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Python News
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(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)

What's New in Python 3.1 alpha 0
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*Release date: XX-XXX-2008*

Core and Builtins
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- Issue #4445: Replace "sizeof(PyBytesObject)" with
  "offsetof(PyBytesObject, ob_sval) + 1" when allocating memory for
  bytes instances.  On a typical machine this saves 3 bytes of memory
  (on average) per allocation of a bytes instance.

- 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).


Library
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- 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.


Build
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Docs
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**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**
