New Features Planned for Python 4.0

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