->>> colormap = dict(red=1, blue=2, green=3, black=4, yellow=5)
->>> for k, v in sorted(colormap.iteritems()):
-...     print k, v
-...
-black 4
-blue 2
-green 3
-red 1
-yellow 5
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item Integer operations will no longer trigger an \exception{OverflowWarning}.
-The \exception{OverflowWarning} warning will disappear in Python 2.5.
-
-\item The interpreter gained a new switch, \programopt{-m}, that
-takes a name, searches for the corresponding  module on \code{sys.path},
-and runs the module as a script.  For example, 
-you can now run the Python profiler with \code{python -m profile}.
-(Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
-
-\item The \function{eval(\var{expr}, \var{globals}, \var{locals})}
-and \function{execfile(\var{filename}, \var{globals}, \var{locals})}
-functions and the \keyword{exec} statement now accept any mapping type
-for the \var{locals} parameter.  Previously this had to be a regular
-Python dictionary.  (Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item The \function{zip()} built-in function and \function{itertools.izip()}
-  now return an empty list if called with no arguments.
-  Previously they raised a \exception{TypeError}
-  exception.  This makes them more
-  suitable for use with variable length argument lists:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> def transpose(array):
-...    return zip(*array)
-...
->>> transpose([(1,2,3), (4,5,6)])
-[(1, 4), (2, 5), (3, 6)]
->>> transpose([])
-[]
-\end{verbatim}
-(Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-    
-\item Encountering a failure while importing a module no longer leaves
-a partially-initialized module object in \code{sys.modules}.  The
-incomplete module object left behind would fool further imports of the
-same module into succeeding, leading to confusing errors.  
-(Fixed by Tim Peters.)
-
-\item \constant{None} is now a constant; code that binds a new value to 
-the name \samp{None} is now a syntax error.
-(Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)       
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\subsection{Optimizations}
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item The inner loops for list and tuple slicing
- were optimized and now run about one-third faster.  The inner loops
- for dictionaries were also optimized, resulting in performance boosts for
- \method{keys()}, \method{values()}, \method{items()},
- \method{iterkeys()}, \method{itervalues()}, and \method{iteritems()}.
- (Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item The machinery for growing and shrinking lists was optimized for
- speed and for space efficiency.  Appending and popping from lists now
- runs faster due to more efficient code paths and less frequent use of
- the underlying system \cfunction{realloc()}.  List comprehensions
- also benefit.   \method{list.extend()} was also optimized and no
- longer converts its argument into a temporary list before extending
- the base list.  (Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item \function{list()}, \function{tuple()}, \function{map()},
-  \function{filter()}, and \function{zip()} now run several times
-  faster with non-sequence arguments that supply a \method{__len__()}
-  method.  (Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item The methods \method{list.__getitem__()},
-  \method{dict.__getitem__()}, and \method{dict.__contains__()} are
-  are now implemented as \class{method_descriptor} objects rather
-  than \class{wrapper_descriptor} objects.  This form of 
-  access doubles their performance and makes them more suitable for
-  use as arguments to functionals:
-  \samp{map(mydict.__getitem__, keylist)}.
-  (Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item Added a new opcode, \code{LIST_APPEND}, that simplifies
-  the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and speeds them up
-  by about a third.  (Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item The peephole bytecode optimizer has been improved to 
-produce shorter, faster bytecode; remarkably, the resulting bytecode is 
-more readable.  (Enhanced by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item String concatenations in statements of the form \code{s = s +
-"abc"} and \code{s += "abc"} are now performed more efficiently in
-certain circumstances.  This optimization won't be present in other
-Python implementations such as Jython, so you shouldn't rely on it;
-using the \method{join()} method of strings is still recommended when
-you want to efficiently glue a large number of strings together.
-(Contributed by Armin Rigo.)       
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-% pystone is almost useless for comparing different versions of Python;
-% instead, it excels at predicting relative Python performance on
-% different machines.
-% So, this section would be more informative if it used other tools
-% such as pybench and parrotbench.  For a more application oriented
-% benchmark, try comparing the timings of test_decimal.py under 2.3
-% and 2.4.
-       
-The net result of the 2.4 optimizations is that Python 2.4 runs the
-pystone benchmark around 5\% faster than Python 2.3 and 35\% faster
-than Python 2.2.  (pystone is not a particularly good benchmark, but
-it's the most commonly used measurement of Python's performance.  Your
-own applications may show greater or smaller benefits from Python~2.4.)
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{New, Improved, and Deprecated Modules}
-
-As usual, Python's standard library received a number of enhancements and
-bug fixes.  Here's a partial list of the most notable changes, sorted
-alphabetically by module name. Consult the
-\file{Misc/NEWS} file in the source tree for a more
-complete list of changes, or look through the CVS logs for all the
-details.
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item The \module{asyncore} module's \function{loop()} function now
-   has a \var{count} parameter that lets you perform a limited number
-   of passes through the polling loop.  The default is still to loop
-   forever.
-
-\item The \module{base64} module now has more complete RFC 3548 support
-  for Base64, Base32, and Base16 encoding and decoding, including
-  optional case folding and optional alternative alphabets.
-  (Contributed by Barry Warsaw.)
-
-\item The \module{bisect} module now has an underlying C implementation
-   for improved performance.
-   (Contributed by Dmitry Vasiliev.)
-
-\item The CJKCodecs collections of East Asian codecs, maintained
-by Hye-Shik Chang, was integrated into 2.4.  
-The new encodings are:
-
-\begin{itemize}
- \item Chinese (PRC): gb2312, gbk, gb18030, big5hkscs, hz
- \item Chinese (ROC): big5, cp950
- \item Japanese: cp932, euc-jis-2004, euc-jp,
-euc-jisx0213, iso-2022-jp, iso-2022-jp-1, iso-2022-jp-2,
- iso-2022-jp-3, iso-2022-jp-ext, iso-2022-jp-2004,
- shift-jis, shift-jisx0213, shift-jis-2004
- \item Korean: cp949, euc-kr, johab, iso-2022-kr
-\end{itemize} 
-
-\item Some other new encodings were added: HP Roman8, 
-ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16, PCTP-154, and TIS-620.
-
-\item The UTF-8 and UTF-16 codecs now cope better with receiving partial input.
-Previously the \class{StreamReader} class would try to read more data,
-making it impossible to resume decoding from the stream.  The
-\method{read()} method will now return as much data as it can and future
-calls will resume decoding where previous ones left off. 
-(Implemented by Walter D\"orwald.)
-
-\item There is a new \module{collections} module for 
-   various specialized collection datatypes.  
-   Currently it contains just one type, \class{deque}, 
-   a double-ended queue that supports efficiently adding and removing
-   elements from either end:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> from collections import deque
->>> d = deque('ghi')        # make a new deque with three items
->>> d.append('j')           # add a new entry to the right side
->>> d.appendleft('f')       # add a new entry to the left side
->>> d                       # show the representation of the deque
-deque(['f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j'])
->>> d.pop()                 # return and remove the rightmost item
-'j'
->>> d.popleft()             # return and remove the leftmost item
-'f'
->>> list(d)                 # list the contents of the deque
-['g', 'h', 'i']
->>> 'h' in d                # search the deque
-True  
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Several modules, such as the \module{Queue} and \module{threading}
-modules, now take advantage of \class{collections.deque} for improved
-performance.  (Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item The \module{ConfigParser} classes have been enhanced slightly.
-   The \method{read()} method now returns a list of the files that
-   were successfully parsed, and the \method{set()} method raises
-   \exception{TypeError} if passed a \var{value} argument that isn't a
-   string.   (Contributed by John Belmonte and David Goodger.)
-
-\item The \module{curses} module now supports the ncurses extension 
-   \function{use_default_colors()}.  On platforms where the terminal
-   supports transparency, this makes it possible to use a transparent
-   background.  (Contributed by J\"org Lehmann.)
-
-\item The \module{difflib} module now includes an \class{HtmlDiff} class
-that creates an HTML table showing a side by side comparison
-of two versions of a text.   (Contributed by Dan Gass.)
-
-\item The \module{email} package was updated to version 3.0, 
-which dropped various deprecated APIs and removes support for Python
-versions earlier than 2.3.  The 3.0 version of the package uses a new
-incremental parser for MIME messages, available in the
-\module{email.FeedParser} module.  The new parser doesn't require
-reading the entire message into memory, and doesn't throw exceptions
-if a message is malformed; instead it records any problems in the 
-\member{defect} attribute of the message.  (Developed by Anthony
-Baxter, Barry Warsaw, Thomas Wouters, and others.)
-
-\item The \module{heapq} module has been converted to C.  The resulting
-   tenfold improvement in speed makes the module suitable for handling
-   high volumes of data.  In addition, the module has two new functions
-   \function{nlargest()} and \function{nsmallest()} that use heaps to
-   find the N largest or smallest values in a dataset without the
-   expense of a full sort.  (Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item The \module{httplib} module now contains constants for HTTP
-status codes defined in various HTTP-related RFC documents.  Constants
-have names such as \constant{OK}, \constant{CREATED},
-\constant{CONTINUE}, and \constant{MOVED_PERMANENTLY}; use pydoc to
-get a full list.  (Contributed by Andrew Eland.)
-
-\item The \module{imaplib} module now supports IMAP's THREAD command
-(contributed by Yves Dionne) and new \method{deleteacl()} and
-\method{myrights()} methods (contributed by Arnaud Mazin).
-
-\item The \module{itertools} module gained a
-  \function{groupby(\var{iterable}\optional{, \var{func}})} function.
-  \var{iterable} is something that can be iterated over to return a
-  stream of elements, and the optional \var{func} parameter is a
-  function that takes an element and returns a key value; if omitted,
-  the key is simply the element itself.  \function{groupby()} then
-  groups the elements into subsequences which have matching values of
-  the key, and returns a series of 2-tuples containing the key value
-  and an iterator over the subsequence.
- 
-Here's an example to make this clearer.  The \var{key} function simply
-returns whether a number is even or odd, so the result of
-\function{groupby()} is to return consecutive runs of odd or even
-numbers.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> import itertools
->>> L = [2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14]
->>> for key_val, it in itertools.groupby(L, lambda x: x % 2):
-...    print key_val, list(it)
-... 
-0 [2, 4, 6]
-1 [7]
-0 [8]
-1 [9, 11]
-0 [12, 14]
->>> 
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\function{groupby()} is typically used with sorted input.  The logic
-for \function{groupby()} is similar to the \UNIX{} \code{uniq} filter
-which makes it handy for eliminating, counting, or identifying
-duplicate elements:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> word = 'abracadabra'
->>> letters = sorted(word)   # Turn string into a sorted list of letters
->>> letters 
-['a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'b', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'r', 'r']
->>> for k, g in itertools.groupby(letters):
-...    print k, list(g)
-... 
-a ['a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a']
-b ['b', 'b']
-c ['c']
-d ['d']
-r ['r', 'r']
->>> # List unique letters
->>> [k for k, g in groupby(letters)]                     
-['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'r']
->>> # Count letter occurrences
->>> [(k, len(list(g))) for k, g in groupby(letters)]     
-[('a', 5), ('b', 2), ('c', 1), ('d', 1), ('r', 2)]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Contributed by Hye-Shik Chang.)
-
-\item \module{itertools} also gained a function named
-\function{tee(\var{iterator}, \var{N})} that returns \var{N} independent
-iterators that replicate \var{iterator}.  If \var{N} is omitted, the
-default is 2.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> L = [1,2,3]
->>> i1, i2 = itertools.tee(L)
->>> i1,i2
-(<itertools.tee object at 0x402c2080>, <itertools.tee object at 0x402c2090>)
->>> list(i1)               # Run the first iterator to exhaustion
-[1, 2, 3]
->>> list(i2)               # Run the second iterator to exhaustion
-[1, 2, 3]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Note that \function{tee()} has to keep copies of the values returned 
-by the iterator; in the worst case, it may need to keep all of them.  
-This should therefore be used carefully if the leading iterator
-can run far ahead of the trailing iterator in a long stream of inputs.
-If the separation is large, then you might as well use 
-\function{list()} instead.  When the iterators track closely with one
-another, \function{tee()} is ideal.  Possible applications include
-bookmarking, windowing, or lookahead iterators.
-(Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)       
-
-\item  A number of functions were added to the \module{locale} 
-module, such as \function{bind_textdomain_codeset()} to specify a
-particular encoding and a family of \function{l*gettext()} functions
-that return messages in the chosen encoding.
-(Contributed by Gustavo Niemeyer.)
-
-\item Some keyword arguments were added to the \module{logging}
-package's \function{basicConfig} function to simplify log
-configuration.  The default behavior is to log messages to standard
-error, but various keyword arguments can be specified to log to a
-particular file, change the logging format, or set the logging level.
-For example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-import logging
-logging.basicConfig(filename='/var/log/application.log',
-    level=0,  # Log all messages
-    format='%(levelname):%(process):%(thread):%(message)')	            
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Other additions to the \module{logging} package include a
-\method{log(\var{level}, \var{msg})} convenience method, as well as a
-\class{TimedRotatingFileHandler} class that rotates its log files at a
-timed interval.  The module already had \class{RotatingFileHandler},
-which rotated logs once the file exceeded a certain size.  Both
-classes derive from a new \class{BaseRotatingHandler} class that can
-be used to implement other rotating handlers.
-
-(Changes implemented by Vinay Sajip.)
-
-\item The \module{marshal} module now shares interned strings on unpacking a 
-data structure.  This may shrink the size of certain pickle strings,
-but the primary effect is to make \file{.pyc} files significantly smaller.
-(Contributed by Martin von~L\"owis.)
-
-\item The \module{nntplib} module's \class{NNTP} class gained
-\method{description()} and \method{descriptions()} methods to retrieve 
-newsgroup descriptions for a single group or for a range of groups.
-(Contributed by J\"urgen A. Erhard.)
-
-\item Two new functions were added to the \module{operator} module, 
-\function{attrgetter(\var{attr})} and \function{itemgetter(\var{index})}.
-Both functions return callables that take a single argument and return
-the corresponding attribute or item; these callables make excellent
-data extractors when used with \function{map()} or
-\function{sorted()}.  For example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> L = [('c', 2), ('d', 1), ('a', 4), ('b', 3)]
->>> map(operator.itemgetter(0), L)
-['c', 'd', 'a', 'b']
->>> map(operator.itemgetter(1), L)
-[2, 1, 4, 3]
->>> sorted(L, key=operator.itemgetter(1)) # Sort list by second tuple item
-[('d', 1), ('c', 2), ('b', 3), ('a', 4)]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)       
-
-\item The \module{optparse} module was updated in various ways.  The
-module now passes its messages through \function{gettext.gettext()},
-making it possible to internationalize Optik's help and error
-messages.  Help messages for options can now include the string
-\code{'\%default'}, which will be replaced by the option's default
-value.  (Contributed by Greg Ward.)
-
-\item The long-term plan is to deprecate the \module{rfc822} module
-in some future Python release in favor of the \module{email} package.
-To this end, the \function{email.Utils.formatdate()} function has been
-changed to make it usable as a replacement for
-\function{rfc822.formatdate()}.  You may want to write new e-mail
-processing code with this in mind.  (Change implemented by Anthony
-Baxter.)
-
-\item A new \function{urandom(\var{n})} function was added to the
-\module{os} module, returning a string containing \var{n} bytes of
-random data.  This function provides access to platform-specific
-sources of randomness such as \file{/dev/urandom} on Linux or the
-Windows CryptoAPI.  (Contributed by Trevor Perrin.)
-
-\item Another new function: \function{os.path.lexists(\var{path})} 
-returns true if the file specified by \var{path} exists, whether or
-not it's a symbolic link.  This differs from the existing
-\function{os.path.exists(\var{path})} function, which returns false if 
-\var{path} is a symlink that points to a destination that doesn't exist.
-(Contributed by Beni Cherniavsky.)
-
-\item A new \function{getsid()} function was added to the
-\module{posix} module that underlies the \module{os} module.
-(Contributed by J. Raynor.)
-
-\item The \module{poplib} module now supports POP over SSL.  (Contributed by
-Hector Urtubia.)
-
-\item The \module{profile} module can now profile C extension functions.
-(Contributed by Nick Bastin.)
-
-\item The \module{random} module has a new method called
-   \method{getrandbits(\var{N})} that returns a long integer \var{N}
-   bits in length.  The existing \method{randrange()} method now uses
-   \method{getrandbits()} where appropriate, making generation of
-   arbitrarily large random numbers more efficient.  (Contributed by
-   Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item The regular expression language accepted by the \module{re} module
-   was extended with simple conditional expressions, written as
-   \regexp{(?(\var{group})\var{A}|\var{B})}.  \var{group} is either a
-   numeric group ID or a group name defined with \regexp{(?P<group>...)} 
-   earlier in the expression.  If the specified group matched, the
-   regular expression pattern \var{A} will be tested against the string; if
-   the group didn't match, the pattern \var{B} will be used instead.
-   (Contributed by Gustavo Niemeyer.)
-
-\item The \module{re} module is also no longer recursive, thanks to a
-massive amount of work by Gustavo Niemeyer.  In a recursive regular
-expression engine, certain patterns result in a large amount of C
-stack space being consumed, and it was possible to overflow the stack.
-For example, if you matched a 30000-byte string of \samp{a} characters
-against the expression \regexp{(a|b)+}, one stack frame was consumed
-per character.  Python 2.3 tried to check for stack overflow and raise
-a \exception{RuntimeError} exception, but certain patterns could
-sidestep the checking and if you were unlucky Python could segfault.
-Python 2.4's regular expression engine can match this pattern without
-problems.
-
-\item The \module{signal} module now performs tighter error-checking
-on the parameters to the \function{signal.signal()} function.  For
-example, you can't set a handler on the \constant{SIGKILL} signal;
-previous versions of Python would quietly accept this, but 2.4 will
-raise a \exception{RuntimeError} exception.
-
-\item Two new functions were added to the \module{socket} module.
-\function{socketpair()} returns a pair of connected sockets and
-\function{getservbyport(\var{port})} looks up the service name for a
-given port number. (Contributed by Dave Cole and Barry Warsaw.)
-
-\item The \function{sys.exitfunc()} function has been deprecated.  Code
-should be using the existing \module{atexit} module, which correctly
-handles calling multiple exit functions.  Eventually
-\function{sys.exitfunc()} will become a purely internal interface,
-accessed only by \module{atexit}.
-
-\item The \module{tarfile} module now generates GNU-format tar files
-by default.  (Contributed by Lars Gustaebel.)
-
-\item The \module{threading} module now has an elegantly simple way to support 
-thread-local data.  The module contains a \class{local} class whose
-attribute values are local to different threads.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-import threading
-
-data = threading.local()
-data.number = 42
-data.url = ('www.python.org', 80)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Other threads can assign and retrieve their own values for the
-\member{number} and \member{url} attributes.  You can subclass
-\class{local} to initialize attributes or to add methods.
-(Contributed by Jim Fulton.)
-
-\item The \module{timeit} module now automatically disables periodic
-  garbage collection during the timing loop.  This change makes
-  consecutive timings more comparable.  (Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item The \module{weakref} module now supports a wider variety of objects
-   including Python functions, class instances, sets, frozensets, deques,
-   arrays, files, sockets, and regular expression pattern objects.
-   (Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item The \module{xmlrpclib} module now supports a multi-call extension for 
-transmitting multiple XML-RPC calls in a single HTTP operation.
-(Contributed by Brian Quinlan.)
-
-\item The \module{mpz}, \module{rotor}, and \module{xreadlines} modules have 
-been removed.
-   
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-% whole new modules get described in subsections here
-
-%=====================
-\subsection{cookielib}
-
-The \module{cookielib} library supports client-side handling for HTTP
-cookies, mirroring the \module{Cookie} module's server-side cookie
-support. Cookies are stored in cookie jars; the library transparently
-stores cookies offered by the web server in the cookie jar, and
-fetches the cookie from the jar when connecting to the server. As in
-web browsers, policy objects control whether cookies are accepted or
-not.
-
-In order to store cookies across sessions, two implementations of
-cookie jars are provided: one that stores cookies in the Netscape
-format so applications can use the Mozilla or Lynx cookie files, and
-one that stores cookies in the same format as the Perl libwww library.
-
-\module{urllib2} has been changed to interact with \module{cookielib}:
-\class{HTTPCookieProcessor} manages a cookie jar that is used when
-accessing URLs.
-
-This module was contributed by John J. Lee.
-
-
-% ==================
-\subsection{doctest}
-
-The \module{doctest} module underwent considerable refactoring thanks
-to Edward Loper and Tim Peters.  Testing can still be as simple as
-running \function{doctest.testmod()}, but the refactorings allow
-customizing the module's operation in various ways
-
-The new \class{DocTestFinder} class extracts the tests from a given 
-object's docstrings:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def f (x, y):
-    """>>> f(2,2)
-4
->>> f(3,2)
-6
-    """
-    return x*y
-
-finder = doctest.DocTestFinder()
-
-# Get list of DocTest instances
-tests = finder.find(f)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The new \class{DocTestRunner} class then runs individual tests and can
-produce a summary of the results:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-runner = doctest.DocTestRunner()
-for t in tests:
-    tried, failed = runner.run(t)
-    
-runner.summarize(verbose=1)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The above example produces the following output:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-1 items passed all tests:
-   2 tests in f
-2 tests in 1 items.
-2 passed and 0 failed.
-Test passed.
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\class{DocTestRunner} uses an instance of the \class{OutputChecker}
-class to compare the expected output with the actual output.  This
-class takes a number of different flags that customize its behaviour;
-ambitious users can also write a completely new subclass of
-\class{OutputChecker}.
-
-The default output checker provides a number of handy features.
-For example, with the \constant{doctest.ELLIPSIS} option flag,
-an ellipsis (\samp{...}) in the expected output matches any substring, 
-making it easier to accommodate outputs that vary in minor ways:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def o (n):
-    """>>> o(1)
-<__main__.C instance at 0x...>
->>>
-"""
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Another special string, \samp{<BLANKLINE>}, matches a blank line:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def p (n):
-    """>>> p(1)
-<BLANKLINE>
->>>
-"""
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Another new capability is producing a diff-style display of the output
-by specifying the \constant{doctest.REPORT_UDIFF} (unified diffs),
-\constant{doctest.REPORT_CDIFF} (context diffs), or
-\constant{doctest.REPORT_NDIFF} (delta-style) option flags.  For example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def g (n):
-    """>>> g(4)
-here
-is
-a
-lengthy
->>>"""
-    L = 'here is a rather lengthy list of words'.split()
-    for word in L[:n]:
-        print word
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Running the above function's tests with
-\constant{doctest.REPORT_UDIFF} specified, you get the following output:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-**********************************************************************
-File ``t.py'', line 15, in g
-Failed example:
-    g(4)
-Differences (unified diff with -expected +actual):
-    @@ -2,3 +2,3 @@
-     is
-     a
-    -lengthy
-    +rather
-**********************************************************************
-\end{verbatim}
-
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{Build and C API Changes}
-
-Some of the changes to Python's build process and to the C API are:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-  \item Three new convenience macros were added for common return
-  values from extension functions: \csimplemacro{Py_RETURN_NONE},
-  \csimplemacro{Py_RETURN_TRUE}, and \csimplemacro{Py_RETURN_FALSE}.
-  (Contributed by Brett Cannon.)
-
-  \item Another new macro, \csimplemacro{Py_CLEAR(\var{obj})}, 
-  decreases the reference count of \var{obj} and sets \var{obj} to the
-  null pointer.  (Contributed by Jim Fulton.)
-
-  \item A new function, \cfunction{PyTuple_Pack(\var{N}, \var{obj1},
-  \var{obj2}, ..., \var{objN})}, constructs tuples from a variable
-  length argument list of Python objects.  (Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-  \item A new function, \cfunction{PyDict_Contains(\var{d}, \var{k})},
-  implements fast dictionary lookups without masking exceptions raised
-  during the look-up process.  (Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-  \item The \csimplemacro{Py_IS_NAN(\var{X})} macro returns 1 if 
-  its float or double argument \var{X} is a NaN.  
-  (Contributed by Tim Peters.)
-
-  \item C code can avoid unnecessary locking by using the new
-   \cfunction{PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()} function to tell 
-   if any thread operations have been performed.  If this function 
-   returns false, no lock operations are needed.
-   (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
-
-  \item A new function, \cfunction{PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords()},
-  is the same as \cfunction{PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords()} but takes a 
-  \ctype{va_list} instead of a number of arguments.
-  (Contributed by Greg Chapman.)
-
-  \item A new method flag, \constant{METH_COEXISTS}, allows a function
-  defined in slots to co-exist with a \ctype{PyCFunction} having the
-  same name.  This can halve the access time for a method such as
-  \method{set.__contains__()}.  (Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-  \item Python can now be built with additional profiling for the
-  interpreter itself, intended as an aid to people developing the
-  Python core.  Providing \longprogramopt{--enable-profiling} to the
-  \program{configure} script will let you profile the interpreter with
-  \program{gprof}, and providing the \longprogramopt{--with-tsc}
-  switch enables profiling using the Pentium's Time-Stamp-Counter
-  register.  Note that the \longprogramopt{--with-tsc} switch is slightly
-  misnamed, because the profiling feature also works on the PowerPC
-  platform, though that processor architecture doesn't call that
-  register ``the TSC register''.  (Contributed by Jeremy Hylton.)
-    
-  \item The \ctype{tracebackobject} type has been renamed to \ctype{PyTracebackObject}.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\subsection{Port-Specific Changes}
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item The Windows port now builds under MSVC++ 7.1 as well as version 6.
-  (Contributed by Martin von~L\"owis.)
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Porting to Python 2.4}
-
-This section lists previously described changes that may require
-changes to your code:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item Left shifts and hexadecimal/octal constants that are too 
-  large no longer trigger a \exception{FutureWarning} and return 
-  a value limited to 32 or 64 bits; instead they return a long integer.
-
-\item Integer operations will no longer trigger an \exception{OverflowWarning}.
-The \exception{OverflowWarning} warning will disappear in Python 2.5.
-
-\item The \function{zip()} built-in function and \function{itertools.izip()}
-  now return  an empty list instead of raising a \exception{TypeError}
-  exception if called with no arguments.
-
-\item You can no longer compare the \class{date} and \class{datetime}
-  instances provided by the \module{datetime} module.  Two 
-  instances of different classes will now always be unequal, and 
-  relative comparisons (\code{<}, \code{>}) will raise a \exception{TypeError}.
-
-\item \function{dircache.listdir()} now passes exceptions to the caller
-      instead of returning empty lists.
-
-\item \function{LexicalHandler.startDTD()} used to receive the public and
-  system IDs in the wrong order.  This has been corrected; applications
-  relying on the wrong order need to be fixed.
-
-\item \function{fcntl.ioctl} now warns if the \var{mutate} 
- argument is omitted and relevant.
-
-\item The \module{tarfile} module now generates GNU-format tar files
-by default.
-
-\item Encountering a failure while importing a module no longer leaves
-a partially-initialized module object in \code{sys.modules}.  
-
-\item \constant{None} is now a constant; code that binds a new value to 
-the name \samp{None} is now a syntax error.
-
-\item The \function{signals.signal()} function now raises a
-\exception{RuntimeError} exception for certain illegal values;
-previously these errors would pass silently.  For example, you can no
-longer set a handler on the \constant{SIGKILL} signal.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Acknowledgements \label{acks}}
-
-The author would like to thank the following people for offering
-suggestions, corrections and assistance with various drafts of this
-article: Koray Can, Hye-Shik Chang, Michael Dyck, Raymond Hettinger,
-Brian Hurt, Hamish Lawson, Fredrik Lundh, Sean Reifschneider,
-Sadruddin Rejeb.
-
-\end{document}
diff --git a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew25.tex b/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew25.tex
deleted file mode 100644
index b6bac49..0000000
--- a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew25.tex
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,2539 +0,0 @@
-\documentclass{howto}
-\usepackage{distutils}
-% $Id$
-
-% Fix XXX comments
-
-\title{What's New in Python 2.5}
-\release{1.01}
-\author{A.M. Kuchling}
-\authoraddress{\email{amk@amk.ca}}
-
-\begin{document}
-\maketitle
-\tableofcontents
-
-This article explains the new features in Python 2.5.  The final
-release of Python 2.5 is scheduled for August 2006;
-\pep{356} describes the planned release schedule.
-
-The changes in Python 2.5 are an interesting mix of language and
-library improvements. The library enhancements will be more important
-to Python's user community, I think, because several widely-useful
-packages were added.  New modules include ElementTree for XML
-processing (section~\ref{module-etree}), the SQLite database module
-(section~\ref{module-sqlite}), and the \module{ctypes} module for
-calling C functions (section~\ref{module-ctypes}).
-
-The language changes are of middling significance.  Some pleasant new
-features were added, but most of them aren't features that you'll use
-every day.  Conditional expressions were finally added to the language
-using a novel syntax; see section~\ref{pep-308}.  The new
-'\keyword{with}' statement will make writing cleanup code easier
-(section~\ref{pep-343}).  Values can now be passed into generators
-(section~\ref{pep-342}).  Imports are now visible as either absolute
-or relative (section~\ref{pep-328}).  Some corner cases of exception
-handling are handled better (section~\ref{pep-341}).  All these
-improvements are worthwhile, but they're improvements to one specific
-language feature or another; none of them are broad modifications to
-Python's semantics.
-
-As well as the language and library additions, other improvements and
-bugfixes were made throughout the source tree.  A search through the
-SVN change logs finds there were 353 patches applied and 458 bugs
-fixed between Python 2.4 and 2.5.  (Both figures are likely to be
-underestimates.)  
-
-This article doesn't try to be a complete specification of the new
-features; instead changes are briefly introduced using helpful
-examples.  For full details, you should always refer to the
-documentation for Python 2.5 at \url{http://docs.python.org}.
-If you want to understand the complete implementation and design
-rationale, refer to the PEP for a particular new feature.
-
-Comments, suggestions, and error reports for this document are
-welcome; please e-mail them to the author or open a bug in the Python
-bug tracker.
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 308: Conditional Expressions\label{pep-308}}
-
-For a long time, people have been requesting a way to write
-conditional expressions, which are expressions that return value A or
-value B depending on whether a Boolean value is true or false.  A
-conditional expression lets you write a single assignment statement
-that has the same effect as the following:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-if condition:
-    x = true_value
-else:
-    x = false_value
-\end{verbatim}
-
-There have been endless tedious discussions of syntax on both
-python-dev and comp.lang.python.  A vote was even held that found the
-majority of voters wanted conditional expressions in some form,
-but there was no syntax that was preferred by a clear majority.
-Candidates included C's \code{cond ? true_v : false_v},
-\code{if cond then true_v else false_v}, and 16 other variations.
-
-Guido van~Rossum eventually chose a surprising syntax:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-x = true_value if condition else false_value
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Evaluation is still lazy as in existing Boolean expressions, so the
-order of evaluation jumps around a bit.  The \var{condition}
-expression in the middle is evaluated first, and the \var{true_value}
-expression is evaluated only if the condition was true.  Similarly,
-the \var{false_value} expression is only evaluated when the condition
-is false.
-
-This syntax may seem strange and backwards; why does the condition go
-in the \emph{middle} of the expression, and not in the front as in C's
-\code{c ? x : y}?  The decision was checked by applying the new syntax
-to the modules in the standard library and seeing how the resulting
-code read.  In many cases where a conditional expression is used, one
-value seems to be the 'common case' and one value is an 'exceptional
-case', used only on rarer occasions when the condition isn't met.  The
-conditional syntax makes this pattern a bit more obvious:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-contents = ((doc + '\n') if doc else '')
-\end{verbatim}
-
-I read the above statement as meaning ``here \var{contents} is 
-usually assigned a value of \code{doc+'\e n'}; sometimes 
-\var{doc} is empty, in which special case an empty string is returned.''  
-I doubt I will use conditional expressions very often where there 
-isn't a clear common and uncommon case.
-
-There was some discussion of whether the language should require
-surrounding conditional expressions with parentheses.  The decision
-was made to \emph{not} require parentheses in the Python language's
-grammar, but as a matter of style I think you should always use them.
-Consider these two statements:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-# First version -- no parens
-level = 1 if logging else 0
-
-# Second version -- with parens
-level = (1 if logging else 0)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-In the first version, I think a reader's eye might group the statement
-into 'level = 1', 'if logging', 'else 0', and think that the condition
-decides whether the assignment to \var{level} is performed.  The
-second version reads better, in my opinion, because it makes it clear
-that the assignment is always performed and the choice is being made
-between two values.
-
-Another reason for including the brackets: a few odd combinations of
-list comprehensions and lambdas could look like incorrect conditional
-expressions. See \pep{308} for some examples.  If you put parentheses
-around your conditional expressions, you won't run into this case.
-
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{308}{Conditional Expressions}{PEP written by
-Guido van~Rossum and Raymond D. Hettinger; implemented by Thomas
-Wouters.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 309: Partial Function Application\label{pep-309}}
-
-The \module{functools} module is intended to contain tools for
-functional-style programming.  
-
-One useful tool in this module is the \function{partial()} function.
-For programs written in a functional style, you'll sometimes want to
-construct variants of existing functions that have some of the
-parameters filled in.  Consider a Python function \code{f(a, b, c)};
-you could create a new function \code{g(b, c)} that was equivalent to
-\code{f(1, b, c)}.  This is called ``partial function application''.
-
-\function{partial} takes the arguments
-\code{(\var{function}, \var{arg1}, \var{arg2}, ...
-\var{kwarg1}=\var{value1}, \var{kwarg2}=\var{value2})}.  The resulting
-object is callable, so you can just call it to invoke \var{function}
-with the filled-in arguments.
-
-Here's a small but realistic example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-import functools
-
-def log (message, subsystem):
-    "Write the contents of 'message' to the specified subsystem."
-    print '%s: %s' % (subsystem, message)
-    ...
-
-server_log = functools.partial(log, subsystem='server')
-server_log('Unable to open socket')
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Here's another example, from a program that uses PyGTK.  Here a
-context-sensitive pop-up menu is being constructed dynamically.  The
-callback provided for the menu option is a partially applied version
-of the \method{open_item()} method, where the first argument has been
-provided.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-...
-class Application:
-    def open_item(self, path):
-       ...
-    def init (self):
-        open_func = functools.partial(self.open_item, item_path)
-        popup_menu.append( ("Open", open_func, 1) )
-\end{verbatim}
-
-
-Another function in the \module{functools} module is the
-\function{update_wrapper(\var{wrapper}, \var{wrapped})} function that
-helps you write well-behaved decorators.  \function{update_wrapper()}
-copies the name, module, and docstring attribute to a wrapper function
-so that tracebacks inside the wrapped function are easier to
-understand.  For example, you might write:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def my_decorator(f):
-    def wrapper(*args, **kwds):
-        print 'Calling decorated function'
-        return f(*args, **kwds)
-    functools.update_wrapper(wrapper, f)
-    return wrapper
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\function{wraps()} is a decorator that can be used inside your own
-decorators to copy the wrapped function's information.  An alternate 
-version of the previous example would be:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def my_decorator(f):
-    @functools.wraps(f)
-    def wrapper(*args, **kwds):
-        print 'Calling decorated function'
-        return f(*args, **kwds)
-    return wrapper
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{309}{Partial Function Application}{PEP proposed and written by
-Peter Harris; implemented by Hye-Shik Chang and Nick Coghlan, with
-adaptations by Raymond Hettinger.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 314: Metadata for Python Software Packages v1.1\label{pep-314}}
-
-Some simple dependency support was added to Distutils.  The
-\function{setup()} function now has \code{requires}, \code{provides},
-and \code{obsoletes} keyword parameters.  When you build a source
-distribution using the \code{sdist} command, the dependency
-information will be recorded in the \file{PKG-INFO} file.
-
-Another new keyword parameter is \code{download_url}, which should be
-set to a URL for the package's source code.  This means it's now
-possible to look up an entry in the package index, determine the
-dependencies for a package, and download the required packages.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-VERSION = '1.0'
-setup(name='PyPackage', 
-      version=VERSION,
-      requires=['numarray', 'zlib (>=1.1.4)'],
-      obsoletes=['OldPackage']
-      download_url=('http://www.example.com/pypackage/dist/pkg-%s.tar.gz'
-                    % VERSION),
-     )
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Another new enhancement to the Python package index at
-\url{http://cheeseshop.python.org} is storing source and binary
-archives for a package.  The new \command{upload} Distutils command
-will upload a package to the repository.
-
-Before a package can be uploaded, you must be able to build a
-distribution using the \command{sdist} Distutils command.  Once that
-works, you can run \code{python setup.py upload} to add your package
-to the PyPI archive.  Optionally you can GPG-sign the package by
-supplying the \longprogramopt{sign} and
-\longprogramopt{identity} options.
-
-Package uploading was implemented by Martin von~L\"owis and Richard Jones. 
- 
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{314}{Metadata for Python Software Packages v1.1}{PEP proposed
-and written by A.M. Kuchling, Richard Jones, and Fred Drake; 
-implemented by Richard Jones and Fred Drake.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 328: Absolute and Relative Imports\label{pep-328}}
-
-The simpler part of PEP 328 was implemented in Python 2.4: parentheses
-could now be used to enclose the names imported from a module using
-the \code{from ... import ...} statement, making it easier to import
-many different names.
-
-The more complicated part has been implemented in Python 2.5:
-importing a module can be specified to use absolute or
-package-relative imports.  The plan is to move toward making absolute
-imports the default in future versions of Python.
-
-Let's say you have a package directory like this:
-\begin{verbatim}
-pkg/
-pkg/__init__.py
-pkg/main.py
-pkg/string.py
-\end{verbatim}
-
-This defines a package named \module{pkg} containing the
-\module{pkg.main} and \module{pkg.string} submodules.  
-
-Consider the code in the \file{main.py} module.  What happens if it
-executes the statement \code{import string}?  In Python 2.4 and
-earlier, it will first look in the package's directory to perform a
-relative import, finds \file{pkg/string.py}, imports the contents of
-that file as the \module{pkg.string} module, and that module is bound
-to the name \samp{string} in the \module{pkg.main} module's namespace.
-
-That's fine if \module{pkg.string} was what you wanted.  But what if
-you wanted Python's standard \module{string} module?  There's no clean
-way to ignore \module{pkg.string} and look for the standard module;
-generally you had to look at the contents of \code{sys.modules}, which
-is slightly unclean.   
-Holger Krekel's \module{py.std} package provides a tidier way to perform
-imports from the standard library, \code{import py ; py.std.string.join()},
-but that package isn't available on all Python installations.
-
-Reading code which relies on relative imports is also less clear,
-because a reader may be confused about which module, \module{string}
-or \module{pkg.string}, is intended to be used.  Python users soon
-learned not to duplicate the names of standard library modules in the
-names of their packages' submodules, but you can't protect against
-having your submodule's name being used for a new module added in a
-future version of Python.
-
-In Python 2.5, you can switch \keyword{import}'s behaviour to 
-absolute imports using a \code{from __future__ import absolute_import}
-directive.  This absolute-import behaviour will become the default in
-a future version (probably Python 2.7).  Once absolute imports 
-are the default, \code{import string} will
-always find the standard library's version.
-It's suggested that users should begin using absolute imports as much
-as possible, so it's preferable to begin writing \code{from pkg import
-string} in your code.  
-
-Relative imports are still possible by adding a leading period 
-to the module name when using the \code{from ... import} form:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-# Import names from pkg.string
-from .string import name1, name2
-# Import pkg.string
-from . import string
-\end{verbatim}
-
-This imports the \module{string} module relative to the current
-package, so in \module{pkg.main} this will import \var{name1} and
-\var{name2} from \module{pkg.string}.  Additional leading periods
-perform the relative import starting from the parent of the current
-package.  For example, code in the \module{A.B.C} module can do:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-from . import D                 # Imports A.B.D
-from .. import E                # Imports A.E
-from ..F import G               # Imports A.F.G
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Leading periods cannot be used with the \code{import \var{modname}} 
-form of the import statement, only the \code{from ... import} form.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{328}{Imports: Multi-Line and Absolute/Relative}
-{PEP written by Aahz; implemented by Thomas Wouters.}
-
-\seeurl{http://codespeak.net/py/current/doc/index.html}
-{The py library by Holger Krekel, which contains the \module{py.std} package.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 338: Executing Modules as Scripts\label{pep-338}}
-
-The \programopt{-m} switch added in Python 2.4 to execute a module as
-a script gained a few more abilities.  Instead of being implemented in
-C code inside the Python interpreter, the switch now uses an
-implementation in a new module, \module{runpy}.
-
-The \module{runpy} module implements a more sophisticated import
-mechanism so that it's now possible to run modules in a package such
-as \module{pychecker.checker}.  The module also supports alternative
-import mechanisms such as the \module{zipimport} module.  This means
-you can add a .zip archive's path to \code{sys.path} and then use the
-\programopt{-m} switch to execute code from the archive.
-
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{338}{Executing modules as scripts}{PEP written and 
-implemented by Nick Coghlan.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 341: Unified try/except/finally\label{pep-341}}
-
-Until Python 2.5, the \keyword{try} statement came in two
-flavours. You could use a \keyword{finally} block to ensure that code
-is always executed, or one or more \keyword{except} blocks to catch 
-specific exceptions.  You couldn't combine both \keyword{except} blocks and a
-\keyword{finally} block, because generating the right bytecode for the
-combined version was complicated and it wasn't clear what the
-semantics of the combined statement should be.  
-
-Guido van~Rossum spent some time working with Java, which does support the
-equivalent of combining \keyword{except} blocks and a
-\keyword{finally} block, and this clarified what the statement should
-mean.  In Python 2.5, you can now write:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-try:
-    block-1 ...
-except Exception1:
-    handler-1 ...
-except Exception2:
-    handler-2 ...
-else:
-    else-block
-finally:
-    final-block 
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The code in \var{block-1} is executed.  If the code raises an
-exception, the various \keyword{except} blocks are tested: if the
-exception is of class \class{Exception1}, \var{handler-1} is executed;
-otherwise if it's of class \class{Exception2}, \var{handler-2} is
-executed, and so forth.  If no exception is raised, the
-\var{else-block} is executed.  
-
-No matter what happened previously, the \var{final-block} is executed
-once the code block is complete and any raised exceptions handled.
-Even if there's an error in an exception handler or the
-\var{else-block} and a new exception is raised, the
-code in the \var{final-block} is still run.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{341}{Unifying try-except and try-finally}{PEP written by Georg Brandl; 
-implementation by Thomas Lee.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 342: New Generator Features\label{pep-342}}
-
-Python 2.5 adds a simple way to pass values \emph{into} a generator.
-As introduced in Python 2.3, generators only produce output; once a
-generator's code was invoked to create an iterator, there was no way to
-pass any new information into the function when its execution is
-resumed.  Sometimes the ability to pass in some information would be
-useful.  Hackish solutions to this include making the generator's code
-look at a global variable and then changing the global variable's
-value, or passing in some mutable object that callers then modify.
-
-To refresh your memory of basic generators, here's a simple example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def counter (maximum):
-    i = 0
-    while i < maximum:
-        yield i
-        i += 1
-\end{verbatim}
-
-When you call \code{counter(10)}, the result is an iterator that
-returns the values from 0 up to 9.  On encountering the
-\keyword{yield} statement, the iterator returns the provided value and
-suspends the function's execution, preserving the local variables.
-Execution resumes on the following call to the iterator's 
-\method{next()} method, picking up after the \keyword{yield} statement.
-
-In Python 2.3, \keyword{yield} was a statement; it didn't return any
-value.  In 2.5, \keyword{yield} is now an expression, returning a
-value that can be assigned to a variable or otherwise operated on:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-val = (yield i)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-I recommend that you always put parentheses around a \keyword{yield}
-expression when you're doing something with the returned value, as in
-the above example.  The parentheses aren't always necessary, but it's
-easier to always add them instead of having to remember when they're
-needed.
-
-(\pep{342} explains the exact rules, which are that a
-\keyword{yield}-expression must always be parenthesized except when it
-occurs at the top-level expression on the right-hand side of an
-assignment.  This means you can write \code{val = yield i} but have to
-use parentheses when there's an operation, as in \code{val = (yield i)
-+ 12}.)
-
-Values are sent into a generator by calling its
-\method{send(\var{value})} method.  The generator's code is then
-resumed and the \keyword{yield} expression returns the specified
-\var{value}.  If the regular \method{next()} method is called, the
-\keyword{yield} returns \constant{None}.
-
-Here's the previous example, modified to allow changing the value of
-the internal counter.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def counter (maximum):
-    i = 0
-    while i < maximum:
-        val = (yield i)
-        # If value provided, change counter
-        if val is not None:
-            i = val
-        else:
-            i += 1
-\end{verbatim}
-
-And here's an example of changing the counter:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> it = counter(10)
->>> print it.next()
-0
->>> print it.next()
-1
->>> print it.send(8)
-8
->>> print it.next()
-9
->>> print it.next()
-Traceback (most recent call last):
-  File ``t.py'', line 15, in ?
-    print it.next()
-StopIteration
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\keyword{yield} will usually return \constant{None}, so you
-should always check for this case.  Don't just use its value in
-expressions unless you're sure that the \method{send()} method
-will be the only method used to resume your generator function.
-
-In addition to \method{send()}, there are two other new methods on
-generators:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-  \item \method{throw(\var{type}, \var{value}=None,
-  \var{traceback}=None)} is used to raise an exception inside the
-  generator; the exception is raised by the \keyword{yield} expression
-  where the generator's execution is paused.
-
-  \item \method{close()} raises a new \exception{GeneratorExit}
-  exception inside the generator to terminate the iteration.  On
-  receiving this exception, the generator's code must either raise
-  \exception{GeneratorExit} or \exception{StopIteration}.  Catching
-  the \exception{GeneratorExit} exception and returning a value is
-  illegal and will trigger a \exception{RuntimeError}; if the function
-  raises some other exception, that exception is propagated to the
-  caller.  \method{close()} will also be called by Python's garbage
-  collector when the generator is garbage-collected.
-
-  If you need to run cleanup code when a \exception{GeneratorExit} occurs,
-  I suggest using a \code{try: ... finally:} suite instead of 
-  catching \exception{GeneratorExit}.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-The cumulative effect of these changes is to turn generators from
-one-way producers of information into both producers and consumers.
-
-Generators also become \emph{coroutines}, a more generalized form of
-subroutines.  Subroutines are entered at one point and exited at
-another point (the top of the function, and a \keyword{return}
-statement), but coroutines can be entered, exited, and resumed at
-many different points (the \keyword{yield} statements).  We'll have to
-figure out patterns for using coroutines effectively in Python.
-
-The addition of the \method{close()} method has one side effect that
-isn't obvious.  \method{close()} is called when a generator is
-garbage-collected, so this means the generator's code gets one last
-chance to run before the generator is destroyed.  This last chance
-means that \code{try...finally} statements in generators can now be
-guaranteed to work; the \keyword{finally} clause will now always get a
-chance to run.  The syntactic restriction that you couldn't mix
-\keyword{yield} statements with a \code{try...finally} suite has
-therefore been removed.  This seems like a minor bit of language
-trivia, but using generators and \code{try...finally} is actually
-necessary in order to implement the  \keyword{with} statement
-described by PEP 343.  I'll look at this new statement in the following 
-section.
-
-Another even more esoteric effect of this change: previously, the
-\member{gi_frame} attribute of a generator was always a frame object.
-It's now possible for \member{gi_frame} to be \code{None}
-once the generator has been exhausted.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{342}{Coroutines via Enhanced Generators}{PEP written by 
-Guido van~Rossum and Phillip J. Eby;
-implemented by Phillip J. Eby.  Includes examples of 
-some fancier uses of generators as coroutines.
-
-Earlier versions of these features were proposed in 
-\pep{288} by Raymond Hettinger and \pep{325} by Samuele Pedroni.
-}
-
-\seeurl{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coroutine}{The Wikipedia entry for 
-coroutines.}
-
-\seeurl{http://www.sidhe.org/\~{}dan/blog/archives/000178.html}{An
-explanation of coroutines from a Perl point of view, written by Dan
-Sugalski.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 343: The 'with' statement\label{pep-343}}
-
-The '\keyword{with}' statement clarifies code that previously would
-use \code{try...finally} blocks to ensure that clean-up code is
-executed.  In this section, I'll discuss the statement as it will
-commonly be used.  In the next section, I'll examine the
-implementation details and show how to write objects for use with this
-statement.
-
-The '\keyword{with}' statement is a new control-flow structure whose
-basic structure is:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-with expression [as variable]:
-    with-block
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The expression is evaluated, and it should result in an object that
-supports the context management protocol (that is, has \method{__enter__()}
-and \method{__exit__()} methods.
-
-The object's \method{__enter__()} is called before \var{with-block} is
-executed and therefore can run set-up code. It also may return a value
-that is bound to the name \var{variable}, if given.  (Note carefully
-that \var{variable} is \emph{not} assigned the result of \var{expression}.)
-
-After execution of the \var{with-block} is finished, the object's
-\method{__exit__()} method is called, even if the block raised an exception,
-and can therefore run clean-up code.
-
-To enable the statement in Python 2.5, you need to add the following
-directive to your module:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-from __future__ import with_statement
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The statement will always be enabled in Python 2.6.
-
-Some standard Python objects now support the context management
-protocol and can be used with the '\keyword{with}' statement. File
-objects are one example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-with open('/etc/passwd', 'r') as f:
-    for line in f:
-        print line
-        ... more processing code ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-After this statement has executed, the file object in \var{f} will
-have been automatically closed, even if the \keyword{for} loop
-raised an exception part-way through the block.
-
-\note{In this case, \var{f} is the same object created by
-      \function{open()}, because \method{file.__enter__()} returns
-      \var{self}.}
-
-The \module{threading} module's locks and condition variables 
-also support the '\keyword{with}' statement:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-lock = threading.Lock()
-with lock:
-    # Critical section of code
-    ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The lock is acquired before the block is executed and always released once 
-the block is complete.
-
-The new \function{localcontext()} function in the \module{decimal} module
-makes it easy to save and restore the current decimal context, which
-encapsulates the desired precision and rounding characteristics for
-computations:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-from decimal import Decimal, Context, localcontext
-
-# Displays with default precision of 28 digits
-v = Decimal('578')
-print v.sqrt()
-
-with localcontext(Context(prec=16)):
-    # All code in this block uses a precision of 16 digits.
-    # The original context is restored on exiting the block.
-    print v.sqrt()
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\subsection{Writing Context Managers\label{context-managers}}
-
-Under the hood, the '\keyword{with}' statement is fairly complicated.
-Most people will only use '\keyword{with}' in company with existing
-objects and don't need to know these details, so you can skip the rest
-of this section if you like.  Authors of new objects will need to
-understand the details of the underlying implementation and should
-keep reading.
-
-A high-level explanation of the context management protocol is:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item The expression is evaluated and should result in an object
-called a ``context manager''.  The context manager must have
-\method{__enter__()} and \method{__exit__()} methods.
-
-\item The context manager's \method{__enter__()} method is called.  The value
-returned is assigned to \var{VAR}.  If no \code{'as \var{VAR}'} clause
-is present, the value is simply discarded.
-
-\item The code in \var{BLOCK} is executed.
-
-\item If \var{BLOCK} raises an exception, the
-\method{__exit__(\var{type}, \var{value}, \var{traceback})} is called
-with the exception details, the same values returned by
-\function{sys.exc_info()}.  The method's return value controls whether
-the exception is re-raised: any false value re-raises the exception,
-and \code{True} will result in suppressing it.  You'll only rarely
-want to suppress the exception, because if you do
-the author of the code containing the
-'\keyword{with}' statement will never realize anything went wrong.
-
-\item If \var{BLOCK} didn't raise an exception, 
-the \method{__exit__()} method is still called,
-but \var{type}, \var{value}, and \var{traceback} are all \code{None}.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-Let's think through an example.  I won't present detailed code but
-will only sketch the methods necessary for a database that supports
-transactions.
-
-(For people unfamiliar with database terminology: a set of changes to
-the database are grouped into a transaction.  Transactions can be
-either committed, meaning that all the changes are written into the
-database, or rolled back, meaning that the changes are all discarded
-and the database is unchanged.  See any database textbook for more
-information.)
-
-Let's assume there's an object representing a database connection.
-Our goal will be to let the user write code like this:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-db_connection = DatabaseConnection()
-with db_connection as cursor:
-    cursor.execute('insert into ...')
-    cursor.execute('delete from ...')
-    # ... more operations ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The transaction should be committed if the code in the block
-runs flawlessly or rolled back if there's an exception.
-Here's the basic interface
-for \class{DatabaseConnection} that I'll assume:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-class DatabaseConnection:
-    # Database interface
-    def cursor (self):
-        "Returns a cursor object and starts a new transaction"
-    def commit (self):
-        "Commits current transaction"
-    def rollback (self):
-        "Rolls back current transaction"
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The \method {__enter__()} method is pretty easy, having only to start
-a new transaction.  For this application the resulting cursor object
-would be a useful result, so the method will return it.  The user can
-then add \code{as cursor} to their '\keyword{with}' statement to bind
-the cursor to a variable name.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-class DatabaseConnection:
-    ...
-    def __enter__ (self):
-        # Code to start a new transaction
-        cursor = self.cursor()
-        return cursor
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The \method{__exit__()} method is the most complicated because it's
-where most of the work has to be done.  The method has to check if an
-exception occurred.  If there was no exception, the transaction is
-committed.  The transaction is rolled back if there was an exception.
-
-In the code below, execution will just fall off the end of the
-function, returning the default value of \code{None}.  \code{None} is
-false, so the exception will be re-raised automatically.  If you
-wished, you could be more explicit and add a \keyword{return}
-statement at the marked location.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-class DatabaseConnection:
-    ...
-    def __exit__ (self, type, value, tb):
-        if tb is None:
-            # No exception, so commit
-            self.commit()
-        else:
-            # Exception occurred, so rollback.
-            self.rollback()
-            # return False
-\end{verbatim}
-
-
-\subsection{The contextlib module\label{module-contextlib}}
-
-The new \module{contextlib} module provides some functions and a
-decorator that are useful for writing objects for use with the
-'\keyword{with}' statement.
-
-The decorator is called \function{contextmanager}, and lets you write
-a single generator function instead of defining a new class.  The generator
-should yield exactly one value.  The code up to the \keyword{yield}
-will be executed as the \method{__enter__()} method, and the value
-yielded will be the method's return value that will get bound to the
-variable in the '\keyword{with}' statement's \keyword{as} clause, if
-any.  The code after the \keyword{yield} will be executed in the
-\method{__exit__()} method.  Any exception raised in the block will be
-raised by the \keyword{yield} statement.
-
-Our database example from the previous section could be written 
-using this decorator as:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-from contextlib import contextmanager
-
-@contextmanager
-def db_transaction (connection):
-    cursor = connection.cursor()
-    try:
-        yield cursor
-    except:
-        connection.rollback()
-        raise
-    else:
-        connection.commit()
-
-db = DatabaseConnection()
-with db_transaction(db) as cursor:
-    ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The \module{contextlib} module also has a \function{nested(\var{mgr1},
-\var{mgr2}, ...)} function that combines a number of context managers so you
-don't need to write nested '\keyword{with}' statements.  In this
-example, the single '\keyword{with}' statement both starts a database
-transaction and acquires a thread lock:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-lock = threading.Lock()
-with nested (db_transaction(db), lock) as (cursor, locked):
-    ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Finally, the \function{closing(\var{object})} function
-returns \var{object} so that it can be bound to a variable,
-and calls \code{\var{object}.close()} at the end of the block.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-import urllib, sys
-from contextlib import closing
-
-with closing(urllib.urlopen('http://www.yahoo.com')) as f:
-    for line in f:
-        sys.stdout.write(line)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{343}{The ``with'' statement}{PEP written by Guido van~Rossum
-and Nick Coghlan; implemented by Mike Bland, Guido van~Rossum, and
-Neal Norwitz.  The PEP shows the code generated for a '\keyword{with}'
-statement, which can be helpful in learning how the statement works.}
-
-\seeurl{../lib/module-contextlib.html}{The documentation 
-for the \module{contextlib} module.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 352: Exceptions as New-Style Classes\label{pep-352}}
-
-Exception classes can now be new-style classes, not just classic
-classes, and the built-in \exception{Exception} class and all the
-standard built-in exceptions (\exception{NameError},
-\exception{ValueError}, etc.) are now new-style classes.
-
-The inheritance hierarchy for exceptions has been rearranged a bit.
-In 2.5, the inheritance relationships are:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-BaseException       # New in Python 2.5
-|- KeyboardInterrupt
-|- SystemExit
-|- Exception
-   |- (all other current built-in exceptions)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-This rearrangement was done because people often want to catch all
-exceptions that indicate program errors.  \exception{KeyboardInterrupt} and
-\exception{SystemExit} aren't errors, though, and usually represent an explicit
-action such as the user hitting Control-C or code calling
-\function{sys.exit()}.  A bare \code{except:} will catch all exceptions,
-so you commonly need to list \exception{KeyboardInterrupt} and
-\exception{SystemExit} in order to re-raise them.  The usual pattern is:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-try:
-    ...
-except (KeyboardInterrupt, SystemExit):
-    raise
-except: 
-    # Log error...  
-    # Continue running program...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-In Python 2.5, you can now write \code{except Exception} to achieve
-the same result, catching all the exceptions that usually indicate errors 
-but leaving \exception{KeyboardInterrupt} and
-\exception{SystemExit} alone.  As in previous versions,
-a bare \code{except:} still catches all exceptions.
-
-The goal for Python 3.0 is to require any class raised as an exception
-to derive from \exception{BaseException} or some descendant of
-\exception{BaseException}, and future releases in the
-Python 2.x series may begin to enforce this constraint.  Therefore, I
-suggest you begin making all your exception classes derive from
-\exception{Exception} now.  It's been suggested that the bare
-\code{except:} form should be removed in Python 3.0, but Guido van~Rossum
-hasn't decided whether to do this or not.
-
-Raising of strings as exceptions, as in the statement \code{raise
-"Error occurred"}, is deprecated in Python 2.5 and will trigger a
-warning.  The aim is to be able to remove the string-exception feature
-in a few releases.
-
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{352}{Required Superclass for Exceptions}{PEP written by 
-Brett Cannon and Guido van~Rossum; implemented by Brett Cannon.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 353: Using ssize_t as the index type\label{pep-353}}
-
-A wide-ranging change to Python's C API, using a new 
-\ctype{Py_ssize_t} type definition instead of \ctype{int}, 
-will permit the interpreter to handle more data on 64-bit platforms.
-This change doesn't affect Python's capacity on 32-bit platforms.
-
-Various pieces of the Python interpreter used C's \ctype{int} type to
-store sizes or counts; for example, the number of items in a list or
-tuple were stored in an \ctype{int}.  The C compilers for most 64-bit
-platforms still define \ctype{int} as a 32-bit type, so that meant
-that lists could only hold up to \code{2**31 - 1} = 2147483647 items.
-(There are actually a few different programming models that 64-bit C
-compilers can use -- see
-\url{http://www.unix.org/version2/whatsnew/lp64_wp.html} for a
-discussion -- but the most commonly available model leaves \ctype{int}
-as 32 bits.)
-
-A limit of 2147483647 items doesn't really matter on a 32-bit platform
-because you'll run out of memory before hitting the length limit.
-Each list item requires space for a pointer, which is 4 bytes, plus
-space for a \ctype{PyObject} representing the item.  2147483647*4 is
-already more bytes than a 32-bit address space can contain.
-
-It's possible to address that much memory on a 64-bit platform,
-however.  The pointers for a list that size would only require 16~GiB
-of space, so it's not unreasonable that Python programmers might
-construct lists that large.  Therefore, the Python interpreter had to
-be changed to use some type other than \ctype{int}, and this will be a
-64-bit type on 64-bit platforms.  The change will cause
-incompatibilities on 64-bit machines, so it was deemed worth making
-the transition now, while the number of 64-bit users is still
-relatively small.  (In 5 or 10 years, we may \emph{all} be on 64-bit
-machines, and the transition would be more painful then.)
-
-This change most strongly affects authors of C extension modules.  
-Python strings and container types such as lists and tuples 
-now use \ctype{Py_ssize_t} to store their size.  
-Functions such as \cfunction{PyList_Size()} 
-now return \ctype{Py_ssize_t}.  Code in extension modules
-may therefore need to have some variables changed to
-\ctype{Py_ssize_t}.  
-
-The \cfunction{PyArg_ParseTuple()} and \cfunction{Py_BuildValue()} functions
-have a new conversion code, \samp{n}, for \ctype{Py_ssize_t}.  
-\cfunction{PyArg_ParseTuple()}'s \samp{s\#} and \samp{t\#} still output
-\ctype{int} by default, but you can define the macro 
-\csimplemacro{PY_SSIZE_T_CLEAN} before including \file{Python.h} 
-to make them return \ctype{Py_ssize_t}.
-
-\pep{353} has a section on conversion guidelines that 
-extension authors should read to learn about supporting 64-bit
-platforms.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{353}{Using ssize_t as the index type}{PEP written and implemented by Martin von~L\"owis.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{PEP 357: The '__index__' method\label{pep-357}}
-
-The NumPy developers had a problem that could only be solved by adding
-a new special method, \method{__index__}.  When using slice notation,
-as in \code{[\var{start}:\var{stop}:\var{step}]}, the values of the
-\var{start}, \var{stop}, and \var{step} indexes must all be either
-integers or long integers.  NumPy defines a variety of specialized
-integer types corresponding to unsigned and signed integers of 8, 16,
-32, and 64 bits, but there was no way to signal that these types could
-be used as slice indexes.
-
-Slicing can't just use the existing \method{__int__} method because
-that method is also used to implement coercion to integers.  If
-slicing used \method{__int__}, floating-point numbers would also
-become legal slice indexes and that's clearly an undesirable
-behaviour.
-
-Instead, a new special method called \method{__index__} was added.  It
-takes no arguments and returns an integer giving the slice index to
-use.  For example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-class C:
-    def __index__ (self):
-        return self.value  
-\end{verbatim}
-
-The return value must be either a Python integer or long integer.
-The interpreter will check that the type returned is correct, and
-raises a \exception{TypeError} if this requirement isn't met.
-
-A corresponding \member{nb_index} slot was added to the C-level
-\ctype{PyNumberMethods} structure to let C extensions implement this
-protocol.  \cfunction{PyNumber_Index(\var{obj})} can be used in
-extension code to call the \method{__index__} function and retrieve
-its result.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seepep{357}{Allowing Any Object to be Used for Slicing}{PEP written 
-and implemented by Travis Oliphant.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Other Language Changes\label{other-lang}}
-
-Here are all of the changes that Python 2.5 makes to the core Python
-language.
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item The \class{dict} type has a new hook for letting subclasses
-provide a default value when a key isn't contained in the dictionary.
-When a key isn't found, the dictionary's
-\method{__missing__(\var{key})}
-method will be called.  This hook is used to implement
-the new \class{defaultdict} class in the \module{collections}
-module.  The following example defines a dictionary 
-that returns zero for any missing key:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-class zerodict (dict):
-    def __missing__ (self, key):
-        return 0
-
-d = zerodict({1:1, 2:2})
-print d[1], d[2]   # Prints 1, 2
-print d[3], d[4]   # Prints 0, 0
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\item Both 8-bit and Unicode strings have new \method{partition(sep)} 
-and \method{rpartition(sep)} methods that simplify a common use case.
-
-The \method{find(S)} method is often used to get an index which is
-then used to slice the string and obtain the pieces that are before
-and after the separator.  
-\method{partition(sep)} condenses this
-pattern into a single method call that returns a 3-tuple containing
-the substring before the separator, the separator itself, and the
-substring after the separator.  If the separator isn't found, the
-first element of the tuple is the entire string and the other two
-elements are empty.  \method{rpartition(sep)} also returns a 3-tuple
-but starts searching from the end of the string; the \samp{r} stands
-for 'reverse'.
-
-Some examples:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> ('http://www.python.org').partition('://')
-('http', '://', 'www.python.org')
->>> ('file:/usr/share/doc/index.html').partition('://')
-('file:/usr/share/doc/index.html', '', '')
->>> (u'Subject: a quick question').partition(':')
-(u'Subject', u':', u' a quick question')
->>> 'www.python.org'.rpartition('.')
-('www.python', '.', 'org')
->>> 'www.python.org'.rpartition(':')
-('', '', 'www.python.org')
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Implemented by Fredrik Lundh following a suggestion by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item The \method{startswith()} and \method{endswith()} methods
-of string types now accept tuples of strings to check for.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-def is_image_file (filename):
-    return filename.endswith(('.gif', '.jpg', '.tiff'))
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Implemented by Georg Brandl following a suggestion by Tom Lynn.)
-% RFE #1491485
-
-\item The \function{min()} and \function{max()} built-in functions
-gained a \code{key} keyword parameter analogous to the \code{key}
-argument for \method{sort()}.  This parameter supplies a function that
-takes a single argument and is called for every value in the list;
-\function{min()}/\function{max()} will return the element with the 
-smallest/largest return value from this function.
-For example, to find the longest string in a list, you can do:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-L = ['medium', 'longest', 'short']
-# Prints 'longest'
-print max(L, key=len)              
-# Prints 'short', because lexicographically 'short' has the largest value
-print max(L)         
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Contributed by Steven Bethard and Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item Two new built-in functions, \function{any()} and
-\function{all()}, evaluate whether an iterator contains any true or
-false values.  \function{any()} returns \constant{True} if any value
-returned by the iterator is true; otherwise it will return
-\constant{False}.  \function{all()} returns \constant{True} only if
-all of the values returned by the iterator evaluate as true.
-(Suggested by Guido van~Rossum, and implemented by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item The result of a class's \method{__hash__()} method can now 
-be either a long integer or a regular integer.  If a long integer is
-returned, the hash of that value is taken.  In earlier versions the
-hash value was required to be a regular integer, but in 2.5 the
-\function{id()} built-in was changed to always return non-negative
-numbers, and users often seem to use \code{id(self)} in
-\method{__hash__()} methods (though this is discouraged).
-% Bug #1536021
-
-\item ASCII is now the default encoding for modules.  It's now 
-a syntax error if a module contains string literals with 8-bit
-characters but doesn't have an encoding declaration.  In Python 2.4
-this triggered a warning, not a syntax error.  See \pep{263} 
-for how to declare a module's encoding; for example, you might add 
-a line like this near the top of the source file:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-# -*- coding: latin1 -*-
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\item A new warning, \class{UnicodeWarning}, is triggered when 
-you attempt to compare a Unicode string and an 8-bit string 
-that can't be converted to Unicode using the default ASCII encoding.  
-The result of the comparison is false:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> chr(128) == unichr(128)   # Can't convert chr(128) to Unicode
-__main__:1: UnicodeWarning: Unicode equal comparison failed 
-  to convert both arguments to Unicode - interpreting them 
-  as being unequal
-False
->>> chr(127) == unichr(127)   # chr(127) can be converted
-True
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Previously this would raise a \class{UnicodeDecodeError} exception,
-but in 2.5 this could result in puzzling problems when accessing a
-dictionary.  If you looked up \code{unichr(128)} and \code{chr(128)}
-was being used as a key, you'd get a \class{UnicodeDecodeError}
-exception.  Other changes in 2.5 resulted in this exception being
-raised instead of suppressed by the code in \file{dictobject.c} that
-implements dictionaries.
-
-Raising an exception for such a comparison is strictly correct, but
-the change might have broken code, so instead 
-\class{UnicodeWarning} was introduced.
-
-(Implemented by Marc-Andr\'e Lemburg.)
-
-\item One error that Python programmers sometimes make is forgetting
-to include an \file{__init__.py} module in a package directory.
-Debugging this mistake can be confusing, and usually requires running
-Python with the \programopt{-v} switch to log all the paths searched.
-In Python 2.5, a new \exception{ImportWarning} warning is triggered when
-an import would have picked up a directory as a package but no
-\file{__init__.py} was found.  This warning is silently ignored by default;
-provide the \programopt{-Wd} option when running the Python executable
-to display the warning message.
-(Implemented by Thomas Wouters.)
-
-\item The list of base classes in a class definition can now be empty.  
-As an example, this is now legal:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-class C():
-    pass
-\end{verbatim}
-(Implemented by Brett Cannon.)
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\subsection{Interactive Interpreter Changes\label{interactive}}
-
-In the interactive interpreter, \code{quit} and \code{exit} 
-have long been strings so that new users get a somewhat helpful message
-when they try to quit:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> quit
-'Use Ctrl-D (i.e. EOF) to exit.'
-\end{verbatim}
-
-In Python 2.5, \code{quit} and \code{exit} are now objects that still
-produce string representations of themselves, but are also callable.
-Newbies who try \code{quit()} or \code{exit()} will now exit the
-interpreter as they expect.  (Implemented by Georg Brandl.)
-
-The Python executable now accepts the standard long options 
-\longprogramopt{help} and \longprogramopt{version}; on Windows, 
-it also accepts the \programopt{/?} option for displaying a help message.
-(Implemented by Georg Brandl.)
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\subsection{Optimizations\label{opts}}
-
-Several of the optimizations were developed at the NeedForSpeed
-sprint, an event held in Reykjavik, Iceland, from May 21--28 2006.
-The sprint focused on speed enhancements to the CPython implementation
-and was funded by EWT LLC with local support from CCP Games.  Those
-optimizations added at this sprint are specially marked in the
-following list.
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item When they were introduced 
-in Python 2.4, the built-in \class{set} and \class{frozenset} types
-were built on top of Python's dictionary type.  
-In 2.5 the internal data structure has been customized for implementing sets,
-and as a result sets will use a third less memory and are somewhat faster.
-(Implemented by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item The speed of some Unicode operations, such as finding
-substrings, string splitting, and character map encoding and decoding,
-has been improved.  (Substring search and splitting improvements were
-added by Fredrik Lundh and Andrew Dalke at the NeedForSpeed
-sprint. Character maps were improved by Walter D\"orwald and
-Martin von~L\"owis.)
-% Patch 1313939, 1359618 
-
-\item The \function{long(\var{str}, \var{base})} function is now
-faster on long digit strings because fewer intermediate results are
-calculated.  The peak is for strings of around 800--1000 digits where 
-the function is 6 times faster.
-(Contributed by Alan McIntyre and committed at the NeedForSpeed sprint.)
-% Patch 1442927
-
-\item It's now illegal to mix iterating over a file 
-with \code{for line in \var{file}} and calling 
-the file object's \method{read()}/\method{readline()}/\method{readlines()}
-methods.  Iteration uses an internal buffer and the 
-\method{read*()} methods don't use that buffer.  
-Instead they would return the data following the buffer, causing the
-data to appear out of order.  Mixing iteration and these methods will
-now trigger a \exception{ValueError} from the \method{read*()} method.
-(Implemented by Thomas Wouters.)
-% Patch 1397960
-
-\item The \module{struct} module now compiles structure format 
-strings into an internal representation and caches this
-representation, yielding a 20\% speedup.  (Contributed by Bob Ippolito
-at the NeedForSpeed sprint.)
-
-\item The \module{re} module got a 1 or 2\% speedup by switching to 
-Python's allocator functions instead of the system's 
-\cfunction{malloc()} and \cfunction{free()}.
-(Contributed by Jack Diederich at the NeedForSpeed sprint.)
-
-\item The code generator's peephole optimizer now performs
-simple constant folding in expressions.  If you write something like
-\code{a = 2+3}, the code generator will do the arithmetic and produce
-code corresponding to \code{a = 5}.  (Proposed and implemented 
-by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item Function calls are now faster because code objects now keep 
-the most recently finished frame (a ``zombie frame'') in an internal
-field of the code object, reusing it the next time the code object is
-invoked.  (Original patch by Michael Hudson, modified by Armin Rigo
-and Richard Jones; committed at the NeedForSpeed sprint.)
-% Patch 876206
-
-Frame objects are also slightly smaller, which may improve cache locality
-and reduce memory usage a bit.  (Contributed by Neal Norwitz.)
-% Patch 1337051
-
-\item Python's built-in exceptions are now new-style classes, a change
-that speeds up instantiation considerably.  Exception handling in
-Python 2.5 is therefore about 30\% faster than in 2.4.
-(Contributed by Richard Jones, Georg Brandl and Sean Reifschneider at
-the NeedForSpeed sprint.)
-
-\item Importing now caches the paths tried, recording whether 
-they exist or not so that the interpreter makes fewer 
-\cfunction{open()} and \cfunction{stat()} calls on startup.
-(Contributed by Martin von~L\"owis and Georg Brandl.)
-% Patch 921466
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{New, Improved, and Removed Modules\label{modules}}
-
-The standard library received many enhancements and bug fixes in
-Python 2.5.  Here's a partial list of the most notable changes, sorted
-alphabetically by module name. Consult the \file{Misc/NEWS} file in
-the source tree for a more complete list of changes, or look through
-the SVN logs for all the details.
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item The \module{audioop} module now supports the a-LAW encoding,
-and the code for u-LAW encoding has been improved.  (Contributed by
-Lars Immisch.)
-
-\item The \module{codecs} module gained support for incremental
-codecs.  The \function{codec.lookup()} function now
-returns a \class{CodecInfo} instance instead of a tuple.
-\class{CodecInfo} instances behave like a 4-tuple to preserve backward
-compatibility but also have the attributes \member{encode},
-\member{decode}, \member{incrementalencoder}, \member{incrementaldecoder},
-\member{streamwriter}, and \member{streamreader}.  Incremental codecs 
-can receive input and produce output in multiple chunks; the output is
-the same as if the entire input was fed to the non-incremental codec.
-See the \module{codecs} module documentation for details.
-(Designed and implemented by Walter D\"orwald.)
-% Patch  1436130
-
-\item The \module{collections} module gained a new type,
-\class{defaultdict}, that subclasses the standard \class{dict}
-type.  The new type mostly behaves like a dictionary but constructs a
-default value when a key isn't present, automatically adding it to the
-dictionary for the requested key value.
-
-The first argument to \class{defaultdict}'s constructor is a factory
-function that gets called whenever a key is requested but not found.
-This factory function receives no arguments, so you can use built-in
-type constructors such as \function{list()} or \function{int()}.  For
-example, 
-you can make an index of words based on their initial letter like this:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-words = """Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
-mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
-che la diritta via era smarrita""".lower().split()
-
-index = defaultdict(list)
-
-for w in words:
-    init_letter = w[0]
-    index[init_letter].append(w)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Printing \code{index} results in the following output:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-defaultdict(<type 'list'>, {'c': ['cammin', 'che'], 'e': ['era'], 
-        'd': ['del', 'di', 'diritta'], 'm': ['mezzo', 'mi'], 
-        'l': ['la'], 'o': ['oscura'], 'n': ['nel', 'nostra'], 
-        'p': ['per'], 's': ['selva', 'smarrita'], 
-        'r': ['ritrovai'], 'u': ['una'], 'v': ['vita', 'via']}
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Contributed by Guido van~Rossum.)
-
-\item The \class{deque} double-ended queue type supplied by the
-\module{collections} module now has a \method{remove(\var{value})}
-method that removes the first occurrence of \var{value} in the queue,
-raising \exception{ValueError} if the value isn't found.
-(Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item New module: The \module{contextlib} module contains helper functions for use 
-with the new '\keyword{with}' statement.  See
-section~\ref{module-contextlib} for more about this module.
-
-\item New module: The \module{cProfile} module is a C implementation of 
-the existing \module{profile} module that has much lower overhead.
-The module's interface is the same as \module{profile}: you run
-\code{cProfile.run('main()')} to profile a function, can save profile
-data to a file, etc.  It's not yet known if the Hotshot profiler,
-which is also written in C but doesn't match the \module{profile}
-module's interface, will continue to be maintained in future versions
-of Python.  (Contributed by Armin Rigo.)
-
-Also, the \module{pstats} module for analyzing the data measured by
-the profiler now supports directing the output to any file object
-by supplying a \var{stream} argument to the \class{Stats} constructor.
-(Contributed by Skip Montanaro.)
-
-\item The \module{csv} module, which parses files in
-comma-separated value format, received several enhancements and a
-number of bugfixes.  You can now set the maximum size in bytes of a
-field by calling the \method{csv.field_size_limit(\var{new_limit})}
-function; omitting the \var{new_limit} argument will return the
-currently-set limit.  The \class{reader} class now has a
-\member{line_num} attribute that counts the number of physical lines
-read from the source; records can span multiple physical lines, so
-\member{line_num} is not the same as the number of records read.
-
-The CSV parser is now stricter about multi-line quoted
-fields. Previously, if a line ended within a quoted field without a
-terminating newline character, a newline would be inserted into the
-returned field. This behavior caused problems when reading files that
-contained carriage return characters within fields, so the code was
-changed to return the field without inserting newlines. As a
-consequence, if newlines embedded within fields are important, the
-input should be split into lines in a manner that preserves the
-newline characters.
-
-(Contributed by Skip Montanaro and Andrew McNamara.)
-
-\item The \class{datetime} class in the \module{datetime} 
-module now has a \method{strptime(\var{string}, \var{format})} 
-method for parsing date strings, contributed by Josh Spoerri.
-It uses the same format characters as \function{time.strptime()} and
-\function{time.strftime()}:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-from datetime import datetime
-
-ts = datetime.strptime('10:13:15 2006-03-07',
-                       '%H:%M:%S %Y-%m-%d')
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\item The \method{SequenceMatcher.get_matching_blocks()} method
-in the \module{difflib} module now guarantees to return a minimal list
-of blocks describing matching subsequences.  Previously, the algorithm would
-occasionally break a block of matching elements into two list entries.
-(Enhancement by Tim Peters.)
-
-\item The \module{doctest} module gained a \code{SKIP} option that
-keeps an example from being executed at all.  This is intended for
-code snippets that are usage examples intended for the reader and
-aren't actually test cases.
-
-An \var{encoding} parameter was added to the \function{testfile()}
-function and the \class{DocFileSuite} class to specify the file's
-encoding.  This makes it easier to use non-ASCII characters in 
-tests contained within a docstring.  (Contributed by Bjorn Tillenius.)
-% Patch 1080727
-
-\item The \module{email} package has been updated to version 4.0.
-% XXX need to provide some more detail here
-(Contributed by Barry Warsaw.)
-
-\item The \module{fileinput} module was made more flexible.
-Unicode filenames are now supported, and a \var{mode} parameter that
-defaults to \code{"r"} was added to the
-\function{input()} function to allow opening files in binary or
-universal-newline mode.  Another new parameter, \var{openhook},
-lets you use a function other than \function{open()} 
-to open the input files.  Once you're iterating over 
-the set of files, the \class{FileInput} object's new
-\method{fileno()} returns the file descriptor for the currently opened file.
-(Contributed by Georg Brandl.)
-
-\item In the \module{gc} module, the new \function{get_count()} function
-returns a 3-tuple containing the current collection counts for the
-three GC generations.  This is accounting information for the garbage
-collector; when these counts reach a specified threshold, a garbage
-collection sweep will be made.  The existing \function{gc.collect()}
-function now takes an optional \var{generation} argument of 0, 1, or 2
-to specify which generation to collect.
-(Contributed by Barry Warsaw.)
-
-\item The \function{nsmallest()} and 
-\function{nlargest()} functions in the \module{heapq} module 
-now support a \code{key} keyword parameter similar to the one
-provided by the \function{min()}/\function{max()} functions
-and the \method{sort()} methods.  For example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> import heapq
->>> L = ["short", 'medium', 'longest', 'longer still']
->>> heapq.nsmallest(2, L)  # Return two lowest elements, lexicographically
-['longer still', 'longest']
->>> heapq.nsmallest(2, L, key=len)   # Return two shortest elements
-['short', 'medium']
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item The \function{itertools.islice()} function now accepts
-\code{None} for the start and step arguments.  This makes it more
-compatible with the attributes of slice objects, so that you can now write
-the following:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-s = slice(5)     # Create slice object
-itertools.islice(iterable, s.start, s.stop, s.step)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item The \function{format()} function in the \module{locale} module
-has been modified and two new functions were added,
-\function{format_string()} and \function{currency()}.
-
-The \function{format()} function's \var{val} parameter could
-previously be a string as long as no more than one \%char specifier
-appeared; now the parameter must be exactly one \%char specifier with
-no surrounding text.  An optional \var{monetary} parameter was also
-added which, if \code{True}, will use the locale's rules for
-formatting currency in placing a separator between groups of three
-digits.
-
-To format strings with multiple \%char specifiers, use the new
-\function{format_string()} function that works like \function{format()}
-but also supports mixing \%char specifiers with
-arbitrary text.
-
-A new \function{currency()} function was also added that formats a
-number according to the current locale's settings.
-
-(Contributed by Georg Brandl.)
-% Patch 1180296
-
-\item The \module{mailbox} module underwent a massive rewrite to add
-the capability to modify mailboxes in addition to reading them.  A new
-set of classes that include \class{mbox}, \class{MH}, and
-\class{Maildir} are used to read mailboxes, and have an
-\method{add(\var{message})} method to add messages,
-\method{remove(\var{key})} to remove messages, and
-\method{lock()}/\method{unlock()} to lock/unlock the mailbox.  The
-following example converts a maildir-format mailbox into an mbox-format one:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-import mailbox
-
-# 'factory=None' uses email.Message.Message as the class representing
-# individual messages.
-src = mailbox.Maildir('maildir', factory=None)
-dest = mailbox.mbox('/tmp/mbox')
-
-for msg in src:
-    dest.add(msg)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Contributed by Gregory K. Johnson.  Funding was provided by Google's
-2005 Summer of Code.)
-
-\item New module: the \module{msilib} module allows creating
-Microsoft Installer \file{.msi} files and CAB files.  Some support
-for reading the \file{.msi} database is also included.
-(Contributed by Martin von~L\"owis.)
-
-\item The \module{nis} module now supports accessing domains other
-than the system default domain by supplying a \var{domain} argument to
-the \function{nis.match()} and \function{nis.maps()} functions.
-(Contributed by Ben Bell.)
-
-\item The \module{operator} module's \function{itemgetter()} 
-and \function{attrgetter()} functions now support multiple fields.  
-A call such as \code{operator.attrgetter('a', 'b')}
-will return a function 
-that retrieves the \member{a} and \member{b} attributes.  Combining 
-this new feature with the \method{sort()} method's \code{key} parameter 
-lets you easily sort lists using multiple fields.
-(Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item The \module{optparse} module was updated to version 1.5.1 of the
-Optik library.  The \class{OptionParser} class gained an
-\member{epilog} attribute, a string that will be printed after the
-help message, and a \method{destroy()} method to break reference
-cycles created by the object. (Contributed by Greg Ward.)
-
-\item The \module{os} module underwent several changes.  The
-\member{stat_float_times} variable now defaults to true, meaning that
-\function{os.stat()} will now return time values as floats.  (This
-doesn't necessarily mean that \function{os.stat()} will return times
-that are precise to fractions of a second; not all systems support
-such precision.)
-
-Constants named \member{os.SEEK_SET}, \member{os.SEEK_CUR}, and
-\member{os.SEEK_END} have been added; these are the parameters to the
-\function{os.lseek()} function.  Two new constants for locking are
-\member{os.O_SHLOCK} and \member{os.O_EXLOCK}.
-
-Two new functions, \function{wait3()} and \function{wait4()}, were
-added.  They're similar the \function{waitpid()} function which waits
-for a child process to exit and returns a tuple of the process ID and
-its exit status, but \function{wait3()} and \function{wait4()} return
-additional information.  \function{wait3()} doesn't take a process ID
-as input, so it waits for any child process to exit and returns a
-3-tuple of \var{process-id}, \var{exit-status}, \var{resource-usage}
-as returned from the \function{resource.getrusage()} function.
-\function{wait4(\var{pid})} does take a process ID.
-(Contributed by Chad J. Schroeder.)
-
-On FreeBSD, the \function{os.stat()} function now returns 
-times with nanosecond resolution, and the returned object
-now has \member{st_gen} and \member{st_birthtime}.
-The \member{st_flags} member is also available, if the platform supports it.
-(Contributed by Antti Louko and  Diego Petten\`o.)
-% (Patch 1180695, 1212117)
-
-\item The Python debugger provided by the \module{pdb} module
-can now store lists of commands to execute when a breakpoint is
-reached and execution stops.  Once breakpoint \#1 has been created,
-enter \samp{commands 1} and enter a series of commands to be executed,
-finishing the list with \samp{end}.  The command list can include
-commands that resume execution, such as \samp{continue} or
-\samp{next}.  (Contributed by Gr\'egoire Dooms.)
-% Patch 790710
-
-\item The \module{pickle} and \module{cPickle} modules no
-longer accept a return value of \code{None} from the
-\method{__reduce__()} method; the method must return a tuple of
-arguments instead.  The ability to return \code{None} was deprecated
-in Python 2.4, so this completes the removal of the feature.
-
-\item The \module{pkgutil} module, containing various utility
-functions for finding packages, was enhanced to support PEP 302's
-import hooks and now also works for packages stored in ZIP-format archives.
-(Contributed by Phillip J. Eby.)
-
-\item The pybench benchmark suite by Marc-Andr\'e~Lemburg is now
-included in the \file{Tools/pybench} directory.  The pybench suite is
-an improvement on the commonly used \file{pystone.py} program because
-pybench provides a more detailed measurement of the interpreter's
-speed.  It times particular operations such as function calls,
-tuple slicing, method lookups, and numeric operations, instead of
-performing many different operations and reducing the result to a
-single number as \file{pystone.py} does.
-
-\item The \module{pyexpat} module now uses version 2.0 of the Expat parser.
-(Contributed by Trent Mick.)
-
-\item The \class{Queue} class provided by the \module{Queue} module
-gained two new methods.  \method{join()} blocks until all items in
-the queue have been retrieved and all processing work on the items 
-have been completed.  Worker threads call the other new method, 
-\method{task_done()}, to signal that processing for an item has been
-completed.  (Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item The old \module{regex} and \module{regsub} modules, which have been 
-deprecated ever since Python 2.0, have finally been deleted.  
-Other deleted modules: \module{statcache}, \module{tzparse},
-\module{whrandom}.
-
-\item Also deleted: the \file{lib-old} directory,
-which includes ancient modules such as \module{dircmp} and
-\module{ni}, was removed.  \file{lib-old} wasn't on the default
-\code{sys.path}, so unless your programs explicitly added the directory to 
-\code{sys.path}, this removal shouldn't affect your code.
-
-\item The \module{rlcompleter} module is no longer 
-dependent on importing the \module{readline} module and
-therefore now works on non-{\UNIX} platforms.
-(Patch from Robert Kiendl.)
-% Patch #1472854
-
-\item The \module{SimpleXMLRPCServer} and \module{DocXMLRPCServer} 
-classes now have a \member{rpc_paths} attribute that constrains
-XML-RPC operations to a limited set of URL paths; the default is
-to allow only \code{'/'} and \code{'/RPC2'}.  Setting 
-\member{rpc_paths} to \code{None} or an empty tuple disables 
-this path checking.
-% Bug #1473048
-
-\item The \module{socket} module now supports \constant{AF_NETLINK}
-sockets on Linux, thanks to a patch from Philippe Biondi.  
-Netlink sockets are a Linux-specific mechanism for communications
-between a user-space process and kernel code; an introductory 
-article about them is at \url{http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7356}.
-In Python code, netlink addresses are represented as a tuple of 2 integers, 
-\code{(\var{pid}, \var{group_mask})}.
-
-Two new methods on socket objects, \method{recv_into(\var{buffer})} and
-\method{recvfrom_into(\var{buffer})}, store the received data in an object 
-that supports the buffer protocol instead of returning the data as a
-string.  This means you can put the data directly into an array or a
-memory-mapped file.
-
-Socket objects also gained \method{getfamily()}, \method{gettype()},
-and \method{getproto()} accessor methods to retrieve the family, type,
-and protocol values for the socket.
-
-\item New module: the \module{spwd} module provides functions for
-accessing the shadow password database on systems that support 
-shadow passwords.
-
-\item The \module{struct} is now faster because it 
-compiles format strings into \class{Struct} objects
-with \method{pack()} and \method{unpack()} methods.  This is similar
-to how the \module{re} module lets you create compiled regular
-expression objects.  You can still use the module-level 
-\function{pack()} and \function{unpack()} functions; they'll create 
-\class{Struct} objects and cache them.  Or you can use 
-\class{Struct} instances directly:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-s = struct.Struct('ih3s')
-
-data = s.pack(1972, 187, 'abc')
-year, number, name = s.unpack(data)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-You can also pack and unpack data to and from buffer objects directly
-using the \method{pack_into(\var{buffer}, \var{offset}, \var{v1},
-\var{v2}, ...)} and \method{unpack_from(\var{buffer}, \var{offset})}
-methods.  This lets you store data directly into an array or a
-memory-mapped file.
-
-(\class{Struct} objects were implemented by Bob Ippolito at the
-NeedForSpeed sprint.  Support for buffer objects was added by Martin
-Blais, also at the NeedForSpeed sprint.)
-
-\item The Python developers switched from CVS to Subversion during the 2.5
-development process.  Information about the exact build version is
-available as the \code{sys.subversion} variable, a 3-tuple of
-\code{(\var{interpreter-name}, \var{branch-name},
-\var{revision-range})}.  For example, at the time of writing my copy
-of 2.5 was reporting \code{('CPython', 'trunk', '45313:45315')}.
-
-This information is also available to C extensions via the 
-\cfunction{Py_GetBuildInfo()} function that returns a 
-string of build information like this:
-\code{"trunk:45355:45356M, Apr 13 2006, 07:42:19"}.  
-(Contributed by Barry Warsaw.)
-
-\item Another new function, \function{sys._current_frames()}, returns
-the current stack frames for all running threads as a dictionary
-mapping thread identifiers to the topmost stack frame currently active
-in that thread at the time the function is called.  (Contributed by
-Tim Peters.)
-
-\item The \class{TarFile} class in the \module{tarfile} module now has
-an \method{extractall()} method that extracts all members from the
-archive into the current working directory.  It's also possible to set
-a different directory as the extraction target, and to unpack only a
-subset of the archive's members.
-
-The compression used for a tarfile opened in stream mode can now be
-autodetected using the mode \code{'r|*'}.
-% patch 918101
-(Contributed by Lars Gust\"abel.)
-
-\item The \module{threading} module now lets you set the stack size
-used when new threads are created. The
-\function{stack_size(\optional{\var{size}})} function returns the
-currently configured stack size, and supplying the optional \var{size}
-parameter sets a new value.  Not all platforms support changing the
-stack size, but Windows, POSIX threading, and OS/2 all do.
-(Contributed by Andrew MacIntyre.)
-% Patch 1454481
-
-\item The \module{unicodedata} module has been updated to use version 4.1.0
-of the Unicode character database.  Version 3.2.0 is required 
-by some specifications, so it's still available as 
-\member{unicodedata.ucd_3_2_0}.
-
-\item New module: the  \module{uuid} module generates 
-universally unique identifiers (UUIDs) according to \rfc{4122}.  The
-RFC defines several different UUID versions that are generated from a
-starting string, from system properties, or purely randomly.  This
-module contains a \class{UUID} class and 
-functions named \function{uuid1()},
-\function{uuid3()}, \function{uuid4()},  and 
-\function{uuid5()} to generate different versions of UUID.  (Version 2 UUIDs 
-are not specified in \rfc{4122} and are not supported by this module.)
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> import uuid
->>> # make a UUID based on the host ID and current time
->>> uuid.uuid1()
-UUID('a8098c1a-f86e-11da-bd1a-00112444be1e')
-
->>> # make a UUID using an MD5 hash of a namespace UUID and a name
->>> uuid.uuid3(uuid.NAMESPACE_DNS, 'python.org')
-UUID('6fa459ea-ee8a-3ca4-894e-db77e160355e')
-
->>> # make a random UUID
->>> uuid.uuid4()
-UUID('16fd2706-8baf-433b-82eb-8c7fada847da')
-
->>> # make a UUID using a SHA-1 hash of a namespace UUID and a name
->>> uuid.uuid5(uuid.NAMESPACE_DNS, 'python.org')
-UUID('886313e1-3b8a-5372-9b90-0c9aee199e5d')
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Contributed by Ka-Ping Yee.)
-
-\item The \module{weakref} module's \class{WeakKeyDictionary} and
-\class{WeakValueDictionary} types gained new methods for iterating
-over the weak references contained in the dictionary. 
-\method{iterkeyrefs()} and \method{keyrefs()} methods were
-added to \class{WeakKeyDictionary}, and
-\method{itervaluerefs()} and \method{valuerefs()} were added to
-\class{WeakValueDictionary}.  (Contributed by Fred L.~Drake, Jr.)
-
-\item The \module{webbrowser} module received a number of
-enhancements.
-It's now usable as a script with \code{python -m webbrowser}, taking a
-URL as the argument; there are a number of switches 
-to control the behaviour (\programopt{-n} for a new browser window, 
-\programopt{-t} for a new tab).  New module-level functions,
-\function{open_new()} and \function{open_new_tab()}, were added 
-to support this.  The module's \function{open()} function supports an
-additional feature, an \var{autoraise} parameter that signals whether
-to raise the open window when possible. A number of additional
-browsers were added to the supported list such as Firefox, Opera,
-Konqueror, and elinks.  (Contributed by Oleg Broytmann and Georg
-Brandl.)
-% Patch #754022
-
-\item The \module{xmlrpclib} module now supports returning 
-      \class{datetime} objects for the XML-RPC date type.  Supply 
-      \code{use_datetime=True} to the \function{loads()} function
-      or the \class{Unmarshaller} class to enable this feature.
-      (Contributed by Skip Montanaro.)
-% Patch 1120353
-
-\item The \module{zipfile} module now supports the ZIP64 version of the 
-format, meaning that a .zip archive can now be larger than 4~GiB and
-can contain individual files larger than 4~GiB.  (Contributed by
-Ronald Oussoren.)
-% Patch 1446489
-
-\item The \module{zlib} module's \class{Compress} and \class{Decompress}
-objects now support a \method{copy()} method that makes a copy of the 
-object's internal state and returns a new 
-\class{Compress} or \class{Decompress} object. 
-(Contributed by Chris AtLee.)
-% Patch 1435422
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\subsection{The ctypes package\label{module-ctypes}}
-
-The \module{ctypes} package, written by Thomas Heller, has been added 
-to the standard library.  \module{ctypes} lets you call arbitrary functions 
-in shared libraries or DLLs.  Long-time users may remember the \module{dl} module, which 
-provides functions for loading shared libraries and calling functions in them.  The \module{ctypes} package is much fancier.
-
-To load a shared library or DLL, you must create an instance of the 
-\class{CDLL} class and provide the name or path of the shared library
-or DLL.  Once that's done, you can call arbitrary functions
-by accessing them as attributes of the \class{CDLL} object.  
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-import ctypes
-
-libc = ctypes.CDLL('libc.so.6')
-result = libc.printf("Line of output\n")
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Type constructors for the various C types are provided: \function{c_int},
-\function{c_float}, \function{c_double}, \function{c_char_p} (equivalent to \ctype{char *}), and so forth.  Unlike Python's types, the C versions are all mutable; you can assign to their \member{value} attribute
-to change the wrapped value.  Python integers and strings will be automatically
-converted to the corresponding C types, but for other types you 
-must call the correct type constructor.  (And I mean \emph{must}; 
-getting it wrong will often result in the interpreter crashing 
-with a segmentation fault.)
-
-You shouldn't use \function{c_char_p} with a Python string when the C function will be modifying the memory area, because Python strings are 
-supposed to be immutable; breaking this rule will cause puzzling bugs.  When you need a modifiable memory area,
-use \function{create_string_buffer()}:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-s = "this is a string"
-buf = ctypes.create_string_buffer(s)
-libc.strfry(buf)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-C functions are assumed to return integers, but you can set
-the \member{restype} attribute of the function object to 
-change this:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> libc.atof('2.71828')
--1783957616
->>> libc.atof.restype = ctypes.c_double
->>> libc.atof('2.71828')
-2.71828
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\module{ctypes} also provides a wrapper for Python's C API 
-as the \code{ctypes.pythonapi} object.  This object does \emph{not} 
-release the global interpreter lock before calling a function, because the lock must be held when calling into the interpreter's code.  
-There's a \class{py_object()} type constructor that will create a 
-\ctype{PyObject *} pointer.  A simple usage:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-import ctypes
-
-d = {}
-ctypes.pythonapi.PyObject_SetItem(ctypes.py_object(d),
-          ctypes.py_object("abc"),  ctypes.py_object(1))
-# d is now {'abc', 1}.
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Don't forget to use \class{py_object()}; if it's omitted you end 
-up with a segmentation fault.
-
-\module{ctypes} has been around for a while, but people still write 
-and distribution hand-coded extension modules because you can't rely on \module{ctypes} being present.
-Perhaps developers will begin to write 
-Python wrappers atop a library accessed through \module{ctypes} instead
-of extension modules, now that \module{ctypes} is included with core Python.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seeurl{http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/ctypes/}
-{The ctypes web page, with a tutorial, reference, and FAQ.}
-
-\seeurl{../lib/module-ctypes.html}{The documentation 
-for the \module{ctypes} module.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\subsection{The ElementTree package\label{module-etree}}
-
-A subset of Fredrik Lundh's ElementTree library for processing XML has
-been added to the standard library as \module{xml.etree}.  The
-available modules are
-\module{ElementTree}, \module{ElementPath}, and
-\module{ElementInclude} from ElementTree 1.2.6.   
-The \module{cElementTree} accelerator module is also included. 
-
-The rest of this section will provide a brief overview of using
-ElementTree.  Full documentation for ElementTree is available at
-\url{http://effbot.org/zone/element-index.htm}.
-
-ElementTree represents an XML document as a tree of element nodes.
-The text content of the document is stored as the \member{.text}
-and \member{.tail} attributes of 
-(This is one of the major differences between ElementTree and 
-the Document Object Model; in the DOM there are many different
-types of node, including \class{TextNode}.)
-
-The most commonly used parsing function is \function{parse()}, that
-takes either a string (assumed to contain a filename) or a file-like
-object and returns an \class{ElementTree} instance:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-from xml.etree import ElementTree as ET
-
-tree = ET.parse('ex-1.xml')
-
-feed = urllib.urlopen(
-          'http://planet.python.org/rss10.xml')
-tree = ET.parse(feed)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Once you have an \class{ElementTree} instance, you
-can call its \method{getroot()} method to get the root \class{Element} node.
-
-There's also an \function{XML()} function that takes a string literal
-and returns an \class{Element} node (not an \class{ElementTree}).  
-This function provides a tidy way to incorporate XML fragments,
-approaching the convenience of an XML literal:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-svg = ET.XML("""<svg width="10px" version="1.0">
-             </svg>""")
-svg.set('height', '320px')
-svg.append(elem1)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Each XML element supports some dictionary-like and some list-like
-access methods.  Dictionary-like operations are used to access attribute
-values, and list-like operations are used to access child nodes.
-
-\begin{tableii}{c|l}{code}{Operation}{Result}
-  \lineii{elem[n]}{Returns n'th child element.}
-  \lineii{elem[m:n]}{Returns list of m'th through n'th child elements.}
-  \lineii{len(elem)}{Returns number of child elements.}
-  \lineii{list(elem)}{Returns list of child elements.}
-  \lineii{elem.append(elem2)}{Adds \var{elem2} as a child.}
-  \lineii{elem.insert(index, elem2)}{Inserts \var{elem2} at the specified location.}
-  \lineii{del elem[n]}{Deletes n'th child element.}
-  \lineii{elem.keys()}{Returns list of attribute names.}
-  \lineii{elem.get(name)}{Returns value of attribute \var{name}.}
-  \lineii{elem.set(name, value)}{Sets new value for attribute \var{name}.}
-  \lineii{elem.attrib}{Retrieves the dictionary containing attributes.}
-  \lineii{del elem.attrib[name]}{Deletes attribute \var{name}.}
-\end{tableii}
-
-Comments and processing instructions are also represented as
-\class{Element} nodes.  To check if a node is a comment or processing
-instructions:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-if elem.tag is ET.Comment:
-    ...
-elif elem.tag is ET.ProcessingInstruction:
-    ...
-\end{verbatim}
-
-To generate XML output, you should call the
-\method{ElementTree.write()} method.  Like \function{parse()},
-it can take either a string or a file-like object:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-# Encoding is US-ASCII
-tree.write('output.xml')
-
-# Encoding is UTF-8
-f = open('output.xml', 'w')
-tree.write(f, encoding='utf-8')
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Caution: the default encoding used for output is ASCII.  For general
-XML work, where an element's name may contain arbitrary Unicode
-characters, ASCII isn't a very useful encoding because it will raise
-an exception if an element's name contains any characters with values
-greater than 127.  Therefore, it's best to specify a different
-encoding such as UTF-8 that can handle any Unicode character.)
-
-This section is only a partial description of the ElementTree interfaces.
-Please read the package's official documentation for more details.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seeurl{http://effbot.org/zone/element-index.htm}
-{Official documentation for ElementTree.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\subsection{The hashlib package\label{module-hashlib}}
-
-A new \module{hashlib} module, written by Gregory P. Smith, 
-has been added to replace the
-\module{md5} and \module{sha} modules.  \module{hashlib} adds support
-for additional secure hashes (SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512).
-When available, the module uses OpenSSL for fast platform optimized
-implementations of algorithms.  
-
-The old \module{md5} and \module{sha} modules still exist as wrappers
-around hashlib to preserve backwards compatibility.  The new module's
-interface is very close to that of the old modules, but not identical.
-The most significant difference is that the constructor functions
-for creating new hashing objects are named differently.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-# Old versions
-h = md5.md5()   
-h = md5.new()   
-
-# New version 
-h = hashlib.md5()
-
-# Old versions
-h = sha.sha()   
-h = sha.new()   
-
-# New version 
-h = hashlib.sha1()
-
-# Hash that weren't previously available
-h = hashlib.sha224()
-h = hashlib.sha256()
-h = hashlib.sha384()
-h = hashlib.sha512()
-
-# Alternative form
-h = hashlib.new('md5')          # Provide algorithm as a string
-\end{verbatim}
-
-Once a hash object has been created, its methods are the same as before:
-\method{update(\var{string})} hashes the specified string into the 
-current digest state, \method{digest()} and \method{hexdigest()}
-return the digest value as a binary string or a string of hex digits,
-and \method{copy()} returns a new hashing object with the same digest state.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seeurl{../lib/module-hashlib.html}{The documentation 
-for the \module{hashlib} module.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\subsection{The sqlite3 package\label{module-sqlite}}
-
-The pysqlite module (\url{http://www.pysqlite.org}), a wrapper for the
-SQLite embedded database, has been added to the standard library under
-the package name \module{sqlite3}.  
-
-SQLite is a C library that provides a lightweight disk-based database
-that doesn't require a separate server process and allows accessing
-the database using a nonstandard variant of the SQL query language.
-Some applications can use SQLite for internal data storage.  It's also
-possible to prototype an application using SQLite and then port the
-code to a larger database such as PostgreSQL or Oracle.
- 
-pysqlite was written by Gerhard H\"aring and provides a SQL interface
-compliant with the DB-API 2.0 specification described by
-\pep{249}. 
-
-If you're compiling the Python source yourself, note that the source
-tree doesn't include the SQLite code, only the wrapper module.
-You'll need to have the SQLite libraries and headers installed before
-compiling Python, and the build process will compile the module when
-the necessary headers are available.
-
-To use the module, you must first create a \class{Connection} object
-that represents the database.  Here the data will be stored in the 
-\file{/tmp/example} file:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-conn = sqlite3.connect('/tmp/example')
-\end{verbatim}
-
-You can also supply the special name \samp{:memory:} to create
-a database in RAM.
-
-Once you have a \class{Connection}, you can create a \class{Cursor} 
-object and call its \method{execute()} method to perform SQL commands:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-c = conn.cursor()
-
-# Create table
-c.execute('''create table stocks
-(date text, trans text, symbol text,
- qty real, price real)''')
-
-# Insert a row of data
-c.execute("""insert into stocks
-          values ('2006-01-05','BUY','RHAT',100,35.14)""")
-\end{verbatim}    
-
-Usually your SQL operations will need to use values from Python
-variables.  You shouldn't assemble your query using Python's string
-operations because doing so is insecure; it makes your program
-vulnerable to an SQL injection attack.  
-
-Instead, use the DB-API's parameter substitution.  Put \samp{?} as a
-placeholder wherever you want to use a value, and then provide a tuple
-of values as the second argument to the cursor's \method{execute()}
-method.  (Other database modules may use a different placeholder,
-such as \samp{\%s} or \samp{:1}.) For example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}    
-# Never do this -- insecure!
-symbol = 'IBM'
-c.execute("... where symbol = '%s'" % symbol)
-
-# Do this instead
-t = (symbol,)
-c.execute('select * from stocks where symbol=?', t)
-
-# Larger example
-for t in (('2006-03-28', 'BUY', 'IBM', 1000, 45.00),
-          ('2006-04-05', 'BUY', 'MSOFT', 1000, 72.00),
-          ('2006-04-06', 'SELL', 'IBM', 500, 53.00),
-         ):
-    c.execute('insert into stocks values (?,?,?,?,?)', t)
-\end{verbatim}
-
-To retrieve data after executing a SELECT statement, you can either 
-treat the cursor as an iterator, call the cursor's \method{fetchone()}
-method to retrieve a single matching row, 
-or call \method{fetchall()} to get a list of the matching rows.
-
-This example uses the iterator form:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
->>> c = conn.cursor()
->>> c.execute('select * from stocks order by price')
->>> for row in c:
-...    print row
-...
-(u'2006-01-05', u'BUY', u'RHAT', 100, 35.140000000000001)
-(u'2006-03-28', u'BUY', u'IBM', 1000, 45.0)
-(u'2006-04-06', u'SELL', u'IBM', 500, 53.0)
-(u'2006-04-05', u'BUY', u'MSOFT', 1000, 72.0)
->>>
-\end{verbatim}
-
-For more information about the SQL dialect supported by SQLite, see 
-\url{http://www.sqlite.org}.
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seeurl{http://www.pysqlite.org}
-{The pysqlite web page.}
-
-\seeurl{http://www.sqlite.org}
-{The SQLite web page; the documentation describes the syntax and the
-available data types for the supported SQL dialect.}
-
-\seeurl{../lib/module-sqlite3.html}{The documentation 
-for the \module{sqlite3} module.}
-
-\seepep{249}{Database API Specification 2.0}{PEP written by
-Marc-Andr\'e Lemburg.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\subsection{The wsgiref package\label{module-wsgiref}}
-
-% XXX should this be in a PEP 333 section instead?
-
-The Web Server Gateway Interface (WSGI) v1.0 defines a standard
-interface between web servers and Python web applications and is
-described in \pep{333}.  The \module{wsgiref} package is a reference
-implementation of the WSGI specification.
-
-The package includes a basic HTTP server that will run a WSGI
-application; this server is useful for debugging but isn't intended for 
-production use.  Setting up a server takes only a few lines of code:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-from wsgiref import simple_server
-
-wsgi_app = ...
-
-host = ''
-port = 8000
-httpd = simple_server.make_server(host, port, wsgi_app)
-httpd.serve_forever()
-\end{verbatim}
-
-% XXX discuss structure of WSGI applications?  
-% XXX provide an example using Django or some other framework?
-
-\begin{seealso}
-
-\seeurl{http://www.wsgi.org}{A central web site for WSGI-related resources.}
-
-\seepep{333}{Python Web Server Gateway Interface v1.0}{PEP written by
-Phillip J. Eby.}
-
-\end{seealso}
-
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{Build and C API Changes\label{build-api}}
-
-Changes to Python's build process and to the C API include:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item The Python source tree was converted from CVS to Subversion, 
-in a complex migration procedure that was supervised and flawlessly
-carried out by Martin von~L\"owis.  The procedure was developed as
-\pep{347}.
-
-\item Coverity, a company that markets a source code analysis tool
-called Prevent, provided the results of their examination of the Python
-source code.  The analysis found about 60 bugs that 
-were quickly fixed.  Many of the bugs were refcounting problems, often
-occurring in error-handling code.  See
-\url{http://scan.coverity.com} for the statistics.
-
-\item The largest change to the C API came from \pep{353},
-which modifies the interpreter to use a \ctype{Py_ssize_t} type
-definition instead of \ctype{int}.  See the earlier
-section~\ref{pep-353} for a discussion of this change.
-
-\item The design of the bytecode compiler has changed a great deal, 
-no longer generating bytecode by traversing the parse tree.  Instead
-the parse tree is converted to an abstract syntax tree (or AST), and it is 
-the abstract syntax tree that's traversed to produce the bytecode.
-
-It's possible for Python code to obtain AST objects by using the 
-\function{compile()} built-in and specifying \code{_ast.PyCF_ONLY_AST}
-as the value of the 
-\var{flags} parameter:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-from _ast import PyCF_ONLY_AST
-ast = compile("""a=0
-for i in range(10):
-    a += i
-""", "<string>", 'exec', PyCF_ONLY_AST)
-
-assignment = ast.body[0]
-for_loop = ast.body[1]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-No official documentation has been written for the AST code yet, but
-\pep{339} discusses the design.  To start learning about the code, read the
-definition of the various AST nodes in \file{Parser/Python.asdl}.  A
-Python script reads this file and generates a set of C structure
-definitions in \file{Include/Python-ast.h}.  The
-\cfunction{PyParser_ASTFromString()} and
-\cfunction{PyParser_ASTFromFile()}, defined in
-\file{Include/pythonrun.h}, take Python source as input and return the
-root of an AST representing the contents.  This AST can then be turned
-into a code object by \cfunction{PyAST_Compile()}.  For more
-information, read the source code, and then ask questions on
-python-dev.
-
-% List of names taken from Jeremy's python-dev post at 
-% http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-October/057500.html
-The AST code was developed under Jeremy Hylton's management, and
-implemented by (in alphabetical order) Brett Cannon, Nick Coghlan,
-Grant Edwards, John Ehresman, Kurt Kaiser, Neal Norwitz, Tim Peters,
-Armin Rigo, and Neil Schemenauer, plus the participants in a number of
-AST sprints at conferences such as PyCon.
- 
-\item Evan Jones's patch to obmalloc, first described in a talk
-at PyCon DC 2005, was applied.  Python 2.4 allocated small objects in
-256K-sized arenas, but never freed arenas.  With this patch, Python
-will free arenas when they're empty.  The net effect is that on some
-platforms, when you allocate many objects, Python's memory usage may
-actually drop when you delete them and the memory may be returned to
-the operating system.  (Implemented by Evan Jones, and reworked by Tim
-Peters.)
-
-Note that this change means extension modules must be more careful
-when allocating memory.  Python's API has many different
-functions for allocating memory that are grouped into families.  For
-example, \cfunction{PyMem_Malloc()}, \cfunction{PyMem_Realloc()}, and
-\cfunction{PyMem_Free()} are one family that allocates raw memory,
-while \cfunction{PyObject_Malloc()}, \cfunction{PyObject_Realloc()},
-and \cfunction{PyObject_Free()} are another family that's supposed to
-be used for creating Python objects.  
-
-Previously these different families all reduced to the platform's
-\cfunction{malloc()} and \cfunction{free()} functions.  This meant 
-it didn't matter if you got things wrong and allocated memory with the
-\cfunction{PyMem} function but freed it with the \cfunction{PyObject}
-function.  With 2.5's changes to obmalloc, these families now do different
-things and mismatches will probably result in a segfault.  You should
-carefully test your C extension modules with Python 2.5.
-
-\item The built-in set types now have an official C API.  Call
-\cfunction{PySet_New()} and \cfunction{PyFrozenSet_New()} to create a
-new set, \cfunction{PySet_Add()} and \cfunction{PySet_Discard()} to
-add and remove elements, and \cfunction{PySet_Contains} and
-\cfunction{PySet_Size} to examine the set's state.
-(Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item C code can now obtain information about the exact revision
-of the Python interpreter by calling the 
-\cfunction{Py_GetBuildInfo()} function that returns a 
-string of build information like this:
-\code{"trunk:45355:45356M, Apr 13 2006, 07:42:19"}.  
-(Contributed by Barry Warsaw.)
-
-\item Two new macros can be used to indicate C functions that are
-local to the current file so that a faster calling convention can be
-used.  \cfunction{Py_LOCAL(\var{type})} declares the function as
-returning a value of the specified \var{type} and uses a fast-calling
-qualifier. \cfunction{Py_LOCAL_INLINE(\var{type})} does the same thing
-and also requests the function be inlined.  If
-\cfunction{PY_LOCAL_AGGRESSIVE} is defined before \file{python.h} is
-included, a set of more aggressive optimizations are enabled for the
-module; you should benchmark the results to find out if these
-optimizations actually make the code faster.  (Contributed by Fredrik
-Lundh at the NeedForSpeed sprint.)
-
-\item \cfunction{PyErr_NewException(\var{name}, \var{base},
-\var{dict})} can now accept a tuple of base classes as its \var{base}
-argument.  (Contributed by Georg Brandl.)
-
-\item The \cfunction{PyErr_Warn()} function for issuing warnings
-is now deprecated in favour of \cfunction{PyErr_WarnEx(category,
-message, stacklevel)} which lets you specify the number of stack
-frames separating this function and the caller.  A \var{stacklevel} of
-1 is the function calling \cfunction{PyErr_WarnEx()}, 2 is the
-function above that, and so forth.  (Added by Neal Norwitz.)
-
-\item The CPython interpreter is still written in C, but 
-the code can now be compiled with a {\Cpp} compiler without errors.  
-(Implemented by Anthony Baxter, Martin von~L\"owis, Skip Montanaro.)
-
-\item The \cfunction{PyRange_New()} function was removed.  It was
-never documented, never used in the core code, and had dangerously lax
-error checking.  In the unlikely case that your extensions were using
-it, you can replace it by something like the following:
-\begin{verbatim}
-range = PyObject_CallFunction((PyObject*) &PyRange_Type, "lll", 
-                              start, stop, step);
-\end{verbatim}
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\subsection{Port-Specific Changes\label{ports}}
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item MacOS X (10.3 and higher): dynamic loading of modules
-now uses the \cfunction{dlopen()} function instead of MacOS-specific
-functions.
-
-\item MacOS X: a \longprogramopt{enable-universalsdk} switch was added
-to the \program{configure} script that compiles the interpreter as a
-universal binary able to run on both PowerPC and Intel processors.
-(Contributed by Ronald Oussoren.)
-
-\item Windows: \file{.dll} is no longer supported as a filename extension for 
-extension modules.  \file{.pyd} is now the only filename extension that will
-be searched for.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Porting to Python 2.5\label{porting}}
-
-This section lists previously described changes that may require
-changes to your code:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item ASCII is now the default encoding for modules.  It's now 
-a syntax error if a module contains string literals with 8-bit
-characters but doesn't have an encoding declaration.  In Python 2.4
-this triggered a warning, not a syntax error.
-
-\item Previously, the \member{gi_frame} attribute of a generator
-was always a frame object.  Because of the \pep{342} changes
-described in section~\ref{pep-342}, it's now possible
-for \member{gi_frame} to be \code{None}.
-
-\item A new warning, \class{UnicodeWarning}, is triggered when 
-you attempt to compare a Unicode string and an 8-bit string that can't
-be converted to Unicode using the default ASCII encoding.  Previously
-such comparisons would raise a \class{UnicodeDecodeError} exception.
-
-\item Library: the \module{csv} module is now stricter about multi-line quoted
-fields.  If your files contain newlines embedded within fields, the
-input should be split into lines in a manner which preserves the
-newline characters.
-
-\item Library: the \module{locale} module's 
-\function{format()} function's would previously 
-accept any string as long as no more than one \%char specifier
-appeared.  In Python 2.5, the argument must be exactly one \%char
-specifier with no surrounding text. 
-
-\item Library: The \module{pickle} and \module{cPickle} modules no
-longer accept a return value of \code{None} from the
-\method{__reduce__()} method; the method must return a tuple of
-arguments instead.  The modules also no longer accept the deprecated
-\var{bin} keyword parameter.
-
-\item Library: The \module{SimpleXMLRPCServer} and \module{DocXMLRPCServer} 
-classes now have a \member{rpc_paths} attribute that constrains
-XML-RPC operations to a limited set of URL paths; the default is
-to allow only \code{'/'} and \code{'/RPC2'}.  Setting 
-\member{rpc_paths} to \code{None} or an empty tuple disables 
-this path checking.
-
-\item C API: Many functions now use \ctype{Py_ssize_t} 
-instead of \ctype{int} to allow processing more data on 64-bit
-machines.  Extension code may need to make the same change to avoid
-warnings and to support 64-bit machines.  See the earlier
-section~\ref{pep-353} for a discussion of this change.
-
-\item C API: 
-The obmalloc changes mean that 
-you must be careful to not mix usage 
-of the \cfunction{PyMem_*()} and \cfunction{PyObject_*()}
-families of functions. Memory allocated with 
-one family's \cfunction{*_Malloc()} must be 
-freed with the corresponding family's \cfunction{*_Free()} function.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Acknowledgements \label{acks}}
-
-The author would like to thank the following people for offering
-suggestions, corrections and assistance with various drafts of this
-article: Georg Brandl, Nick Coghlan, Phillip J. Eby, Lars Gust\"abel,
-Raymond Hettinger, Ralf W. Grosse-Kunstleve, Kent Johnson, Iain Lowe,
-Martin von~L\"owis, Fredrik Lundh, Andrew McNamara, Skip Montanaro,
-Gustavo Niemeyer, Paul Prescod, James Pryor, Mike Rovner, Scott
-Weikart, Barry Warsaw, Thomas Wouters.
-
-\end{document}
diff --git a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew26.tex b/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew26.tex
deleted file mode 100644
index 5d2373f..0000000
--- a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew26.tex
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,268 +0,0 @@
-\documentclass{howto}
-\usepackage{distutils}
-% $Id$
-
-% Rules for maintenance:
-% 
-%  * Anyone can add text to this document.  Do not spend very much time
-%    on the wording of your changes, because your text will probably
-%    get rewritten to some degree.
-%
-%  * The maintainer will go through Misc/NEWS periodically and add
-%    changes; it's therefore more important to add your changes to 
-%    Misc/NEWS than to this file.
-%
-%  * This is not a complete list of every single change; completeness
-%    is the purpose of Misc/NEWS.  Some changes I consider too small
-%    or esoteric to include.  If such a change is added to the text,
-%    I'll just remove it.  (This is another reason you shouldn't spend
-%    too much time on writing your addition.)
-%
-%  * If you want to draw your new text to the attention of the
-%    maintainer, add 'XXX' to the beginning of the paragraph or
-%    section.
-%
-%  * It's OK to just add a fragmentary note about a change.  For
-%    example: "XXX Describe the transmogrify() function added to the
-%    socket module."  The maintainer will research the change and
-%    write the necessary text.
-%
-%  * You can comment out your additions if you like, but it's not
-%    necessary (especially when a final release is some months away).
-%
-%  * Credit the author of a patch or bugfix.   Just the name is
-%    sufficient; the e-mail address isn't necessary.
-%
-%  * It's helpful to add the bug/patch number as a comment:
-%
-%       % Patch 12345
-%       XXX Describe the transmogrify() function added to the socket
-%       module.
-%       (Contributed by P.Y. Developer.)
-%
-%    This saves the maintainer the effort of going through the SVN log
-%    when researching a change.
-
-\title{What's New in Python 2.6}
-\release{0.0}
-\author{A.M. Kuchling}
-\authoraddress{\email{amk@amk.ca}}
-
-\begin{document}
-\maketitle
-\tableofcontents
-
-This article explains the new features in Python 2.6.  No release date
-for Python 2.6 has been set; it will probably be released in mid 2008.
-
-% Compare with previous release in 2 - 3 sentences here.
-
-This article doesn't attempt to provide a complete specification of
-the new features, but instead provides a convenient overview.  For
-full details, you should refer to the documentation for Python 2.6.
-% add hyperlink when the documentation becomes available online.
-If you want to understand the complete implementation and design
-rationale, refer to the PEP for a particular new feature.
-
-
-%======================================================================
-
-% Large, PEP-level features and changes should be described here.
-
-% Should there be a new section here for 3k migration?
-% Or perhaps a more general section describing module changes/deprecation?
-% sets module deprecated
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Other Language Changes}
-
-Here are all of the changes that Python 2.6 makes to the core Python
-language.
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-% Bug 1569356
-\item An obscure change: when you use the the \function{locals()}
-function inside a \keyword{class} statement, the resulting dictionary
-no longer returns free variables.  (Free variables, in this case, are
-variables referred to in the \keyword{class} statement 
-that aren't attributes of the class.)
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\subsection{Optimizations}
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-% Patch 1624059
-\item Internally, a bit is now set in type objects to indicate some of
-the standard built-in types.  This speeds up checking if an object is
-a subclass of one of these types.  (Contributed by Neal Norwitz.)
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-The net result of the 2.6 optimizations is that Python 2.6 runs the
-pystone benchmark around XX\% faster than Python 2.5.
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{New, Improved, and Deprecated Modules}
-
-As usual, Python's standard library received a number of enhancements and
-bug fixes.  Here's a partial list of the most notable changes, sorted
-alphabetically by module name. Consult the
-\file{Misc/NEWS} file in the source tree for a more
-complete list of changes, or look through the CVS logs for all the
-details.
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item New data type in the \module{collections} module:
-\class{NamedTuple(\var{typename}, \var{fieldnames})} is a factory function that
-creates subclasses of the standard tuple whose fields are accessible
-by name as well as index.  For example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-var_type = collections.NamedTuple('variable', 
-             'id name type size')
-var = var_type(1, 'frequency', 'int', 4)
-
-print var[0], var.id		# Equivalent
-print var[2], var.type          # Equivalent
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item New method in the \module{curses} module:
-for a window, \method{chgat()} changes the display characters for a 
-certain number of characters on a single line.
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-# Boldface text starting at y=0,x=21 
-# and affecting the rest of the line.
-stdscr.chgat(0,21, curses.A_BOLD)  
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Contributed by Fabian Kreutz.)
-
-\item The \module{gopherlib} module has been removed.
-
-\item New function in the \module{heapq} module:
-\function{merge(iter1, iter2, ...)} 
-takes any number of iterables that return data 
-\emph{in sorted order}, 
-and 
-returns a new iterator that returns the contents of
-all the iterators, also in sorted order.  For example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-heapq.merge([1, 3, 5, 9], [2, 8, 16]) ->
-  [1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9, 16]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item New function in the \module{itertools} module:
-\function{izip_longest(iter1, iter2, ...\optional{, fillvalue})}
-makes tuples from each of the elements; if some of the iterables
-are shorter than others, the missing values 
-are set to \var{fillvalue}.  For example:
-
-\begin{verbatim}
-itertools.izip_longest([1,2,3], [1,2,3,4,5]) ->
-  [(1, 1), (2, 2), (3, 3), (None, 4), (None, 5)]
-\end{verbatim}
-
-(Contributed by Raymond Hettinger.)
-
-\item The \module{macfs} module has been removed.  This in turn
-required the \function{macostools.touched()} function to be removed
-because it depended on the \module{macfs} module.
-
-% Patch #1490190
-\item New functions in the \module{posix} module: \function{chflags()}
-and \function{lchflags()} are wrappers for the corresponding system
-calls (where they're available).  Constants for the flag values are
-defined in the \module{stat} module; some possible values include
-\constant{UF_IMMUTABLE} to signal the file may not be changed and
-\constant{UF_APPEND} to indicate that data can only be appended to the
-file.  (Contributed by M. Levinson.)
-
-\item The \module{rgbimg} module has been removed.
-
-\item The \module{smtplib} module now supports SMTP over 
-SSL thanks to the addition of the \class{SMTP_SSL} class.
-This class supports an interface identical to the existing \class{SMTP} 
-class. (Contributed by Monty Taylor.)
-
-\item The \module{test.test_support} module now contains a
-\function{EnvironmentVarGuard} context manager that 
-supports temporarily changing environment variables and 
-automatically restores them to their old values.
-(Contributed by Brett Cannon.)
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-% whole new modules get described in \subsections here
-
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{Build and C API Changes}
-
-Changes to Python's build process and to the C API include:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item Detailed changes are listed here.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\subsection{Port-Specific Changes}
-
-Platform-specific changes go here.
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Other Changes and Fixes \label{section-other}}
-
-As usual, there were a bunch of other improvements and bugfixes
-scattered throughout the source tree.  A search through the change
-logs finds there were XXX patches applied and YYY bugs fixed between
-Python 2.5 and 2.6.  Both figures are likely to be underestimates.
-
-Some of the more notable changes are:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item Details go here.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Porting to Python 2.6}
-
-This section lists previously described changes that may require
-changes to your code:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item Everything is all in the details!
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Acknowledgements \label{acks}}
-
-The author would like to thank the following people for offering
-suggestions, corrections and assistance with various drafts of this
-article: .
-
-\end{document}
diff --git a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew30.tex b/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew30.tex
deleted file mode 100644
index f52ca37..0000000
--- a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew30.tex
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,178 +0,0 @@
-\documentclass{howto}
-\usepackage{distutils}
-% $Id: whatsnew26.tex 55506 2007-05-22 07:43:29Z neal.norwitz $
-
-% Rules for maintenance:
-% 
-%  * Anyone can add text to this document.  Do not spend very much time
-%    on the wording of your changes, because your text will probably
-%    get rewritten to some degree.
-%
-%  * The maintainer will go through Misc/NEWS periodically and add
-%    changes; it's therefore more important to add your changes to 
-%    Misc/NEWS than to this file.
-%
-%  * This is not a complete list of every single change; completeness
-%    is the purpose of Misc/NEWS.  Some changes I consider too small
-%    or esoteric to include.  If such a change is added to the text,
-%    I'll just remove it.  (This is another reason you shouldn't spend
-%    too much time on writing your addition.)
-%
-%  * If you want to draw your new text to the attention of the
-%    maintainer, add 'XXX' to the beginning of the paragraph or
-%    section.
-%
-%  * It's OK to just add a fragmentary note about a change.  For
-%    example: "XXX Describe the transmogrify() function added to the
-%    socket module."  The maintainer will research the change and
-%    write the necessary text.
-%
-%  * You can comment out your additions if you like, but it's not
-%    necessary (especially when a final release is some months away).
-%
-%  * Credit the author of a patch or bugfix.   Just the name is
-%    sufficient; the e-mail address isn't necessary.
-%
-%  * It's helpful to add the bug/patch number as a comment:
-%
-%       % Patch 12345
-%       XXX Describe the transmogrify() function added to the socket
-%       module.
-%       (Contributed by P.Y. Developer.)
-%
-%    This saves the maintainer the effort of going through the SVN log
-%    when researching a change.
-
-\title{What's New in Python 3.0}
-\release{0.0}
-\author{A.M. Kuchling}
-\authoraddress{\email{amk@amk.ca}}
-
-\begin{document}
-\maketitle
-\tableofcontents
-
-This article explains the new features in Python 3.0.  No release date
-for Python 3.0 has been set; it will probably be released in mid 2008.
-
-% Compare with previous release in 2 - 3 sentences here.
-
-This article doesn't attempt to provide a complete specification of
-the new features, but instead provides a convenient overview.  For
-full details, you should refer to the documentation for Python 3.0.
-% add hyperlink when the documentation becomes available online.
-If you want to understand the complete implementation and design
-rationale, refer to the PEP for a particular new feature.
-
-
-%======================================================================
-
-% Large, PEP-level features and changes should be described here.
-
-% Should there be a new section here for 3k migration?
-% Or perhaps a more general section describing module changes/deprecation?
-% sets module deprecated
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Other Language Changes}
-
-Here are all of the changes that Python 2.6 makes to the core Python
-language.
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item Detailed changes are listed here.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\subsection{Optimizations}
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item Detailed changes are listed here.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-The net result of the 3.0 optimizations is that Python 3.0 runs the
-pystone benchmark around XX\% slower than Python 2.6.
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{New, Improved, and Deprecated Modules}
-
-As usual, Python's standard library received a number of enhancements and
-bug fixes.  Here's a partial list of the most notable changes, sorted
-alphabetically by module name. Consult the
-\file{Misc/NEWS} file in the source tree for a more
-complete list of changes, or look through the CVS logs for all the
-details.
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item Detailed changes are listed here.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-% whole new modules get described in \subsections here
-
-
-% ======================================================================
-\section{Build and C API Changes}
-
-Changes to Python's build process and to the C API include:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item Detailed changes are listed here.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\subsection{Port-Specific Changes}
-
-Platform-specific changes go here.
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Other Changes and Fixes \label{section-other}}
-
-As usual, there were a bunch of other improvements and bugfixes
-scattered throughout the source tree.  A search through the change
-logs finds there were XXX patches applied and YYY bugs fixed between
-Python 2.6 and 3.0.  Both figures are likely to be underestimates.
-
-Some of the more notable changes are:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item Details go here.
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Porting to Python 3.0}
-
-This section lists previously described changes that may require
-changes to your code:
-
-\begin{itemize}
-
-\item Everything is all in the details!
-
-\end{itemize}
-
-
-%======================================================================
-\section{Acknowledgements \label{acks}}
-
-The author would like to thank the following people for offering
-suggestions, corrections and assistance with various drafts of this
-article: .
-
-\end{document}