Python Polars 0.20.6-rc.1

🏆 Highlights

• new implementation for String/Binary type. (#13748)

🚀 Performance improvements

• speedup boolean filter (#13905)
• speedup binview filter (#13902)
• allow python threads in read_ functions (#13886)
• improve binview filter (#13878)
• apply string view GC more conservatively (#13850)
• add optimized BinaryViewArray comparison kernels (#13839)
• lazy cache binview bytes len (#13830)
• fast-path for eager int_range (#13811)
• Optimize arr.sum for inner non-null bool (#13800)

✨ Enhancements

• register 'set_sorted' as batch/elementwise (#13896)
• move Enum/Categorical categories to binview (#13882)
• Add ignore_nulls for list.join (#13701)
• Add ignore_nulls for pl.concat_str (#13877)
• Align int_range and int_ranges signatures (#13867)
• fix parquet for binview (#13873)
• support mmap for binview in OOC (#13872)
• implement ffi for binview (#13871)
• Support zero fill null strategy for binary and string columns (#13869)
• allow df.rename and lf.rename to take a renaming function (#13708)
• Implement/fix unary minus operator -pl.col(...) (#13776)
• extend SQL EXTRACT with "century", "millennium", and "timezone" parts (#13634)
• fix binview ipc format (#13842)
• add SQL support for numeric and/or decimal types (#13739)
• improve panic message (#13836)
• Expressify str.zfill (#13790)
• new implementation for String/Binary type. (#13748)
• Add typing to hvplot plot namespace (#13813)
• Add nulls_last for Series.sort (#13794)
• allow ftp URLs, improve URL check (#13781)

🐞 Bug fixes

• prune emtpy chunks before set operations (#13898)
• treat null columns as zero in sum_horizontal (#13880)
• include null count in rolling window validity with min_periods (#13863)
• Fix interchange protocol for new String type (#13881)
• parquet hybrid RLE encoding did not always align to bit width (#13883)
• Add ignore_nulls for list.join (#13701)
• .dt.time() was panicking for datetimes prior to unix epoch (#13812)
• allow list creation of decimals (#13851)
• ensure kwargs filter behaviour matches docstring (expect equivalence with eq) (#13864)
• Implement abs for Decimal, error on Date/Time/Datetime (#13821)
• rolling nested groups deadlock (#13835)
• gather_every should work on agg context (#13810)
• Fix segfault of is_in (#13814)
• don't panic on full null qcut (#13815)
• validate operator arithmetic with None, fix Series edge-case (#13780)

📖 Documentation

• Mention deltalake write support in README (#13890)
• use proper argument names in the code blocks of api.rst (#13866)

🛠️ Other improvements

• move filter to polars-compute (#13897)
• Revert pandas warning filter (#13893)
• Make functions in expr/general non-anonymous (#13832)
• Fix doctests (#13831)
• Refactor Python release workflow (#13807)

Thank you to all our contributors for making this release possible!
@ByteNybbler, @MarcoGorelli, @Wainberg, @alexander-beedie, @dependabot, @dependabot[bot], @edavisau, @flisky, @ion-elgreco, @itamarst, @kstoneriv3, @mcrumiller, @mkucijan, @nameexhaustion, @orlp, @reswqa, @ritchie46, @stinodego, @taki-mekhalfa and @thomasaarholt