\title{What's New in Python 2.3}
\release{0.08}
-\author{A.M. Kuchling}
+\author{A.M.\ Kuchling}
\authoraddress{\email{amk@amk.ca}}
\begin{document}
the function will resume executing immediately after the
\keyword{yield} statement. (For complicated reasons, the
\keyword{yield} statement isn't allowed inside the \keyword{try} block
-of a \code{try...finally} statement; read \pep{255} for a full
+of a \keyword{try}...\keyword{finally} statement; read \pep{255} for a full
explanation of the interaction between \keyword{yield} and
exceptions.)
-Here's a sample usage of the \function{generate_ints} generator:
+Here's a sample usage of the \function{generate_ints()} generator:
\begin{verbatim}
>>> gen = generate_ints(3)
There's also an \function{exception()} function that records the most
recent traceback. Any of the other functions will also record the
traceback if you specify a true value for the keyword argument
-\code{exc_info}.
+\var{exc_info}.
\begin{verbatim}
def f():
Log records are usually propagated up the hierarchy, so a message
logged to \samp{server.auth} is also seen by \samp{server} and
\samp{root}, but a handler can prevent this by setting its
-\member{propagate} attribute to \code{False}.
+\member{propagate} attribute to \constant{False}.
There are more classes provided by the \module{logging} package that
can be customized. When a \class{Logger} instance is told to log a
An entry in \code{sys.path} can now be the filename of a ZIP archive.
The ZIP archive can contain any kind of files, but only files named
-\code{*.py}, \code{*.pyc}, or \code{*.pyo} can be imported. If an
-archive only contains \code{*.py} files, Python will not attempt to
-modify the archive by adding the corresponding \code{*.pyc} file, meaning
-that if a ZIP archive doesn't contain \code{*.pyc} files, importing may be
+\file{*.py}, \file{*.pyc}, or \file{*.pyo} can be imported. If an
+archive only contains \file{*.py} files, Python will not attempt to
+modify the archive by adding the corresponding \file{*.pyc} file, meaning
+that if a ZIP archive doesn't contain \file{*.pyc} files, importing may be
rather slow.
A path within the archive can also be specified to only import from a
\begin{itemize}
\item \code{sys.path_hooks} is a list of callable objects; most
-often they'll be classes. Each callable takes a string containing
-a path and either returns an importer object that will handle imports
-from this path or raises an \exception{ImportError} exception if it
-can't handle this path.
+ often they'll be classes. Each callable takes a string containing a
+ path and either returns an importer object that will handle imports
+ from this path or raises an \exception{ImportError} exception if it
+ can't handle this path.
\item \code{sys.path_importer_cache} caches importer objects for
-each path, so \code{sys.path_hooks} will only need to be traversed
-once for each path.
+ each path, so \code{sys.path_hooks} will only need to be traversed
+ once for each path.
\item \code{sys.meta_path} is a list of importer objects that will
be traversed before \code{sys.path} is checked. This list is
To simplify implementing sequences that support extended slicing,
slice objects now have a method \method{indices(\var{length})} which,
-given the length of a sequence, returns a \code{(start, stop, step)}
-tuple that can be passed directly to \function{range()}.
+given the length of a sequence, returns a \code{(\var{start},
+\var{stop}, \var{step})} tuple that can be passed directly to
+\function{range()}.
\method{indices()} handles omitted and out-of-bounds indices in a
manner consistent with regular slices (and this innocuous phrase hides
a welter of confusing details!). The method is intended to be used
\begin{itemize}
-\item The \code{in} operator now works differently for strings.
+\item The \keyword{in} operator now works differently for strings.
Previously, when evaluating \code{\var{X} in \var{Y}} where \var{X}
and \var{Y} are strings, \var{X} could only be a single character.
That's now changed; \var{X} can be a string of any length, and
\item The \function{sample(\var{population}, \var{k})} function was
added to the \module{random} module. \var{population} is a sequence
-or \code{xrange} object containing the elements of a population, and \function{sample()}
+or \class{xrange} object containing the elements of a population, and
+\function{sample()}
chooses \var{k} elements from the population without replacing chosen
elements. \var{k} can be any value up to \code{len(\var{population})}.
For example:
\constant{METH_NOARGS} flag, signalling that there are no arguments, and
the argument checking can then be removed. If compatibility with
pre-2.2 versions of Python is important, the code could use
-\code{PyArg_ParseTuple(args, "")} instead, but this will be slower
+\code{PyArg_ParseTuple(\var{args}, "")} instead, but this will be slower
than using \constant{METH_NOARGS}.
\item A new function, \cfunction{PyObject_DelItemString(\var{mapping},
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