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What's New In Python 3.1

https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.1.html

Other Language Changes

  • Directories and zip archives containing a __main__.py file can now be executed directly by passing their name to the interpreter. The directory/zipfile is automatically inserted as the first entry in sys.path.
  • The int() type gained a bit_length method that returns the number of bits necessary to represent its argument in binary.
  • The fields in format() strings can now be automatically numbered.
  • The string.maketrans() function is deprecated and is replaced by new static methods, bytes.maketrans() and bytearray.maketrans(). This change solves the confusion around which types were supported by the string module. Now, str, bytes, and bytearray each have their own maketrans and translate methods with intermediate translation tables of the appropriate type.
  • The syntax of the with statement now allows multiple context managers in a single statement.
  • round(x, n) now returns an integer if x is an integer. Previously it returned a float.
  • Python now uses David Gay's algorithm for finding the shortest floating point representation that doesn't change its value.

New, Improved, and Deprecated Modules

  • Added a collections.Counter class to support convenient counting of unique items in a sequence or iterable.
  • Added a new module, tkinter.ttk for access to the Tk themed widget set. The basic idea of ttk is to separate, to the extent possible, the code implementing a widget's behavior from the code implementing its appearance.
  • The gzip.GzipFile and bz2.BZ2File classes now support the context management protocol
  • The decimal module now supports methods for creating a decimal object from a binary float.
  • The itertools module grew two new functions. The itertools.combinations_with_replacement() function is one of four for generating combinatorics including permutations and Cartesian products. The itertools.compress() function mimics its namesake from APL. Also, the existing itertools.count() function now has an optional step argument and can accept any type of counting sequence including fractions.Fraction and decimal.Decimal.
  • collections.namedtuple() now supports a keyword argument rename which lets invalid fieldnames be automatically converted to positional names in the form _0, _1, etc. This is useful when the field names are being created by an external source such as a CSV header, SQL field list, or user input.
  • The re.sub(), re.subn() and re.split() functions now accept a flags parameter.
  • The logging module now implements a simple logging.NullHandler class for applications that are not using logging but are calling library code that does. Setting-up a null handler will suppress spurious warnings such as "No handlers could be found for logger foo".
  • The runpy module which supports the -m command line switch now supports the execution of packages by looking for and executing a __main__ submodule when a package name is supplied.
  • The pdb module can now access and display source code loaded via zipimport (or any other conformant PEP 302 loader).
  • functools.partial objects can now be pickled.
  • Add pydoc help topics for symbols so that help('@') works as expected in the interactive environment.
  • The unittest module now supports skipping individual tests or classes of tests. And it supports marking a test as an expected failure, a test that is known to be broken, but shouldn't be counted as a failure on a TestResult. Also, tests for exceptions have been builtout to work with context managers using the with statement. In addition, several new assertion methods were added including assertSetEqual(), assertDictEqual(), assertDictContainsSubset(), assertListEqual(), assertTupleEqual(), assertSequenceEqual(), assertRaisesRegexp(), assertIsNone(), and assertIsNotNone().
  • The io module has three new constants for the seek() method SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, and SEEK_END.
  • sys.version_info tuple is now a named tuple.
  • The nntplib and imaplib modules now support IPv6.
  • The pickle module has been adapted for better interoperability with Python 2.x when used with protocol 2 or lower. The reorganization of the standard library changed the formal reference for many objects. For example, __builtin__.set in Python 2 is called builtins.set in Python 3. This change confounded efforts to share data between different versions of Python. But now when protocol 2 or lower is selected, the pickler will automatically use the old Python 2 names for both loading and dumping. This remapping is turned-on by default but can be disabled with the fix_imports option. An unfortunate but unavoidable side-effect of this change is that protocol 2 pickles produced by Python 3.1 won't be readable with Python 3.0. The latest pickle protocol, protocol 3, should be used when migrating data between Python 3.x implementations, as it doesn't attempt to remain compatible with Python 2.x.
  • A new module, importlib was added. It provides a complete, portable, pure Python reference implementation of the import statement and its counterpart, the __import__() function. It represents a substantial step forward in documenting and defining the actions that take place during imports.