Doc/whatsnew/3.7.rst

****************************
  What's New In Python 3.7
****************************

:Release: |release|
:Date: |today|

.. Rules for maintenance:

   * Anyone can add text to this document.  Do not spend very much time
   on the wording of your changes, because your text will probably
   get rewritten to some degree.

   * The maintainer will go through Misc/NEWS periodically and add
   changes; it's therefore more important to add your changes to
   Misc/NEWS than to this file.

   * This is not a complete list of every single change; completeness
   is the purpose of Misc/NEWS.  Some changes I consider too small
   or esoteric to include.  If such a change is added to the text,
   I'll just remove it.  (This is another reason you shouldn't spend
   too much time on writing your addition.)

   * If you want to draw your new text to the attention of the
   maintainer, add 'XXX' to the beginning of the paragraph or
   section.

   * It's OK to just add a fragmentary note about a change.  For
   example: "XXX Describe the transmogrify() function added to the
   socket module."  The maintainer will research the change and
   write the necessary text.

   * You can comment out your additions if you like, but it's not
   necessary (especially when a final release is some months away).

   * Credit the author of a patch or bugfix.   Just the name is
   sufficient; the e-mail address isn't necessary.

   * It's helpful to add the bug/patch number as a comment:

   XXX Describe the transmogrify() function added to the socket
   module.
   (Contributed by P.Y. Developer in :issue:`12345`.)

   This saves the maintainer the effort of going through the Mercurial log
   when researching a change.

This article explains the new features in Python 3.7, compared to 3.6.

For full details, see the :ref:`changelog <changelog>`.

.. note::

   Prerelease users should be aware that this document is currently in draft
   form. It will be updated substantially as Python 3.7 moves towards release,
   so it's worth checking back even after reading earlier versions.


Summary -- Release highlights
=============================

.. This section singles out the most important changes in Python 3.7.
   Brevity is key.


.. PEP-sized items next.



New Features
============

.. _whatsnew37-pep538:

PEP 538: Legacy C Locale Coercion
---------------------------------

An ongoing challenge within the Python 3 series has been determining a sensible
default strategy for handling the "7-bit ASCII" text encoding assumption
currently implied by the use of the default C locale on non-Windows platforms.

:pep:`538` updates the default interpreter command line interface to
automatically coerce that locale to an available UTF-8 based locale as
described in the documentation of the new :envvar:`PYTHONCOERCECLOCALE`
environment variable. Automatically setting ``LC_CTYPE`` this way means that
both the core interpreter and locale-aware C extensions (such as
:mod:`readline`) will assume the use of UTF-8 as the default text encoding,
rather than ASCII.

The platform support definition in :pep:`11` has also been updated to limit
full text handling support to suitably configured non-ASCII based locales.

As part of this change, the default error handler for ``stdin`` and ``stdout``
is now ``surrogateescape`` (rather than ``strict``) when using any of the
defined coercion target locales (currently ``C.UTF-8``, ``C.utf8``, and
``UTF-8``). The default error handler for ``stderr`` continues to be
``backslashreplace``, regardless of locale.

Locale coercion is silent by default, but to assist in debugging potentially
locale related integration problems, explicit warnings (emitted directly on
``stderr`` can be requested by setting ``PYTHONCOERCECLOCALE=warn``. This
setting will also cause the Python runtime to emit a warning if the legacy C
locale remains active when the core interpreter is initialized.

.. seealso::

    :pep:`538` -- Coercing the legacy C locale to a UTF-8 based locale
       PEP written and implemented by Nick Coghlan.

.. _whatsnew37-pep553:

PEP 553: Built-in breakpoint()
------------------------------

:pep:`553` describes a new built-in called ``breakpoint()`` which makes it
easy and consistent to enter the Python debugger.  Built-in ``breakpoint()``
calls ``sys.breakpointhook()``.  By default, this latter imports ``pdb`` and
then calls ``pdb.set_trace()``, but by binding ``sys.breakpointhook()`` to the
function of your choosing, ``breakpoint()`` can enter any debugger.  Or, the
environment variable :envvar:`PYTHONBREAKPOINT` can be set to the callable of
your debugger of choice.  Set ``PYTHONBREAKPOINT=0`` to completely disable
built-in ``breakpoint()``.

.. seealso::

    :pep:`553` -- Built-in breakpoint()
      PEP written and implemented by Barry Warsaw


.. _whatsnew37-pep539:

PEP 539: A New C-API for Thread-Local Storage in CPython
--------------------------------------------------------

While Python provides a C API for thread-local storage support; the existing
:ref:`Thread Local Storage (TLS) API <thread-local-storage-api>` has used
:c:type:`int` to represent TLS keys across all platforms.  This has not
generally been a problem for officially-support platforms, but that is neither
POSIX-compliant, nor portable in any practical sense.

:pep:`539` changes this by providing a new :ref:`Thread Specific Storage (TSS)
API <thread-specific-storage-api>` to CPython which supersedes use of the
existing TLS API within the CPython interpreter, while deprecating the existing
API.  The TSS API uses a new type :c:type:`Py_tss_t` instead of :c:type:`int`
to represent TSS keys--an opaque type the definition of which may depend on
the underlying TLS implementation.  Therefore, this will allow to build CPython
on platforms where the native TLS key is defined in a way that cannot be safely
cast to :c:type:`int`.

Note that on platforms where the native TLS key is defined in a way that cannot
be safely cast to :c:type:`int`, all functions of the existing TLS API will be
no-op and immediately return failure. This indicates clearly that the old API
is not supported on platforms where it cannot be used reliably, and that no
effort will be made to add such support.

.. seealso::

    :pep:`539` -- A New C-API for Thread-Local Storage in CPython
       PEP written by Erik M. Bray; implementation by Masayuki Yamamoto.


Other Language Changes
======================

* More than 255 arguments can now be passed to a function, and a function can
  now have more than 255 parameters. (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in
  :issue:`12844` and :issue:`18896`.)

* :meth:`bytes.fromhex` and :meth:`bytearray.fromhex` now ignore all ASCII
  whitespace, not only spaces. (Contributed by Robert Xiao in :issue:`28927`.)

* :exc:`ImportError` now displays module name and module ``__file__`` path when
  ``from ... import ...`` fails. (Contributed by Matthias Bussonnier in :issue:`29546`.)

* Circular imports involving absolute imports with binding a submodule to
  a name are now supported.
  (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`30024`.)

* ``object.__format__(x, '')`` is now equivalent to ``str(x)`` rather than
  ``format(str(self), '')``.
  (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`28974`.)


New Modules
===========

* None yet.


Improved Modules
================


argparse
--------

The :meth:`~argparse.ArgumentParser.parse_intermixed_args` supports letting
the user intermix options and positional arguments on the command line,
as is possible in many unix commands.  It supports most but not all
argparse features.  (Contributed by paul.j3 in :issue:`14191`.)


binascii
--------

The :func:`~binascii.b2a_uu` function now accepts an optional *backtick*
keyword argument.  When it's true, zeros are represented by ``'`'``
instead of spaces.  (Contributed by Xiang Zhang in :issue:`30103`.)


calendar
--------

The class :class:`~calendar.HTMLCalendar` has new class attributes which ease
the customisation of the CSS classes in the produced HTML calendar.
(Contributed by Oz Tiram in :issue:`30095`.)

cgi
---

:func:`~cgi.parse_multipart` returns the same results as
:class:`~FieldStorage` : for non-file fields, the value associated to a key
is a list of strings, not bytes.
(Contributed by Pierre Quentel in :issue:`29979`.)

contextlib
----------

:func:`contextlib.asynccontextmanager` has been added. (Contributed by
Jelle Zijlstra in :issue:`29679`.)

dis
---

The :func:`~dis.dis` function now is able to
disassemble nested code objects (the code of comprehensions, generator
expressions and nested functions, and the code used for building nested
classes).  (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`11822`.)

distutils
---------

README.rst is now included in the list of distutils standard READMEs and
therefore included in source distributions.
(Contributed by Ryan Gonzalez in :issue:`11913`.)

http.server
-----------

:class:`~http.server.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler` supports the HTTP
If-Modified-Since header. The server returns the 304 response status if the
target file was not modified after the time specified in the header.
(Contributed by Pierre Quentel in :issue:`29654`.)

Add the parameter ``directory`` to the :class:`~http.server.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler`
and the ``--directory`` to the command line of the module :mod:`~http.server`.
With this parameter, the server serves the specified directory, by default it uses the current working directory.
(Contributed by Stéphane Wirtel and Julien Palard in :issue:`28707`.)

locale
------

Added another argument *monetary* in :meth:`format_string` of :mod:`locale`.
If *monetary* is true, the conversion uses monetary thousands separator and
grouping strings. (Contributed by Garvit in :issue:`10379`.)

math
----

New :func:`~math.remainder` function, implementing the IEEE 754-style remainder
operation. (Contributed by Mark Dickinson in :issue:`29962`.)

os
--

Added support for :class:`bytes` paths in :func:`~os.fwalk`. (Contributed by
Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`28682`.)

Added support for :ref:`file descriptors <path_fd>` in :func:`~os.scandir`
on Unix.  (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`25996`.)

New function :func:`os.register_at_fork` allows registering Python callbacks
to be executed on a process fork.  (Contributed by Antoine Pitrou in
:issue:`16500`.)

pdb
---

:func:`~pdb.set_trace` now takes an optional ``header`` keyword-only
argument.  If given, this is printed to the console just before debugging
begins.

string
------

:class:`string.Template` now lets you to optionally modify the regular
expression pattern for braced placeholders and non-braced placeholders
separately.  (Contributed by Barry Warsaw in :issue:`1198569`.)

unittest.mock
-------------

The :const:`~unittest.mock.sentinel` attributes now preserve their identity
when they are :mod:`copied <copy>` or :mod:`pickled <pickle>`. (Contributed by
Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`20804`.)

xmlrpc.server
-------------

:meth:`register_function` of :class:`xmlrpc.server.SimpleXMLRPCDispatcher` and
its subclasses can be used as a decorator. (Contributed by Xiang Zhang in
:issue:`7769`.)

unicodedata
-----------

The internal :mod:`unicodedata` database has been upgraded to use `Unicode 10
<http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode10.0.0/>`_. (Contributed by Benjamin
Peterson.)

urllib.parse
------------

:func:`urllib.parse.quote` has been updated from RFC 2396 to RFC 3986,
adding `~` to the set of characters that is never quoted by default.
(Contributed by Christian Theune and Ratnadeep Debnath in :issue:`16285`.)

uu
--

Function :func:`~uu.encode` now accepts an optional *backtick*
keyword argument.  When it's true, zeros are represented by ``'`'``
instead of spaces.  (Contributed by Xiang Zhang in :issue:`30103`.)

xml.etree
---------

:ref:`ElementPath <elementtree-xpath>` predicates in the :meth:`find`
methods can now compare text of the current node with ``[. = "text"]``,
not only text in children.  Predicates also allow adding spaces for
better readability.  (Contributed by Stefan Behnel in :issue:`31648`.)

zipapp
------

Function :func:`zipapp.create_archive` now accepts an optional *filter*
argument to allow the user to select which files should be included in the
archive, and an optional *compressed* argument to generate a compressed
archive.

A command line option ``--compress`` has also been added to support
compression.


Optimizations
=============

* Added two new opcodes: ``LOAD_METHOD`` and ``CALL_METHOD`` to avoid
  instantiation of bound method objects for method calls, which results
  in method calls being faster up to 20%. (Contributed by Yury Selivanov and
  INADA Naoki in :issue:`26110`.)

* Searching some unlucky Unicode characters (like Ukrainian capital "Є")
  in a string was to 25 times slower than searching other characters.
  Now it is slower only by 3 times in worst case.
  (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`24821`.)

* Fast implementation from standard C library is now used for functions
  :func:`~math.erf` and :func:`~math.erfc` in the :mod:`math` module.
  (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`26121`.)

* The :func:`os.fwalk` function has been sped up by 2 times.  This was done
  using the :func:`os.scandir` function.
  (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`25996`.)

* Optimized case-insensitive matching and searching of :mod:`regular
  expressions <re>`.  Searching some patterns can now be up to 20 times faster.
  (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`30285`.)

* :func:`re.compile` now converts ``flags`` parameter to int object if
  it is ``RegexFlag``.  It is now as fast as Python 3.5, and faster than
  Python 3.6 about 10% depending on the pattern.
  (Contributed by INADA Naoki in :issue:`31671`.)

* :meth:`selectors.EpollSelector.modify`, :meth:`selectors.PollSelector.modify`
  and :meth:`selectors.DevpollSelector.modify` may be around 10% faster under
  heavy loads. (Contributed by Giampaolo Rodola' in :issue:`30014`)

Build and C API Changes
=======================

* A full copy of libffi is no longer bundled for use when building the
  :mod:`_ctypes <ctypes>` module on non-OSX UNIX platforms.  An installed copy
  of libffi is now required when building ``_ctypes`` on such platforms.
  Contributed by Zachary Ware in :issue:`27979`.

* The fields :c:member:`name` and :c:member:`doc` of structures
  :c:type:`PyMemberDef`, :c:type:`PyGetSetDef`,
  :c:type:`PyStructSequence_Field`, :c:type:`PyStructSequence_Desc`,
  and :c:type:`wrapperbase` are now of type ``const char *`` rather of
  ``char *``.  (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`28761`.)

* The result of :c:func:`PyUnicode_AsUTF8AndSize` and :c:func:`PyUnicode_AsUTF8`
  is now of type ``const char *`` rather of ``char *``. (Contributed by Serhiy
  Storchaka in :issue:`28769`.)

* The result of :c:func:`PyMapping_Keys`, :c:func:`PyMapping_Values` and
  :c:func:`PyMapping_Items` is now always a list, rather than a list or a
  tuple. (Contributed by Oren Milman in :issue:`28280`.)

* Added functions :c:func:`PySlice_Unpack` and :c:func:`PySlice_AdjustIndices`.
  (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`27867`.)

* :c:func:`PyOS_AfterFork` is deprecated in favour of the new functions
  :c:func:`PyOS_BeforeFork`, :c:func:`PyOS_AfterFork_Parent` and
  :c:func:`PyOS_AfterFork_Child`.  (Contributed by Antoine Pitrou in
  :issue:`16500`.)

* The Windows build process no longer depends on Subversion to pull in external
  sources, a Python script is used to download zipfiles from GitHub instead.
  If Python 3.6 is not found on the system (via ``py -3.6``), NuGet is used to
  download a copy of 32-bit Python for this purpose.  (Contributed by Zachary
  Ware in :issue:`30450`.)

* Support for building ``--without-threads`` is removed.
  (Contributed by Antoine Pitrou in :issue:`31370`.).


Other CPython Implementation Changes
====================================

* Trace hooks may now opt out of receiving ``line`` events from the interpreter
  by setting the new ``f_trace_lines`` attribute to :const:`False` on the frame
  being traced. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan in :issue:`31344`.)

* Trace hooks may now opt in to receiving ``opcode`` events from the interpreter
  by setting the new ``f_trace_opcodes`` attribute to :const:`True` on the frame
  being traced. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan in :issue:`31344`.)


Deprecated
==========

- Function :c:func:`PySlice_GetIndicesEx` is deprecated and replaced with
  a macro if ``Py_LIMITED_API`` is not set or set to the value between
  ``0x03050400`` and ``0x03060000`` (not including) or ``0x03060100`` or
  higher.  (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`27867`.)

- Deprecated :meth:`format` from :mod:`locale`, use the :meth:`format_string`
  instead. (Contributed by Garvit in :issue:`10379`.)

- Methods
  :meth:`MetaPathFinder.find_module() <importlib.abc.MetaPathFinder.find_module>`
  (replaced by
  :meth:`MetaPathFinder.find_spec() <importlib.abc.MetaPathFinder.find_spec>`
  ) and
  :meth:`PathEntryFinder.find_loader() <importlib.abc.PathEntryFinder.find_loader>`
  (replaced by
  :meth:`PathEntryFinder.find_spec() <importlib.abc.PathEntryFinder.find_spec>`)
  both deprecated in Python 3.4 now emit :exc:`DeprecationWarning`. (Contributed
  by Matthias Bussonnier in :issue:`29576`)

- Using non-integer value for selecting a plural form in :mod:`gettext` is
  now deprecated.  It never correctly worked. (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka
  in :issue:`28692`.)

- The :mod:`macpath` is now deprecated and will be removed in Python 3.8.


Changes in the C API
--------------------

- The type of results of :c:func:`PyThread_start_new_thread` and
  :c:func:`PyThread_get_thread_ident`, and the *id* parameter of
  :c:func:`PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc` changed from :c:type:`long` to
  :c:type:`unsigned long`.
  (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`6532`.)

- :c:func:`PyUnicode_AsWideCharString` now raises a :exc:`ValueError` if the
  second argument is *NULL* and the :c:type:`wchar_t*` string contains null
  characters.  (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`30708`.)


Windows Only
------------
- The python launcher, (py.exe), can accept 32 & 64 bit specifiers **without**
  having to specify a minor version as well. So ``py -3-32`` and ``py -3-64``
  become valid as well as ``py -3.7-32``, also the -*m*-64 and -*m.n*-64 forms
  are now accepted to force 64 bit python even if 32 bit would have otherwise
  been used. If the specified version is not available py.exe will error exit.
  (Contributed by Steve Barnes in :issue:`30291`.)

- The launcher can be run as "py -0" to produce a list of the installed pythons,
  *with default marked with an asterix*. Running "py -0p" will include the paths.
  If py is run with a version specifier that cannot be matched it will also print
  the *short form* list of available specifiers.
  (Contributed by Steve Barnes in :issue:`30362`.)

Removed
=======

API and Feature Removals
------------------------

* Unknown escapes consisting of ``'\'`` and an ASCII letter in replacement
  templates for :func:`re.sub` were deprecated in Python 3.5, and will now
  cause an error.

* Removed support of the *exclude* argument in :meth:`tarfile.TarFile.add`.
  It was deprecated in Python 2.7 and 3.2.  Use the *filter* argument instead.

* The ``splitunc()`` function in the :mod:`ntpath` module was deprecated in
  Python 3.1, and has now been removed.  Use the :func:`~os.path.splitdrive`
  function instead.

* :func:`collections.namedtuple` no longer supports the *verbose* parameter
  or ``_source`` attribute which showed the generated source code for the
  named tuple class.  This was part of an optimization designed to speed-up
  class creation.  (Contributed by Jelle Zijlstra with further improvements
  by INADA Naoki, Serhiy Storchaka, and Raymond Hettinger in :issue:`28638`.)

* Functions :func:`bool`, :func:`float`, :func:`list` and :func:`tuple` no
  longer take keyword arguments.  The first argument of :func:`int` can now
  be passed only as positional argument.

* Removed previously deprecated in Python 2.4 classes ``Plist``, ``Dict`` and
  ``_InternalDict`` in the :mod:`plistlib` module.  Dict values in the result
  of functions :func:`~plistlib.readPlist` and
  :func:`~plistlib.readPlistFromBytes` are now normal dicts.  You no longer
  can use attribute access to access items of these dictionaries.


Porting to Python 3.7
=====================

This section lists previously described changes and other bugfixes
that may require changes to your code.


Changes in the Python API
-------------------------

* :meth:`pkgutil.walk_packages` now raises ValueError if *path* is a string.
  Previously an empty list was returned. (Contributed by Sanyam Khurana in
  :issue:`24744`.)

* A format string argument for :meth:`string.Formatter.format`
  is now :ref:`positional-only <positional-only_parameter>`.
  Passing it as a keyword argument was deprecated in Python 3.5. (Contributed
  by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`29193`.)

* Attributes :attr:`~http.cookies.Morsel.key`,
  :attr:`~http.cookies.Morsel.value` and
  :attr:`~http.cookies.Morsel.coded_value` of class
  :class:`http.cookies.Morsel` are now read-only.
  Assigning to them was deprecated in Python 3.5.
  Use the :meth:`~http.cookies.Morsel.set` method for setting them.
  (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`29192`.)

* ``Module``, ``FunctionDef``, ``AsyncFunctionDef``, and
  ``ClassDef`` AST nodes now have a new ``docstring`` field.
  The first statement in their body is not considered as a docstring
  anymore.  ``co_firstlineno`` and ``co_lnotab`` of code object for class
  and module are affected by this change. (Contributed by INADA Naoki and
  Eugene Toder in :issue:`29463`.)

* The *mode* argument of :func:`os.makedirs` no longer affects the file
  permission bits of newly-created intermediate-level directories.
  To set their file permission bits you can set the umask before invoking
  ``makedirs()``.
  (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`19930`.)

* The :attr:`struct.Struct.format` type is now :class:`str` instead of
  :class:`bytes`. (Contributed by Victor Stinner in :issue:`21071`.)

* Due to internal changes in :mod:`socket` you won't be able to
  :func:`socket.fromshare` a socket :func:`~socket.socket.share`-ed in older
  Python versions.

* ``repr`` for :class:`datetime.timedelta` has changed to include keyword arguments
  in the output. (Contributed by Utkarsh Upadhyay in :issue:`30302`.)


Changes in the C API
--------------------

* The function :c:func:`PySlice_GetIndicesEx` is considered not safe for
  resizable sequences.  If the slice indices are not instances of :class:`int`,
  but objects that implement the :meth:`!__index__` method, the sequence can be
  resized after passing its length to :c:func:`!PySlice_GetIndicesEx`.  This
  can lead to returning indices out of the length of the sequence.  For
  avoiding possible problems use new functions :c:func:`PySlice_Unpack` and
  :c:func:`PySlice_AdjustIndices`.
  (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`27867`.)


CPython bytecode changes
------------------------

* Added two new opcodes: :opcode:`LOAD_METHOD` and :opcode:`CALL_METHOD`.
  (Contributed by Yury Selivanov and INADA Naoki in :issue:`26110`.)