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authorAndrew M. Kuchling <amk@amk.ca>2002-07-12 20:24:42 (GMT)
committerAndrew M. Kuchling <amk@amk.ca>2002-07-12 20:24:42 (GMT)
commit346386fedc4ed41f1c748ff83c7dd686cefda2f5 (patch)
treeafa95f951558bbc33c31cd85ae80fed6c0da12e6 /Doc
parent3e59f72075e2ae8ac3a00b98388cc85c2332e963 (diff)
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Add more items
Use \cfunction instead of \function in various places Add contributor names
Diffstat (limited to 'Doc')
-rw-r--r--Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew23.tex59
1 files changed, 46 insertions, 13 deletions
diff --git a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew23.tex b/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew23.tex
index 5c3a1de..a854f20 100644
--- a/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew23.tex
+++ b/Doc/whatsnew/whatsnew23.tex
@@ -15,11 +15,8 @@
% Optik (or whatever it gets called)
%
-% New dependency argument to distutils.Extension
+% Bug #580462: changes to GC API
%
-% The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime.
-%
-%
%\section{Introduction \label{intro}}
@@ -440,6 +437,8 @@ u'\u4001abc'
>>>
\end{verbatim}
+(Contributed by Simon Brunning.)
+
\item The \method{startswith()} and \method{endswith()}
string methods now accept negative numbers for the start and end
parameters.
@@ -459,6 +458,13 @@ than \method{zfill()}.
'0goofy'
\end{verbatim}
+(Contributed by Walter D\"orwald.)
+
+\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 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
@@ -516,9 +522,9 @@ In 2.3, you get this:
An experimental feature added to Python 2.1 was a specialized object
allocator called pymalloc, written by Vladimir Marangozov. Pymalloc
-was intended to be faster than the system \function{malloc()} and have
+was intended to be faster than the system \cfunction{malloc()} and have
less memory overhead for typical allocation patterns of Python
-programs. The allocator uses C's \function{malloc()} function to get
+programs. The allocator uses C's \cfunction{malloc()} function to get
large pools of memory, and then fulfills smaller memory requests from
these pools.
@@ -534,14 +540,14 @@ pymalloc may expose bugs in C extensions. Authors of C extension
modules should test their code with the object allocator enabled,
because some incorrect code may cause 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
+previously been just 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
-\function{malloc()} and \function{free()} any more, and calling the
+\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 \function{PyObject_Malloc()}, it has to
-be freed using \function{PyObject_Free()}, not \function{free()}. A
+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.
@@ -687,9 +693,26 @@ An abstract binary packager class,
easier to write binary packaging commands. (Contributed by Mark
Alexander.)
+\item The Distutils \class{Extension} class now supports
+an extra constructor argument named \samp{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 \samp{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 The \module{array} module now supports arrays of Unicode
-characters using the \samp{u} format character. Arrays also
-now support using the \code{+=} assignment operator to add another array's
+characters using the \samp{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.)
@@ -718,6 +741,12 @@ in \module{xml.dom.minidom} can now generate XML output in a
particular encoding, by specifying an optional encoding argument to
the \method{toxml()} and \method{toprettyxml()} methods of DOM nodes.
+\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.
+
\end{itemize}
@@ -774,6 +803,10 @@ 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.
+
\end{itemize}
\subsection{Port-Specific Changes}