Introduction

During the creation process of this text, the Python development team has been hard at work producing Python 2.0, which at press time, is finally being released to the public.

The supplementary CD-ROM in the back of the book contains the three most current releases of Python: 1.5.2, 1.6, and 2.0, including the most recent Java version of the Python interpreter, JPython (a.k.a. Jython): 1.1.

1.5.2 has been a rock stable release for almost two years, and is the foundation for most of the content in the book. 1.6 brought many new changes to Python. String methods and Unicode support have been added, as well as an improved regular expression engine.

A few more significant changes have made their way into the 2.0 release, which we will address here. We also recommend the “What's New in 2.0” document found at the Python 2.0 Web site (see the Online Resources section of the Appendix for the URL).