From: barry@zope.com (Barry A. Warsaw) To: python-announce-list@python.org Subject: RELEASED: Python 2.2b1 is out! Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 13:00:26 -0400 We've released Python 2.2b1, the first beta release of Python 2.2, for your ebullience, ecdysis, and embarcation. As this is the first beta release, we are now in feature freeze for Python 2.2. http://www.python.org/2.2/ Give it a good try, and report what breaks to the bug tracker: http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?group_id=5470 New features in this release include: - New-style classes are now always dynamic, except for built-in and extension types - A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed - getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError - Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offers a C API. - unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj) - isinstance() now accepts more objects as its first and second arguments - os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions now return "pseudo-sequences" whose elements can be accessed by name or index. The time module's localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() are pseudo-sequences too. - Many improvements to the profiler As usual, Andrew Kuchling is writing a gentle introduction to the most important changes (currently excluding type/class unification), titled "What's New in Python 2.2": http://www.amk.ca/python/2.2/ There is an introduction to the type/class unification at: http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html Thanks to everybody who contributed to this release, including all the alpha testers! brought-to-you-by-the-letter-"E"-ly y'rs, -Barry -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-announce-list