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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
================================

*Release date: XX-XXX-200X*

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

- Issue #4868: utf-8, utf-16 and latin1 decoding are now 2x to 4x faster. The
  common cases are optimized thanks to a dedicated fast path and a moderate
  amount of loop unrolling.

- Issue #4074: Change the criteria for doing a full garbage collection (i.e.
  collecting the oldest generation) so that allocating lots of objects without
  destroying them does not show quadratic performance. Based on a proposal by
  Martin von Löwis at
  http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2008-June/080579.html.

- 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).

- The internal table, _PyLong_DigitValue, is now an array of unsigned chars
  instead of ints (reducing its size from 4 to 8 times thereby reducing
  Python's overall memory).

- 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  code objects if the original filename is obsolete (which can happen if the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 #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: None is now allowed as the first argument of
  bytearray.translate().  It was always allowed for bytes.translate().

- 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 #2183: Simplify and optimize bytecode for list, dict and set
  comprehensions. Original patch for list comprehensions by Neal Norwitz.

- 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 #3439: Add a bit_length method to 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 #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).

- Issue #4233: Changed semantic of ``_fileio.FileIO``'s ``close()``
  method on file objects with closefd=False. The file descriptor is still
  kept open but the file object behaves like a closed file. The ``FileIO``
  object also got a new readonly attribute ``closefd``.

- Issue #4569: Interpreter crash when mutating a memoryview with an item size
  larger than 1.

- Issue #4748: Lambda generators no longer return a value.

Library
-------

- Issue #3860: GzipFile and BZ2File now support the context manager protocol.

- Issue #4867: Fixed a crash in ctypes when passing a string to a
  function without defining argtypes.

- Issue #4272: Add an optional argument to the GzipFile constructor to override
  the timestamp in the gzip stream. The default value remains the current time.
  The information can be used by e.g. gunzip when decompressing. Patch by
  Jacques Frechet.

- 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 
  <http://www.wsgi.org/wsgi/Amendments_1.0>`_.

- Issue #4796: Added Decimal.from_float() and Context.create_decimal_from_float()
  to the decimal module.

- 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 #4444: Allow assertRaises() to be used as a context handler, so that
  the code under test can be written inline if more practical.

- Issue #4739: Add pydoc help topics for symbols, so that e.g. help('@')
  works as expected in the interactive environment.

- Issue #4756: zipfile.is_zipfile() now supports file-like objects. Patch by
  Gabriel Genellina.

- Issue #4574: reading an UTF16-encoded text file crashes if \r 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 #4163: textwrap module: allow word splitting on a hyphen preceded by
  a non-ASCII letter.

- 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.

- Added the subprocess.check_call_output() convenience function to get output
  from a subprocess on success or raise an exception on error.

- 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 #4384: Added logging integration with warnings module using
  captureWarnings(). This change includes a NullHandler which does nothing;
  it will be of use to library developers who want to avoid the "No handlers
  could be found for logger XXX" message which can appear if the library user
  doesn't configure logging.

- Issue #3741: DISTUTILS_USE_SDK set causes msvc9compiler.py to raise an
  exception.

- 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.

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

- Issue #4677: add two list comprehension tests to pybench.


Build
-----

- 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 #4751: hashlib now releases the GIL when hashing large buffers
  (with a hardwired threshold of 2048 bytes), allowing better parallelization
  on multi-CPU systems. Contributed by Lukas Lueg (ebfe) and Victor Stinner.

- Issue #4051: Prevent conflict of UNICODE macros in cPickle.

- Issue #4738: Each zlib object now has a separate lock, allowing to compress
  or decompress several streams at once on multi-CPU systems. Also, the GIL
  is now released when computing the CRC of a large buffer. Patch by ebfe.

- 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.


Docs
----


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