Python 2.3b2 is the second beta release of Python 2.3. There have be a
slew of fixes since the first beta, and a few new "features". Our goal
is to have a final Python 2.3 release by early August, so we encourage
lots of testing for this beta. Highlights since beta 1 include:
- IDLEfork has been merged in and now replaces the old IDLE.
- The Windows installer now ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3.
- list.index() has grown optional `start' and `end' arguments.
- A new C-only API function PyThreadState_S etAsyncExc() which can be
used to interrupt threads by sending them exceptions.
- Python programs can enter the interactive prompt at program exit by
setting the PYTHONINSPECT environment variable.
- Many new doctest improvements, including the ability to write doctest
based unit tests.
- New and improved documentation for writing new types in C that
participate in cyclic garbage collection.
There is at least one known bug: we have seen crashes on both Windows
and Linux with certain interactions between test_logging and
test_bsddb3. We intend to fix this for the next release.
For more highlights, see http://www.python.org/2.3/highlights.html
Other new stuff since Python 2.2:
- Many new and improved library modules, e.g. sets, heapq, datetime,
textwrap, optparse, logging, bsddb, bz2, tarfile,
ossaudiodev, and a new random number generator based on the highly
acclaimed Mersenne Twister algorithm (with a period of 2**19937-1!).
- New builtin enumerate(): an iterator yielding (index, item) pairs.
- Extended slices, e.g. "hello"[::-1] returns "olleh".
- Universal newlines mode for reading files (converts \r, \n and \r\n
all into \n).
- Source code encoding declarations. (PEP 263)
- Import from zip files. (PEP 273 and PEP 302)
- FutureWarning issued for "unsigned" operations on ints. (PEP 237)
- Faster list.sort() is now stable.
- Unicode filenames on Windows.
- Karatsuba long multiplication (running time O(N**1.58) instead of
O(N**2)).
If you have an important Python application, we strongly recommend that
you try it out with a beta release and report any incompatibiliti es or
other problems you may encounter, so that they can be fixed before the
final release. To report problems, use the SourceForge bug tracker:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?grou...70&atid=105470
Enjoy,
-Barry
