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This article explains the new features in Python 2.3. Python 2.3 was released on July
29, 2003.
The main themes for Python 2.3 are polishing some of the features added in 2.2, adding
various small but useful enhancements to the core language, and expanding the standard
library. The new object model introduced in the previous version has benefited from 18
months of bugfixes and from optimization efforts that have improved the performance of
new-style classes. A few new built-in functions have been added such as sum() and enumerate(). The in operator can now be used for substring searches (e.g. "ab"
in "abc" returns True).
Some of the many new library features include Boolean, set, heap, and date/time data
types, the ability to import modules from ZIP-format archives, metadata support for the
long-awaited Python catalog, an updated version of IDLE, and modules for logging messages,
wrapping text, parsing CSV files, processing command-line options, using BerkeleyDB
databases... the list of new and enhanced modules is lengthy.
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 Python Library Reference and the Python
Reference Manual. If you want to understand the complete implementation and
design rationale, refer to the PEP for a particular new feature.
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