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_SetAsyncExc() 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 incompatibilities 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/?group_id=5470&atid=105470 Enjoy, -Barry