%\section{Introduction \label{intro}}
{\large This article is a draft, and is currently up to date for
-Python 2.3beta1. Please send any additions, comments or errata to the
+Python 2.3rc1. Please send any additions, comments or errata to the
author.}
This article explains the new features in Python 2.3. The tentative
-release date of Python 2.3 is currently scheduled for mid-2003.
+release date of Python 2.3 is currently scheduled for August 2003.
This article doesn't attempt to provide a complete specification of
the new features, but instead provides a convenient overview. For
full details, you should refer to the documentation for Python 2.3,
such as the \citetitle[../lib/lib.html]{Python Library Reference} and
the \citetitle[../ref/ref.html]{Python Reference Manual}. If you want
-to understand the complete implementation and design rationale for a
-change, refer to the PEP for a particular new feature.
+to understand the complete implementation and design rationale,
+refer to the PEP for a particular new feature.
%======================================================================
\end{verbatim}
The union and intersection of sets can be computed with the
-\method{union()} and \method{intersection()} methods or
-alternatively using the bitwise operators \code{\&} and \code{|}.
+\method{union()} and \method{intersection()} methods; an alternative
+notation uses the bitwise operators \code{\&} and \code{|}.
Mutable sets also have in-place versions of these methods,
\method{union_update()} and \method{intersection_update()}.
It's also possible to take the symmetric difference of two sets. This
is the set of all elements in the union that aren't in the
-intersection. An alternative way of expressing the symmetric
-difference is that it contains all elements that are in exactly one
+intersection. Another way of putting it is that the symmetric
+difference contains all elements that are in exactly one
set. Again, there's an alternative notation (\code{\^}), and an
in-place version with the ungainly name
\method{symmetric_difference_update()}.
\end{verbatim}
Without such an encoding declaration, the default encoding used is
-7-bit ASCII. Executing or importing modules containing string
-literals with 8-bit characters and no encoding declaration will result
+7-bit ASCII. Executing or importing modules that contain string
+literals with 8-bit characters and have no encoding declaration will result
in a \exception{DeprecationWarning} being signalled by Python 2.3; in
2.4 this will be a syntax error.
The three major operating systems used today are Microsoft Windows,
Apple's Macintosh OS, and the various \UNIX\ derivatives. A minor
-irritation is that these three platforms all use different characters
+irritation of cross-platform work
+is that these three platforms all use different characters
to mark the ends of lines in text files. \UNIX\ uses the linefeed
-(ASCII character 10), while MacOS uses the carriage return (ASCII
-character 13), and Windows uses a two-character sequence containing a
+(ASCII character 10), MacOS uses the carriage return (ASCII
+character 13), and Windows uses a two-character sequence of a
carriage return plus a newline.
Python's file objects can now support end of line conventions other
that Python modules can be shared between all three operating systems
without needing to convert the line-endings.
-This feature can be disabled at compile-time by specifying
-\longprogramopt{without-universal-newlines} when running Python's
+This feature can be disabled when compiling Python by specifying
+the \longprogramopt{without-universal-newlines} switch when running Python's
\program{configure} script.
\begin{seealso}
that will return \code{(0, \var{thing}[0])}, \code{(1,
\var{thing}[1])}, \code{(2, \var{thing}[2])}, and so forth.
-Fairly often you'll see code to change every element of a list that
-looks like this:
+A common idiom to change every element of a list looks like this:
\begin{verbatim}
for i in range(len(L)):
As usual, there were a bunch of other improvements and bugfixes
scattered throughout the source tree. A search through the CVS change
-logs finds there were 121 patches applied and 103 bugs fixed between
+logs finds there were 523 patches applied and 514 bugs fixed between
Python 2.2 and 2.3. Both figures are likely to be underestimates.
Some of the more notable changes are:
projects / python / commitdiff