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external" href="../topic/release/">Release</a></dd> <dt class="field-odd">Created<span class="colon">:</span></dt> <dd class="field-odd">09-Nov-2011</dd> <dt class="field-even">Python-Version<span class="colon">:</span></dt> <dd class="field-even">2.8</dd> </dl> <hr class="docutils" /> <section id="contents"> <details><summary>Table of Contents</summary><ul class="simple"> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#abstract">Abstract</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#un-release-manager-and-crew">Un-release Manager and Crew</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#un-release-schedule">Un-release Schedule</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#official-pronouncement">Official pronouncement</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#upgrade-path">Upgrade path</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#and-now-for-something-completely-different">And Now For Something Completely Different</a><ul> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#strings-and-bytes">Strings and bytes</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#numbers">Numbers</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#classes">Classes</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#multiple-spellings">Multiple spellings</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#imports">Imports</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#iterators-and-views">Iterators and views</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#copyright">Copyright</a></li> </ul> </details></section> <section id="abstract"> <h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#abstract" role="doc-backlink">Abstract</a></h2> <p>This document describes the un-development and un-release schedule for Python 2.8.</p> </section> <section id="un-release-manager-and-crew"> <h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#un-release-manager-and-crew" role="doc-backlink">Un-release Manager and Crew</a></h2> <table class="docutils align-default"> <thead> <tr class="row-odd"><th class="head">Position</th> <th class="head">Name</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr class="row-even"><td>2.8 Un-release Manager</td> <td>Cardinal Biggles</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </section> <section id="un-release-schedule"> <h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#un-release-schedule" role="doc-backlink">Un-release Schedule</a></h2> <p>The current un-schedule is:</p> <ul class="simple"> <li>2.8 final Never</li> </ul> </section> <section id="official-pronouncement"> <h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#official-pronouncement" role="doc-backlink">Official pronouncement</a></h2> <p>Rule number six: there is <em>no</em> official Python 2.8 release. There never will be an official Python 2.8 release. It is an ex-release. Python 2.7 is the end of the Python 2 line of development.</p> </section> <section id="upgrade-path"> <h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#upgrade-path" role="doc-backlink">Upgrade path</a></h2> <p>The official upgrade path from Python 2.7 is to Python 3.</p> </section> <section id="and-now-for-something-completely-different"> <h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#and-now-for-something-completely-different" role="doc-backlink">And Now For Something Completely Different</a></h2> <p>In all seriousness, there are important reasons why there won’t be an official Python 2.8 release, and why you should plan to migrate instead to Python 3.</p> <p>Python is (as of this writing) more than 20 years old, and Guido and the community have learned a lot in those intervening years. Guido’s original concept for Python 3 was to make changes to the language primarily to remove the warts that had grown in the preceding versions. Python 3 was not to be a complete redesign, but instead an evolution of the language, and while maintaining full backward compatibility with Python 2 was explicitly off-the-table, neither were gratuitous changes in syntax or semantics acceptable. In most cases, Python 2 code can be translated fairly easily to Python 3, sometimes entirely mechanically by such tools as <a class="reference external" href="http://docs.python.org/library/2to3.html">2to3</a> (there’s also a non-trivial subset of the language that will run without modification on both 2.7 and 3.x).</p> <p>Because maintaining multiple versions of Python is a significant drag on the resources of the Python developers, and because the improvements to the language and libraries embodied in Python 3 are so important, it was decided to end the Python 2 lineage with Python 2.7. Thus, all new development occurs in the Python 3 line of development, and there will never be an official Python 2.8 release. Python 2.7 will however be maintained for longer than the usual period of time.</p> <p>Here are some highlights of the significant improvements in Python 3. You can read in more detail on the <a class="reference external" href="http://docs.python.org/release/3.0.1/whatsnew/3.0.html">differences</a> between Python 2 and Python 3. There are also many good guides on <a class="reference external" href="http://python3porting.com/">porting</a> from Python 2 to Python 3.</p> <section id="strings-and-bytes"> <h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#strings-and-bytes" role="doc-backlink">Strings and bytes</a></h3> <p>Python 2’s basic original strings are called 8-bit strings, and they play a dual role in Python 2 as both ASCII text and as byte sequences. While Python 2 also has a unicode string type, the fundamental ambiguity of the core string type, coupled with Python 2’s default behavior of supporting automatic coercion from 8-bit strings to unicode objects when the two are combined, often leads to <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">UnicodeError</span></code>s. Python 3’s standard string type is Unicode based, and Python 3 adds a dedicated bytes type, but critically, no automatic coercion between bytes and unicode strings is provided. The closest the language gets to implicit coercion are a few text-based APIs that assume a default encoding (usually UTF-8) if no encoding is explicitly stated. Thus, the core interpreter, its I/O libraries, module names, etc. are clear in their distinction between unicode strings and bytes. Python 3’s unicode support even extends to the filesystem, so that non-ASCII file names are natively supported.</p> <p>This string/bytes clarity is often a source of difficulty in transitioning existing code to Python 3, because many third party libraries and applications are themselves ambiguous in this distinction. Once migrated though, most <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">UnicodeError</span></code>s can be eliminated.</p> </section> <section id="numbers"> <h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#numbers" role="doc-backlink">Numbers</a></h3> <p>Python 2 has two basic integer types, a native machine-sized <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">int</span></code> type, and an arbitrary length <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">long</span></code> type. These have been merged in Python 3 into a single <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">int</span></code> type analogous to Python 2’s <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">long</span></code> type.</p> <p>In addition, integer division now produces floating point numbers for non-integer results.</p> </section> <section id="classes"> <h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#classes" role="doc-backlink">Classes</a></h3> <p>Python 2 has two core class hierarchies, often called <em>classic classes</em> and <em>new-style classes</em>. The latter allow for such things as inheriting from the builtin basic types, support descriptor based tools like the <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">property</span></code> builtin and provide a generally more sane and coherent system for dealing with multiple inheritance. Python 3 provided the opportunity to completely drop support for classic classes, so all classes in Python 3 automatically use the new-style semantics (although that’s a misnomer now). There is no need to explicitly inherit from <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">object</span></code> or set the default metatype to enable them (in fact, setting a default metatype at the module level is no longer supported - the default metatype is always <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">object</span></code>).</p> <p>The mechanism for explicitly specifying a metaclass has also changed to use a <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">metaclass</span></code> keyword argument in the class header line rather than a <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">__metaclass__</span></code> magic attribute in the class body.</p> </section> <section id="multiple-spellings"> <h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#multiple-spellings" role="doc-backlink">Multiple spellings</a></h3> <p>There are many cases in Python 2 where multiple spellings of some constructs exist, such as <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">repr()</span></code> and <em>backticks</em>, or the two inequality operators <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">!=</span></code> and <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre"><></span></code>. In all cases, Python 3 has chosen exactly one spelling and removed the other (e.g. <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">repr()</span></code> and <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">!=</span></code> were kept).</p> </section> <section id="imports"> <h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#imports" role="doc-backlink">Imports</a></h3> <p>In Python 3, implicit relative imports within packages are no longer available - only absolute imports and explicit relative imports are supported. In addition, star imports (e.g. <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">from</span> <span class="pre">x</span> <span class="pre">import</span> <span class="pre">*</span></code>) are only permitted in module level code.</p> <p>Also, some areas of the standard library have been reorganized to make the naming scheme more intuitive. Some rarely used builtins have been relocated to standard library modules.</p> </section> <section id="iterators-and-views"> <h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#iterators-and-views" role="doc-backlink">Iterators and views</a></h3> <p>Many APIs, which in Python 2 returned concrete lists, in Python 3 now return iterators or lightweight <em>views</em>.</p> </section> </section> <section id="copyright"> <h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#copyright" role="doc-backlink">Copyright</a></h2> <p>This document has been placed in the public domain.</p> </section> </section> <hr class="docutils" /> <p>Source: <a class="reference external" href="https://github.com/python/peps/blob/main/peps/pep-0404.rst">https://github.com/python/peps/blob/main/peps/pep-0404.rst</a></p> <p>Last modified: <a class="reference external" href="https://github.com/python/peps/commits/main/peps/pep-0404.rst">2023-09-09 17:39:29 GMT</a></p> </article> <nav id="pep-sidebar"> <h2>Contents</h2> <ul> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#abstract">Abstract</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#un-release-manager-and-crew">Un-release Manager and Crew</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#un-release-schedule">Un-release Schedule</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#official-pronouncement">Official pronouncement</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#upgrade-path">Upgrade path</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#and-now-for-something-completely-different">And Now For Something Completely Different</a><ul> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#strings-and-bytes">Strings and bytes</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#numbers">Numbers</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#classes">Classes</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#multiple-spellings">Multiple spellings</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#imports">Imports</a></li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#iterators-and-views">Iterators and views</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a class="reference internal" href="#copyright">Copyright</a></li> </ul> <br> <a id="source" href="https://github.com/python/peps/blob/main/peps/pep-0404.rst">Page Source (GitHub)</a> </nav> </section> <script src="../_static/colour_scheme.js"></script> <script src="../_static/wrap_tables.js"></script> <script src="../_static/sticky_banner.js"></script> </body> </html>