Pep 3105: the end of print?

[Fuzzyman]

On Feb 16, 11:54 am, "Edward K Ream" <edream... at charter.net> wrote:
> > In short, if you need to support 2.3, you're not ready to be looking at
> > 3.0.
>
> I hope this turns out not to be true.   As a developer, I have no way to
> force people to 3.0, and no reason to want to.  For me, maintaining two
> incompatible code bases is out of the question.
>
> It will be interesting to see how this plays out.  Users, not developers,
> will determine when Python 2.x becomes extinct.
>

As has been mentioned 3.0 will deliberately break backwards
compatibilit in a few ways in order to remove cruft and make changes
that *can't* be done any other way.

That said, the changing of print feels to me like gratutitous breakage
- but then I've never had the need to go through old code replacing
print with logging code (the need that Guido cites as the reasn for
the change).

There are various of the 3.0 changes being discussed for inclusion (or
at least support) in Python 2.6 so it might be possible to write code
that will run unchanged on Python 2.6 and 3.0. (That is *some* code -
nt arbitrary code.)

There is also the 2to3 converter. The aim is that this will be
effective enough that coders should be able to maintain a 2.X (2.6 ?)
codebase, run it through 2to3 and have the result run unchanged on
Python 3. That way there will be no need to maintain two code bases.

Also bear in mind that people using Python 3.0 will be aware that most
existing libraries won't work - and it will be a long time (2 to 3
yearsafter the release of 3.0 final ?) before the majority of Python
users have switched. This will provide plenty of time for migration
patterns and tools to be established.

Fuzzyman
http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/articles.shtml

> Edward
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> Edward K. Ream   email:  edream... at charter.net
> Leo:http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html
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