New features planned for Python 4.0
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With the release of Python 3.8 coming soon, the core development team has asked me to summarize our latest discussions on the new features planned for Python 4.0, codename ‘ouroboros: the snake will eat itself’. This will be an exciting release and a significant milestone, many thanks to the hard work of over 100 contributors. After heated debate on the mailing list, the 79-character line limit prescribed by PEP8 will be updated.
IDE users all over the world will now be able to take advantage of their 30′ ultra-wide 4K monitors, as the recommended line length will be increased to 89.5 characters (this was a compromise with the 100-character lobby, the decision being to split the difference). All new libraries and standard lib modules must include the phrase ‘for humans’ somewhere in their title, and have a splashy documentation page with lots of fonts typography and testimonials. Finally, a new string-type for the masses, Python 4.0 will feature ‘z-strings’: C-style NULL terminated bytestrings.
Just prefix your string with z’my string’ and Python will automatically ensure it is NULL-terminated. Note: the new z-strings cannot be used with any of the existing APIs that take string arguments – they must first be decoded to unicode strings or cast to bytes.
Source: charlesleifer.com
