summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/Misc
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorGuido van Rossum <guido@python.org>1994-01-26 17:24:14 (GMT)
committerGuido van Rossum <guido@python.org>1994-01-26 17:24:14 (GMT)
commita85d0531355b0185538c3b0be63d0794491c8890 (patch)
tree34ba6b448242bf26cb59c7f4594204cfe1fa1cfd /Misc
parent95f61a7ef067dbcabccc9b45ee885b0d55922c5f (diff)
downloadcpython-a85d0531355b0185538c3b0be63d0794491c8890.zip
cpython-a85d0531355b0185538c3b0be63d0794491c8890.tar.gz
cpython-a85d0531355b0185538c3b0be63d0794491c8890.tar.bz2
Initial revision
Diffstat (limited to 'Misc')
-rw-r--r--Misc/NEWS382
1 files changed, 382 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d5f4973
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -0,0 +1,382 @@
+=======================================
+==> Release 1.0.0 (26 January 1994) <==
+=======================================
+
+As is traditional, so many things have changed that I can't pretend to
+be complete in these release notes, but I'll try anyway :-)
+
+Note that the very last section is labeled "remaining bugs".
+
+
+Source organization and build process
+-------------------------------------
+
+* The sources have finally been split: instead of a single src
+subdirectory there are now separate directories Include, Parser,
+Grammar, Objects, Python and Modules. Other directories also start
+with a capital letter: Misc, Doc, Lib, Demo.
+
+* A few extensions (notably Amoeba and X support) have been moved to a
+separate subtree Extensions, which is no longer in the core
+distribution, but separately ftp'able as extensions.tar.Z. (The
+distribution contains a placeholder Ext-dummy with a description of
+the Extensions subtree as well as the most recent versions of the
+scripts used there.)
+
+* A few large specialized demos (SGI video and www) have been
+moved to a separate subdirectory Demo2, which is no longer in the core
+distribution, but separately ftp'able as demo2.tar.Z.
+
+* Parts of the standard library have been moved to subdirectories:
+there are now standard subdirectories stdwin, test, sgi and sun4.
+
+* The configuration process has radically changed: I now use GNU
+autoconf. This makes it much easier to build on new Unix flavors, as
+well as fully supporting VPATH (if your Make has it). The scripts
+Configure.py and Addmodule.sh are no longer needed. Many source files
+have been adapted in order to work with the symbols that the configure
+script generated by autoconf defines (or not); the resulting source is
+much more portable to different C compilers and operating systems,
+even non Unix systems (a Mac port was done in an afternoon). See the
+toplevel README file for a description of the new build process.
+
+* GNU readline (a slightly newer version) is now a subdirectory of the
+Python toplevel. It is still not automatically configured (being
+totally autoconf-unaware :-). One problem has been solved: typing
+Control-C to a readline prompt will now work. The distribution no
+longer contains a "super-level" directory (above the python toplevel
+directory), and dl, dl-dld and GNU dld are no longer part of the
+Python distribution (you can still ftp them from
+ftp.cwi.nl:/pub/dynload).
+
+* The DOS functions have been taken out of posixmodule.c and moved
+into a separate file dosmodule.c.
+
+* There's now a separate file version.c which contains nothing but
+the version number.
+
+* The actual main program is now contained in config.c (unless NO_MAIN
+is defined); pythonmain.c now contains a function realmain() which is
+called from config.c's main().
+
+* All files needed to use the built-in module md5 are now contained in
+the distribution. The module has been cleaned up considerably.
+
+
+Documentation
+-------------
+
+* The library manual has been split into many more small latex files,
+so it is easier to edit Doc/lib.tex file to create a custom library
+manual, describing only those modules supported on your system. (This
+is not automated though.)
+
+* A fourth manual has been added, titled "Extending and Embedding the
+Python Interpreter" (Doc/ext.tex), which collects information about
+the interpreter which was previously spread over several files in the
+misc subdirectory.
+
+* The entire documentation is now also available on-line for those who
+have a WWW browser (e.g. NCSA Mosaic). Point your browser to the URL
+"http://www.cwi.nl/~guido/Python.html".
+
+
+Syntax
+------
+
+* Strings may now be enclosed in double quotes as well as in single
+quotes. There is no difference in interpretation. The repr() of
+string objects will use double quotes if the string contains a single
+quote and no double quotes. Thanks to Amrit for these changes!
+
+* There is a new keyword 'exec'. This replaces the exec() built-in
+function. If a function contains an exec statement, local variable
+optimization is not performed for that particular function, thus
+making assignment to local variables in exec statements less
+confusing. (As a consequence, os.exec and python.exec have been
+renamed to execv.)
+
+* There is a new keyword 'lambda'. An expression of the form
+
+ lambda <parameters> : <expression>
+
+yields an anonymous function. This is really only syntactic sugar;
+you can just as well define a local function using
+
+ def some_temporary_name(<parameters>): return <expression>
+
+Lambda expressions are particularly useful in combination with map(),
+filter() and reduce(), described below. Thanks to Amrit for
+submitting this code (as well as map(), filter(), reduce() and
+xrange())!
+
+
+Built-in functions
+------------------
+
+* The built-in module containing the built-in functions is called
+__builtin__ instead of builtin.
+
+* New built-in functions map(), filter() and reduce() perform standard
+functional programming operations (though not lazily):
+
+- map(f, seq) returns a new sequence whose items are the items from
+seq with f() applied to them.
+
+- filter(f, seq) returns a subsequence of seq consisting of those
+items for which f() is true.
+
+- reduce(f, seq, initial) returns a value computed as follows:
+ acc = initial
+ for item in seq: acc = f(acc, item)
+ return acc
+
+* New function xrange() creates a "range object". Its arguments are
+the same as those of range(), and when used in a for loop a range
+objects also behaves identical. The advantage of xrange() over
+range() is that its representation (if the range contains many
+elements) is much more compact than that of range(). The disadvantage
+is that the result cannot be used to initialize a list object or for
+the "Python idiom" [RED, GREEN, BLUE] = range(3). On some modern
+architectures, benchmarks have shown that "for i in range(...): ..."
+actually executes *faster* than "for i in xrange(...): ...", but on
+memory starved machines like PCs running DOS range(100000) may be just
+too big to be represented at all...
+
+* Built-in function exec() has been replaced by the exec statement --
+see above.
+
+
+The interpreter
+---------------
+
+* Syntax errors are now not printed to stderr by the parser, but
+rather the offending line and other relevant information are packed up
+in the SyntaxError exception argument. When the main loop catches a
+SyntaxError exception it will print the error in the same format as
+previously, but at the proper position in the stack traceback.
+
+* You can now set a maximum to the number of traceback entries
+printed by assigning to sys.tracebacklimit. The default is 1000.
+
+* The version number in .pyc files has changed yet again.
+
+* It is now possible to have a .pyc file without a corresponding .py
+file. (Warning: this may break existing installations if you have an
+old .pyc file lingering around somewhere on your module search path
+without a corresponding .py file, when there is a .py file for a
+module of the same name further down the path -- the new interpreter
+will find the first .pyc file and complain about it, while the old
+interpreter would ignore it and use the .py file further down.)
+
+* The list sys.builtin_module_names is now sorted and also contains
+the names of a few hardwired built-in modules (sys, __main__ and
+__builtin__).
+
+* A module can now find its own name by accessing the global variable
+__name__. Assigning to this variable essentially renames the module
+(it should also be stored under a different key in sys.modules).
+A neat hack follows from this: a module that wants to execute a main
+program when called as a script no longer needs to compare
+sys.argv[0]; it can simply do "if __name__ == '__main__': main()".
+
+* When an object is printed by the print statement, its implementation
+of str() is used. This means that classes can define __str__(self) to
+direct how their instances are printed. This is different from
+__repr__(self), which should define an unambigous string
+representation of the instance. (If __str__() is not defined, it
+defaults to __repr__().)
+
+* Functions and code objects can now be compared meaningfully.
+
+* On systems supporting SunOS or SVR4 style shared libraries, dynamic
+loading of modules using shared libraries is automatically configured.
+Thanks to Bill Jansen and Denis Severson for contributing this change!
+
+
+Built-in objects
+----------------
+
+* File objects have acquired a new method writelines() which is the
+reverse of readlines(). (It does not actually write lines, just a
+list of strings, but the symmetry makes the choice of name OK.)
+
+
+Built-in modules
+----------------
+
+* Socket objects no longer support the avail() method. Use the select
+module instead, or use this function to replace it:
+
+ def avail(f):
+ import select
+ return f in select.select([f], [], [], 0)[0]
+
+* Initialization of stdwin is done differently. It actually modifies
+sys.argv (taking out the options the X version of stdwin recognizes)
+the first time it is imported.
+
+* A new built-in module parser provides a rudimentary interface to the
+python parser. Corresponding standard library modules token and symbol
+defines the numeric values of tokens and non-terminal symbols.
+
+* The posix module has aquired new functions setuid(), setgid(),
+execve(), and exec() has been renamed to execv().
+
+* The array module is extended with 8-byte object swaps, the 'i'
+format character, and a reverse() method. The read() and write()
+methods are renamed to fromfile() and tofile().
+
+* The rotor module has freed of portability bugs. This introduces a
+backward compatibility problem: strings encoded with the old rotor
+module can't be decoded by the new version.
+
+* For select.select(), a timeout (4th) argument of None means the same
+as leaving the timeout argument out.
+
+* Module strop (and hence standard library module string) has aquired
+a new function: rindex(). Thanks to Amrit!
+
+* Module regex defines a new function symcomp() which uses an extended
+regular expression syntax: parenthesized subexpressions may be labeled
+using the form "\(<labelname>...\)", and the group() method can return
+sub-expressions by name. Thanks to Tracy Tims for these changes!
+
+* Multiple threads are now supported on Solaris 2. Thanks to Sjoerd
+Mullender!
+
+
+Standard library modules
+------------------------
+
+* The library is now split in several subdirectories: all stuff using
+stdwin is in Lib/stdwin, all SGI specific (or SGI Indigo or GL) stuff
+is in Lib/sgi, all Sun Sparc specific stuff is in Lib/sun4, and all
+test modules are in Lib/test. The default module search path will
+include all relevant subdirectories by default.
+
+* Module os now knows about trying to import dos. It defines
+functions execl(), execle(), execlp() and execvp().
+
+* New module dospath (should be attacked by a DOS hacker though).
+
+* All modules defining classes now define __init__() constructors
+instead of init() methods. THIS IS AN INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE!
+
+* Some minor changes and bugfixes module ftplib (mostly Steve
+Majewski's suggestions); the debug() method is renamed to
+set_debuglevel().
+
+* Some new test modules (not run automatically by testall though):
+test_audioop, test_md5, test_rgbimg, test_select.
+
+* Module string now defines rindex() and rfind() in analogy of index()
+and find(). It also defines atof() and atol() (and corresponding
+exceptions) in analogy to atoi().
+
+* Added help() functions to modules profile and pdb.
+
+* The wdb debugger (now in Lib/stdwin) now shows class or instance
+variables on a double click. Thanks to Sjoerd Mullender!
+
+* The (undocumented) module lambda has gone -- you couldn't import it
+any more, and it was basically more a demo than a library module...
+
+
+Multimedia extensions
+---------------------
+
+* The optional built-in modules audioop and imageop are now standard
+parts of the interpreter. Thanks to Sjoerd Mullender and Jack Jansen
+for contributing this code!
+
+* There's a new operation in audioop: minmax().
+
+* There's a new built-in module called rgbimg which supports portable
+efficient reading of SGI RCG image files. Thanks also to Paul
+Haeberli for the original code! (Who will contribute a GIF reader?)
+
+* The module aifc is gone -- you should now always use aifc, which has
+received a facelift.
+
+* There's a new module sunau., for reading Sun (and NeXT) audio files.
+
+* There's a new module audiodev which provides a uniform interface to
+(SGI Indigo and Sun Sparc) audio hardware.
+
+* There's a new module sndhdr which recognizes various sound files by
+looking in their header and checking for various magic words.
+
+
+Optimizations
+-------------
+
+* Most optimizations below can be configured by compile-time flags.
+Thanks to Sjoerd Mullender for submitting these optimizations!
+
+* Small integers (default -1..99) are shared -- i.e. if two different
+functions compute the same value it is possible (but not
+guaranteed!!!) that they return the same *object*. Python programs
+can detect this but should *never* rely on it.
+
+* Empty tuples (which all compare equal) are shared in the same
+manner.
+
+* Tuples of size up to 20 (default) are put in separate free lists
+when deallocated.
+
+* There is a compile-time option to cache a string's hash function,
+but this appeared to have a negligeable effect, and as it costs 4
+bytes per string it is disabled by default.
+
+
+Embedding Python
+----------------
+
+* The initialization interface has been simplified somewhat. You now
+only call "initall()" to initialize the interpreter.
+
+* The previously announced renaming of externally visible identifiers
+has not been carried out. It will happen in a later release. Sorry.
+
+
+Miscellaneous bugs that have been fixed
+---------------------------------------
+
+* All known portability bugs.
+
+* Version 0.9.9 dumped core in <listobject>.sort() which has been
+fixed. Thanks to Jaap Vermeulen for fixing this and posting the fix
+on the mailing list while I was away!
+
+* Core dump on a format string ending in '%', e.g. in the expression
+'%' % None.
+
+* The array module yielded a bogus result for concatenation (a+b would
+yield a+a).
+
+* Some serious memory leaks in strop.split() and strop.splitfields().
+
+* Several problems with the nis module.
+
+* Subtle problem when copying a class method from another class
+through assignment (the method could not be called).
+
+
+Remaining bugs
+--------------
+
+* One problem with 64-bit machines remains -- since .pyc files are
+portable and use only 4 bytes to represent an integer object, 64-bit
+integer literals are silently truncated when written into a .pyc file.
+Work-around: use eval('123456789101112').
+
+* The freeze script doesn't work any more. A new and more portable
+one can probably be cooked up using tricks from Extensions/mkext.py.
+
+* The dos support hasn't been tested yet. (Really Soon Now we should
+have a PC with a working C compiler!)
+
+
+--Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam <Guido.van.Rossum@cwi.nl>
+URL: <http://www.cwi.nl/cwi/people/Guido.van.Rossum.html>