Python (32-bit)

What's new in this version:

Core and Builtins
-----------------

- Issue #5137: Make len() correctly raise a TypeError when a __len__ method
returns a non-number type.
- Issue #5182: Removed memoryview.__str__.
- Issue #1717: Removed builtin cmp() function, dropped tp_compare
slot, the C API functions PyObject_Compare and PyUnicode_Compare and
the type definition cmpfunc. The tp_compare slot has been renamed
to tp_reserved, and is reserved for future usage.
- Issue 1242657: the __len__() and __length_hint__() calls in several tools
were suppressing all exceptions. These include list() and bytearray().
- Issue #4707: round(x, n) now returns an integer if x is an integer.
Previously it returned a float.
- Issue #4874: Most builtin decoders now reject unicode input.
- Issue #4842: Don't allow trailing 'L' when constructing an integer
from a string.
- Issue #4991: os.fdopen now raises an OSError for invalid file descriptors.
- Issue #4838: When a module is deallocated, free the memory backing the
optional module state data.
- Issue #4910: Rename nb_long slot to nb_reserved, and change its
type to (void *).
- Issue #4935: The overflow checking code in the expandtabs() method common
to str, bytes and bytearray could be optimized away by the compiler, letting
the interpreter segfault instead of raising an error.
- Issue #4910: Builtin int() function and PyNumber_Long/PyNumber_Int API
function no longer attempt to call the __long__ slot to convert an object
to an integer. Only the __int__ and __trunc__ slots are examined.
- Issue #4604: Some objects of the I/O library could still be used after
having been closed (for instance, a read() call could return some
previously buffered data). Patch by Dmitry Vasiliev.
- Issue #4705: Fix the -u ("unbuffered binary stdout and stderr") command-line
flag to work properly. Furthermore, when specifying -u, the text stdout
and stderr streams have line-by-line buffering enabled (the default being
to buffer arbitrary chunks of data).
- Issue #1180193: When importing a module from a .pyc (or .pyo) file with
an existing .py counterpart, override the co_filename attributes of all
code objects if the original filename is obsolete (which can happen if the
file has been renamed, moved, or if it is accessed through different paths).
Patch by Ziga Seilnacht and Jean-Paul Calderone.
- Issue #4580: Fix slicing of memoryviews when the item size is greater than
one byte. Also fixes the meaning of len() so that it returns the number of
items, rather than the size in bytes.
- Issue #2467: gc.DEBUG_STATS reported invalid elapsed times. Also, always
print elapsed times, not only when some objects are uncollectable /
unreachable. Original patch by Neil Schemenauer.
- Issue #4075: Use OutputDebugStringW in Py_FatalError.
- Issue #4747: When the terminal does not use utf-8, executing a script with
non-ascii characters in its name could fail with a "SyntaxError: None" error.
- Issue #4797: IOError.filename was not set when _fileio.FileIO failed to open
file with `bytes' filename on Windows.
- Issue #3680: Reference cycles created through a dict, set or deque iterator
did not get collected.
- Issue #4701: PyObject_Hash now implicitly calls PyType_Ready on types
where the tp_hash and tp_dict slots are both NULL.
- Issue #4759: fix a segfault for bytearray.translate(x, None).
- Added test case to ensure attempts to read from a file opened for writing
fail.
- Issue #3106: Speedup some comparisons (str/str and int/int).
- Issue #2173: When getting device encoding, check that return value of
nl_langinfo is not the empty string. This was causing silent build
failures on OS X.
- Issue #4597: Fixed several opcodes that weren't always propagating
exceptions.
- Issue #4589: Fixed exception handling when the __exit__ function of a
context manager returns a value that cannot be converted to a bool.
- Issue #4533: File read operation was dreadfully slow due to a slowly
growing read buffer. Fixed by using the same growth rate algorithm as
Python 2.x.
- Issue #4509: Various issues surrounding resize of bytearray objects to
which there are buffer exports (e.g. memoryview instances).
- Issue #4569: Interpreter crash when mutating a memoryview with an item size
larger than 1.

Library
-------

- Issue #4998: The memory saving effect of __slots__ had been lost on Fractions
which inherited from numbers.py which did not have __slots__ defined. The
numbers hierarchy now has its own __slots__ declarations.
- Issue #4631: Fix urlopen() result when an HTTP response uses chunked
encoding.
- Issue #5203: Fixed ctypes segfaults when passing a unicode string to a
function without argtypes (only occurs if HAVE_USABLE_WCHAR_T is false).
- Issue #3386: distutils.sysconfig.get_python_lib prefix argument was ignored
under NT and OS2. Patch by Philip Jenvey.
- Issue #3321: _multiprocessing.Connection() doesn't check handle; added checks
for *nix machines for negative handles and large int handles. Without this check
it is possible to segfault the interpreter.
- Issue #4449: AssertionError in mp_benchmarks.py, caused by an underlying issue
in sharedctypes.py.
- Issue #4890: Handle empty text search pattern in Tkinter.Text.search.
- Partial fix to issue #1731706: memory leak in Tkapp_Call when calling
from a thread different than the one that created the Tcl interpreter.
Patch by Robert Hancock.
- Issue #5132: Fixed trouble building extensions under Solaris with
--enabled-shared activated. Initial patch by Dave Peterson.
- Issue #1581476: Always use the Tcl global namespace when calling into Tcl.
- The shelve module now defaults to pickle protocol 3.
- Issue #2047: shutil.move() could believe that its destination path was
inside its source path if it began with the same letters (e.g. "src" vs.
"src.new").
- Removed isSequenceType(), isMappingType, and isNumberType() from the
operator module; use the abstract base classes instead. Also removed
the repeat() function; use mul() instead.
- Issue 5021: doctest.testfile() did not create __name__ and
collections.namedtuple() relied on __name__ being defined.
- Issue #1885: distutils. When running sdist with --formats=tar,gztar
the tar file was overriden by the gztar one.
- Issue #1672332: fix unpickling of subnormal floats, which was
producing a ValueError on some platforms.
- Issue #3881: Help Tcl to load even when started through the
unreadable local symlink to "Program Files" on Vista.
- Issue #4710: Extract directories properly in the zipfile module;
allow adding directories to a zipfile.
- Issue #5008: When a file is opened in append mode with the new IO library,
do an explicit seek to the end of file (so that e.g. tell() returns the
file size rather than 0). This is consistent with the behaviour of the
traditional 2.x file object.
- Issue #5013: Fixed a bug in FileHandler which occurred when the delay
parameter was set.
- Issue #4842: Always append a trailing 'L' when pickling longs using
pickle protocol 0. When reading, the 'L' is optional.
- Issue #3826 and #4791: The socket module now closes the underlying socket
appropriately when it is being used via socket.makefile() objects
rather than delaying the close by waiting for garbage collection to do it.
- Issue #4998: Decimal no longer subclasses from or is registered to
numbers.Real. Instead, it is registered to numbers.Number so that
isinstance(d, Number) will work.
- Issue #4867: Fixed a crash in ctypes when passing a string to a
function without defining argtypes.
- Restore Python 2.3 compatibility for decimal.py.
- Issue #3638: Remove functions from _tkinter module level that depend on
TkappObject to work with multiple threads.
- Issue #4718: Adapt the wsgiref package so that it actually works with
Python 3.x, in accordance with the `official amendments of the spec
`_. - Fractions.from_float() no longer loses precision for integers too big to
cast as floats.
- Issue #4812: add missing underscore prefix to some internal-use-only
constants in the decimal module. (Dec_0 becomes _Dec_0, etc.)
- Issue 4790: The nsmallest() and nlargest() functions in the heapq module
did unnecessary work in the common case where no key function was specified.
- Issue #4795: inspect.isgeneratorfunction() returns False instead of None when
the function is not a generator.
- Issue #4702: Throwing a DistutilsPlatformError instead of IOError in case
no MSVC compiler is found under Windows. Original patch by Philip Jenvey.
- Issue #4646: distutils was choking on empty options arg in the setup
function. Original patch by Thomas Heller.
- Issue #3767: Convert Tk object to string in tkColorChooser.
- Issue #3248: Allow placing ScrolledText in a PanedWindow.
- Issue #4739: Add pydoc help topics for symbols, so that e.g. help('@')
works as expected in the interactive environment.
- Issue #4574: reading an UTF16-encoded text file crashes if on 64-char
boundary.
- Issue #4223: inspect.getsource() will now correctly display source code
for packages loaded via zipimport (or any other conformant PEP 302
loader). Original patch by Alexander Belopolsky.
- Issue #4201: pdb can now access and display source code loaded via
zipimport (or any other conformant PEP 302 loader). Original patch by
Alexander Belopolsky.
- Issue #4197: doctests in modules loaded via zipimport (or any other PEP
302 conformant loader) will now work correctly in most cases (they
are still subject to the constraints that exist for all code running
from inside a module loaded via a PEP 302 loader and attempting to
perform IO operations based on __file__). Original patch by
Alexander Belopolsky.
- Issues #4082 and #4512: Add runpy support to zipimport in a manner that
allows backporting to maintenance branches. Original patch by
Alexander Belopolsky.
- Issue #4616: TarFile.utime(): Restore directory times on Windows.
- Issue #4021: tokenize.detect_encoding() now raises a SyntaxError when the
codec cannot be found. This is for compatibility with the builtin behavior.
- Issue #4084: Fix max, min, max_mag and min_mag Decimal methods to
give correct results in the case where one argument is a quiet NaN
and the other is a finite number that requires rounding.
- Issue #4483: _dbm module now builds on systems with gdbm & gdbm_compat
libs.
- Issue #4529: fix the parser module's validation of try-except-finally
statements.
- Issue #4458: getopt.gnu_getopt() now recognizes a single "-" as an argument,
not a malformed option.
- Added the subprocess.check_output() convenience function to get output
from a subprocess on success or raise an exception on error.
- Issue #4542: On Windows, binascii.crc32 still accepted str as binary input;
the corresponding tests now pass.
- Issue #4537: webbrowser.UnixBrowser would fail to open the browser because
it was calling the wrong open() function.
- Issue #1055234: cgi.parse_header(): Fixed parsing of header parameters to
support unusual filenames (such as those containing semi-colons) in
Content-Disposition headers.
- Issue #4861: ctypes.util.find_library(): Robustify. Fix library detection on
biarch systems. Try to rely on ldconfig only, without using objdump and gcc.
- Issue #5104: The socket module now raises OverflowError when 16-bit port and
protocol numbers are supplied outside the allowed 0-65536 range on bind()
and getservbyport().

Tools/Demos
-----------

- Issue #4704: remove use of cmp() in pybench, bump its version number to 2.1,
and make it 2.6-compatible.
- Issue #4677: add two list comprehension tests to pybench.

Build
-----

- Issue #5134: Silence compiler warnings when compiling sqlite with VC++.
- Issue #4494: Fix build with Py_NO_ENABLE_SHARED on Windows.
- Issue #4472: "configure --enable-shared" now works on OSX
- Issues #4728 and #4060: WORDS_BIGEDIAN is now correct in Universal builds.
- Issue #4389: Add icon to the uninstall entry in "add-and-remove-programs".
- Issue #4289: Remove Cancel button from AdvancedDlg.
- Issue #1656675: Register a drop handler for .py* files on Windows.
- Issue #4120: Exclude manifest from extension modules in VS2008.
- Issue #4091: Install pythonxy.dll in system32 again.
- Issue #4018: Disable "for me" installations on Vista.
- Issue #3758: Add ``patchcheck`` build target to .PHONY.
- Issue #4204: Fixed module build errors on FreeBSD 4.

C-API
-----

- Issue #4720: The format for PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords can begin with '|'.
- Issue #3632: from the gdb debugger, the 'pyo' macro can now be called when
the GIL is released, or owned by another thread.
- Issue #4122: On Windows, fix a compilation error when using the
Py_UNICODE_ISSPACE macro in an extension module.

Extension Modules
-----------------

- Issue #3745: Fix hashlib to always reject unicode and non buffer-api
supporting objects as input no matter how it was compiled (built in
implementations or external openssl library).
- Issue #4397: Fix occasional test_socket failure on OS X.
- Issue #4279: Fix build of parsermodule under Cygwin.
- Issue #4228: Pack negative values the same way as 2.4 in struct's L format.
- Issue #1040026: Fix os.times result on systems where HZ is incorrect.
- Issues #3167, #3682: Fix test_math failures for log, log10 on Solaris,
OpenBSD.
- Issue #4583: array.array would not always prohibit resizing when a buffer
has been exported, resulting in an interpreter crash when accessing the
buffer.