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

Editor:
   Elvis Pranskevichus <elvis@magic.io>

This article explains the new features in Python 3.7, compared to 3.6.
Python 3.7 was released on June 27, 2018. For full details, see the
changelog.


Summary -- Release Highlights
=============================

New syntax features:

* PEP 563, postponed evaluation of type annotations.

Backwards incompatible syntax changes:

* "async" and "await" are now reserved keywords.

New library modules:

* "contextvars": PEP 567 -- Context Variables

* "dataclasses": PEP 557 -- Data Classes

* importlib.resources

New built-in features:

* PEP 553, the new "breakpoint()" function.

Python data model improvements:

* PEP 562, customization of access to module attributes.

* PEP 560, core support for typing module and generic types.

* the insertion-order preservation nature of dict objects has been
  declared to be an official part of the Python language spec.

Significant improvements in the standard library:

* The "asyncio" module has received new features, significant
  usability and performance improvements.

* The "time" module gained support for functions with nanosecond
  resolution.

CPython implementation improvements:

* Avoiding the use of ASCII as a default text encoding:

  * PEP 538, legacy C locale coercion

  * PEP 540, forced UTF-8 runtime mode

* PEP 552, deterministic .pycs

* New Python Development Mode

* PEP 565, improved "DeprecationWarning" handling

C API improvements:

* PEP 539, new C API for thread-local storage

Documentation improvements:

* PEP 545, Python documentation translations

* New documentation translations: Japanese, French, and Korean.

This release features notable performance improvements in many areas.
The Optimizations section lists them in detail.

For a list of changes that may affect compatibility with previous
Python releases please refer to the Porting to Python 3.7 section.


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


PEP 563: Postponed Evaluation of Annotations
--------------------------------------------

The advent of type hints in Python uncovered two glaring usability
issues with the functionality of annotations added in **PEP 3107** and
refined further in **PEP 526**:

* annotations could only use names which were already available in the
  current scope, in other words they didn't support forward references
  of any kind; and

* annotating source code had adverse effects on startup time of Python
  programs.

Both of these issues are fixed by postponing the evaluation of
annotations.  Instead of compiling code which executes expressions in
annotations at their definition time, the compiler stores the
annotation in a string form equivalent to the AST of the expression in
question. If needed, annotations can be resolved at runtime using
"typing.get_type_hints()".  In the common case where this is not
required, the annotations are cheaper to store (since short strings
are interned by the interpreter) and make startup time faster.

Usability-wise, annotations now support forward references, making the
following syntax valid:

   class C:
       @classmethod
       def from_string(cls, source: str) -> C:
           ...

       def validate_b(self, obj: B) -> bool:
           ...

   class B:
       ...

Since this change breaks compatibility, the new behavior needs to be
enabled on a per-module basis in Python 3.7 using a "__future__"
import:

   from __future__ import annotations

It will become the default in Python 3.10.

See also:

  **PEP 563** -- Postponed evaluation of annotations
     PEP written and implemented by Łukasz Langa.


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 or POSIX
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 "PYTHONCOERCECLOCALE"
environment variable. Automatically setting "LC_CTYPE" this way means
that both the core interpreter and locale-aware C extensions (such as
"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.

While **PEP 538**'s locale coercion has the benefit of also affecting
extension modules (such as GNU "readline"), as well as child processes
(including those running non-Python applications and older versions of
Python), it has the downside of requiring that a suitable target
locale be present on the running system. To better handle the case
where no suitable target locale is available (as occurs on RHEL/CentOS
7, for example), Python 3.7 also implements PEP 540: Forced UTF-8
Runtime Mode.

See also:

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


PEP 540: Forced UTF-8 Runtime Mode
----------------------------------

The new "-X" "utf8" command line option and "PYTHONUTF8" environment
variable can be used to enable the Python UTF-8 Mode.

When in UTF-8 mode, CPython ignores the locale settings, and uses the
UTF-8 encoding by default.  The error handlers for "sys.stdin" and
"sys.stdout" streams are set to "surrogateescape".

The forced UTF-8 mode can be used to change the text handling behavior
in an embedded Python interpreter without changing the locale settings
of an embedding application.

While **PEP 540**'s UTF-8 mode has the benefit of working regardless
of which locales are available on the running system, it has the
downside of having no effect on extension modules (such as GNU
"readline"), child processes running non-Python applications, and
child processes running older versions of Python. To reduce the risk
of corrupting text data when communicating with such components,
Python 3.7 also implements PEP 540: Forced UTF-8 Runtime Mode).

The UTF-8 mode is enabled by default when the locale is "C" or
"POSIX", and the **PEP 538** locale coercion feature fails to change
it to a UTF-8 based alternative (whether that failure is due to
"PYTHONCOERCECLOCALE=0" being set, "LC_ALL" being set, or the lack of
a suitable target locale).

See also:

  **PEP 540** -- Add a new UTF-8 mode
     PEP written and implemented by Victor Stinner


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

Python 3.7 includes the new built-in "breakpoint()" function as an
easy and consistent way to enter the Python debugger.

Built-in "breakpoint()" calls "sys.breakpointhook()".  By default, the
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. Additionally, the environment
variable "PYTHONBREAKPOINT" can be set to the callable of your
debugger of choice.  Set "PYTHONBREAKPOINT=0" to completely disable
built-in "breakpoint()".

See also:

  **PEP 553** -- Built-in breakpoint()
     PEP written and implemented by Barry Warsaw


PEP 539: New C API for Thread-Local Storage
-------------------------------------------

While Python provides a C API for thread-local storage support; the
existing Thread Local Storage (TLS) API has used *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 Thread Specific Storage
(TSS) 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 "Py_tss_t" instead of *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 *int*.

Note that on platforms where the native TLS key is defined in a way
that cannot be safely cast to *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.

See also:

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


PEP 562: Customization of Access to Module Attributes
-----------------------------------------------------

Python 3.7 allows defining "__getattr__()" on modules and will call it
whenever a module attribute is otherwise not found.  Defining
"__dir__()" on modules is now also allowed.

A typical example of where this may be useful is module attribute
deprecation and lazy loading.

See also:

  **PEP 562** -- Module "__getattr__" and "__dir__"
     PEP written and implemented by Ivan Levkivskyi


PEP 564: New Time Functions With Nanosecond Resolution
------------------------------------------------------

The resolution of clocks in modern systems can exceed the limited
precision of a floating point number returned by the "time.time()"
function and its variants.  To avoid loss of precision, **PEP 564**
adds six new "nanosecond" variants of the existing timer functions to
the "time" module:

* "time.clock_gettime_ns()"

* "time.clock_settime_ns()"

* "time.monotonic_ns()"

* "time.perf_counter_ns()"

* "time.process_time_ns()"

* "time.time_ns()"

The new functions return the number of nanoseconds as an integer
value.

Measurements show that on Linux and Windows the resolution of
"time.time_ns()" is approximately 3 times better than that of
"time.time()".

See also:

  **PEP 564** -- Add new time functions with nanosecond resolution
     PEP written and implemented by Victor Stinner


PEP 565: Show DeprecationWarning in "__main__"
----------------------------------------------

The default handling of "DeprecationWarning" has been changed such
that these warnings are once more shown by default, but only when the
code triggering them is running directly in the "__main__" module.  As
a result, developers of single file scripts and those using Python
interactively should once again start seeing deprecation warnings for
the APIs they use, but deprecation warnings triggered by imported
application, library and framework modules will continue to be hidden
by default.

As a result of this change, the standard library now allows developers
to choose between three different deprecation warning behaviours:

* "FutureWarning": always displayed by default, recommended for
  warnings intended to be seen by application end users (e.g. for
  deprecated application configuration settings).

* "DeprecationWarning": displayed by default only in "__main__" and
  when running tests, recommended for warnings intended to be seen by
  other Python developers where a version upgrade may result in
  changed behaviour or an error.

* "PendingDeprecationWarning": displayed by default only when running
  tests, intended for cases where a future version upgrade will change
  the warning category to "DeprecationWarning" or "FutureWarning".

Previously both "DeprecationWarning" and "PendingDeprecationWarning"
were only visible when running tests, which meant that developers
primarily writing single file scripts or using Python interactively
could be surprised by breaking changes in the APIs they used.

See also:

  **PEP 565** -- Show DeprecationWarning in "__main__"
     PEP written and implemented by Nick Coghlan


PEP 560: Core Support for "typing" module and Generic Types
-----------------------------------------------------------

Initially **PEP 484** was designed in such way that it would not
introduce *any* changes to the core CPython interpreter. Now type
hints and the "typing" module are extensively used by the community,
so this restriction is removed. The PEP introduces two special methods
"__class_getitem__()" and "__mro_entries__", these methods are now
used by most classes and special constructs in "typing". As a result,
the speed of various operations with types increased up to 7 times,
the generic types can be used without metaclass conflicts, and several
long standing bugs in "typing" module are fixed.

See also:

  **PEP 560** -- Core support for typing module and generic types
     PEP written and implemented by Ivan Levkivskyi


PEP 552: Hash-based .pyc Files
------------------------------

Python has traditionally checked the up-to-dateness of bytecode cache
files (i.e., ".pyc" files) by comparing the source metadata (last-
modified timestamp and size) with source metadata saved in the cache
file header when it was generated. While effective, this invalidation
method has its drawbacks.  When filesystem timestamps are too coarse,
Python can miss source updates, leading to user confusion.
Additionally, having a timestamp in the cache file is problematic for
build reproducibility and content-based build systems.

**PEP 552** extends the pyc format to allow the hash of the source
file to be used for invalidation instead of the source timestamp. Such
".pyc" files are called "hash-based". By default, Python still uses
timestamp-based invalidation and does not generate hash-based ".pyc"
files at runtime. Hash-based ".pyc" files may be generated with
"py_compile" or "compileall".

Hash-based ".pyc" files come in two variants: checked and unchecked.
Python validates checked hash-based ".pyc" files against the
corresponding source files at runtime but doesn't do so for unchecked
hash-based pycs. Unchecked hash-based ".pyc" files are a useful
performance optimization for environments where a system external to
Python (e.g., the build system) is responsible for keeping ".pyc"
files up-to-date.

See Cached bytecode invalidation for more information.

See also:

  **PEP 552** -- Deterministic pycs
     PEP written and implemented by Benjamin Peterson


PEP 545: Python Documentation Translations
------------------------------------------

**PEP 545** describes the process of creating and maintaining Python
documentation translations.

Three new translations have been added:

* Japanese: https://docs.python.org/ja/

* French: https://docs.python.org/fr/

* Korean: https://docs.python.org/ko/

See also:

  **PEP 545** -- Python Documentation Translations
     PEP written and implemented by Julien Palard, Inada Naoki, and
     Victor Stinner.


Python Development Mode (-X dev)
--------------------------------

The new "-X" "dev" command line option or the new "PYTHONDEVMODE"
environment variable can be used to enable Python Development Mode.
When in development mode, Python performs additional runtime checks
that are too expensive to be enabled by default. See Python
Development Mode documentation for the full description.


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

* An "await" expression and comprehensions containing an "async for"
  clause were illegal in the expressions in formatted string literals
  due to a problem with the implementation.  In Python 3.7 this
  restriction was lifted.

* 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 bpo-12844 and bpo-18896.)

* "bytes.fromhex()" and "bytearray.fromhex()" now ignore all ASCII
  whitespace, not only spaces. (Contributed by Robert Xiao in
  bpo-28927.)

* "str", "bytes", and "bytearray" gained support for the new
  "isascii()" method, which can be used to test if a string or bytes
  contain only the ASCII characters. (Contributed by INADA Naoki in
  bpo-32677.)

* "ImportError" now displays module name and module "__file__" path
  when "from ... import ..." fails. (Contributed by Matthias
  Bussonnier in bpo-29546.)

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

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

* In order to better support dynamic creation of stack traces,
  "types.TracebackType" can now be instantiated from Python code, and
  the "tb_next" attribute on tracebacks is now writable. (Contributed
  by Nathaniel J. Smith in bpo-30579.)

* When using the "-m" switch, "sys.path[0]" is now eagerly expanded to
  the full starting directory path, rather than being left as the
  empty directory (which allows imports from the *current* working
  directory at the time when an import occurs) (Contributed by Nick
  Coghlan in bpo-33053.)

* The new "-X" "importtime" option or the "PYTHONPROFILEIMPORTTIME"
  environment variable can be used to show the timing of each module
  import. (Contributed by Victor Stinner in bpo-31415.)


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


contextvars
-----------

The new "contextvars" module and a set of new C APIs introduce support
for *context variables*.  Context variables are conceptually similar
to thread-local variables.  Unlike TLS, context variables support
asynchronous code correctly.

The "asyncio" and "decimal" modules have been updated to use and
support context variables out of the box.  Particularly the active
decimal context is now stored in a context variable, which allows
decimal operations to work with the correct context in asynchronous
code.

See also:

  **PEP 567** -- Context Variables
     PEP written and implemented by Yury Selivanov


dataclasses
-----------

The new "dataclass()" decorator provides a way to declare *data
classes*.  A data class describes its attributes using class variable
annotations.  Its constructor and other magic methods, such as
"__repr__()", "__eq__()", and "__hash__()" are generated
automatically.

Example:

   @dataclass
   class Point:
       x: float
       y: float
       z: float = 0.0

   p = Point(1.5, 2.5)
   print(p)   # produces "Point(x=1.5, y=2.5, z=0.0)"

See also:

  **PEP 557** -- Data Classes
     PEP written and implemented by Eric V. Smith


importlib.resources
-------------------

The new "importlib.resources" module provides several new APIs and one
new ABC for access to, opening, and reading *resources* inside
packages. Resources are roughly similar to files inside packages, but
they needn't be actual files on the physical file system.  Module
loaders can provide a "get_resource_reader()" function which returns a
"importlib.abc.ResourceReader" instance to support this new API.
Built-in file path loaders and zip file loaders both support this.

Contributed by Barry Warsaw and Brett Cannon in bpo-32248.

See also:

  importlib_resources -- a PyPI backport for earlier Python versions.


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


argparse
--------

The new "ArgumentParser.parse_intermixed_args()" method allows
intermixing options and positional arguments. (Contributed by paul.j3
in bpo-14191.)


asyncio
-------

The "asyncio" module has received many new features, usability and
performance improvements.  Notable changes include:

* The new *provisional* "asyncio.run()" function can be used to run a
  coroutine from synchronous code by automatically creating and
  destroying the event loop. (Contributed by Yury Selivanov in
  bpo-32314.)

* asyncio gained support for "contextvars". "loop.call_soon()",
  "loop.call_soon_threadsafe()", "loop.call_later()",
  "loop.call_at()", and "Future.add_done_callback()" have a new
  optional keyword-only *context* parameter. "Tasks" now track their
  context automatically. See **PEP 567** for more details.
  (Contributed by Yury Selivanov in bpo-32436.)

* The new "asyncio.create_task()" function has been added as a
  shortcut to "asyncio.get_event_loop().create_task()". (Contributed
  by Andrew Svetlov in bpo-32311.)

* The new "loop.start_tls()" method can be used to upgrade an existing
  connection to TLS. (Contributed by Yury Selivanov in bpo-23749.)

* The new "loop.sock_recv_into()" method allows reading data from a
  socket directly into a provided buffer making it possible to reduce
  data copies. (Contributed by Antoine Pitrou in bpo-31819.)

* The new "asyncio.current_task()" function returns the currently
  running "Task" instance, and the new "asyncio.all_tasks()" function
  returns a set of all existing "Task" instances in a given loop. The
  "Task.current_task()" and "Task.all_tasks()" methods have been
  deprecated. (Contributed by Andrew Svetlov in bpo-32250.)

* The new *provisional* "BufferedProtocol" class allows implementing
  streaming protocols with manual control over the receive buffer.
  (Contributed by Yury Selivanov in bpo-32251.)

* The new "asyncio.get_running_loop()" function returns the currently
  running loop, and raises a "RuntimeError" if no loop is running.
  This is in contrast with "asyncio.get_event_loop()", which will
  *create* a new event loop if none is running. (Contributed by Yury
  Selivanov in bpo-32269.)

* The new "StreamWriter.wait_closed()" coroutine method allows waiting
  until the stream writer is closed.  The new
  "StreamWriter.is_closing()" method can be used to determine if the
  writer is closing. (Contributed by Andrew Svetlov in bpo-32391.)

* The new "loop.sock_sendfile()" coroutine method allows sending files
  using "os.sendfile" when possible. (Contributed by Andrew Svetlov in
  bpo-32410.)

* The new "Future.get_loop()" and "Task.get_loop()" methods return the
  instance of the loop on which a task or a future were created.
  "Server.get_loop()" allows doing the same for "asyncio.Server"
  objects. (Contributed by Yury Selivanov in bpo-32415 and Srinivas
  Reddy Thatiparthy in bpo-32418.)

* It is now possible to control how instances of "asyncio.Server"
  begin serving.  Previously, the server would start serving
  immediately when created. The new *start_serving* keyword argument
  to "loop.create_server()" and "loop.create_unix_server()", as well
  as "Server.start_serving()", and "Server.serve_forever()" can be
  used to decouple server instantiation and serving.  The new
  "Server.is_serving()" method returns "True" if the server is
  serving.  "Server" objects are now asynchronous context managers:

     srv = await loop.create_server(...)

     async with srv:
         # some code

     # At this point, srv is closed and no longer accepts new connections.

  (Contributed by Yury Selivanov in bpo-32662.)

* Callback objects returned by "loop.call_later()" gained the new
  "when()" method which returns an absolute scheduled callback
  timestamp. (Contributed by Andrew Svetlov in bpo-32741.)

* The "loop.create_datagram_endpoint() " method gained support for
  Unix sockets. (Contributed by Quentin Dawans in bpo-31245.)

* The "asyncio.open_connection()", "asyncio.start_server()" functions,
  "loop.create_connection()", "loop.create_server()",
  "loop.create_accepted_socket()" methods and their corresponding UNIX
  socket variants now accept the *ssl_handshake_timeout* keyword
  argument. (Contributed by Neil Aspinall in bpo-29970.)

* The new "Handle.cancelled()" method returns "True" if the callback
  was cancelled. (Contributed by Marat Sharafutdinov in bpo-31943.)

* The asyncio source has been converted to use the "async"/"await"
  syntax. (Contributed by Andrew Svetlov in bpo-32193.)

* The new "ReadTransport.is_reading()" method can be used to determine
  the reading state of the transport. Additionally, calls to
  "ReadTransport.resume_reading()" and "ReadTransport.pause_reading()"
  are now idempotent. (Contributed by Yury Selivanov in bpo-32356.)

* Loop methods which accept socket paths now support passing *path-
  like objects*. (Contributed by Yury Selivanov in bpo-32066.)

* In "asyncio" TCP sockets on Linux are now created with "TCP_NODELAY"
  flag set by default. (Contributed by Yury Selivanov and Victor
  Stinner in bpo-27456.)

* Exceptions occurring in cancelled tasks are no longer logged.
  (Contributed by Yury Selivanov in bpo-30508.)

* New "WindowsSelectorEventLoopPolicy" and
  "WindowsProactorEventLoopPolicy" classes. (Contributed by Yury
  Selivanov in bpo-33792.)

Several "asyncio" APIs have been deprecated.


binascii
--------

The "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 bpo-30103.)


calendar
--------

The "HTMLCalendar" class has new class attributes which ease the
customization of CSS classes in the produced HTML calendar.
(Contributed by Oz Tiram in bpo-30095.)


collections
-----------

"collections.namedtuple()" now supports default values. (Contributed
by Raymond Hettinger in bpo-32320.)


compileall
----------

"compileall.compile_dir()" learned the new *invalidation_mode*
parameter, which can be used to enable hash-based .pyc invalidation.
The invalidation mode can also be specified on the command line using
the new "--invalidation-mode" argument. (Contributed by Benjamin
Peterson in bpo-31650.)


concurrent.futures
------------------

"ProcessPoolExecutor" and "ThreadPoolExecutor" now support the new
*initializer* and *initargs* constructor arguments. (Contributed by
Antoine Pitrou in bpo-21423.)

The "ProcessPoolExecutor" can now take the multiprocessing context via
the new *mp_context* argument. (Contributed by Thomas Moreau in
bpo-31540.)


contextlib
----------

The new "nullcontext()" is a simpler and faster no-op context manager
than "ExitStack". (Contributed by Jesse-Bakker in bpo-10049.)

The new "asynccontextmanager()", "AbstractAsyncContextManager", and
"AsyncExitStack" have been added to complement their synchronous
counterparts.  (Contributed by Jelle Zijlstra in bpo-29679 and
bpo-30241, and by Alexander Mohr and Ilya Kulakov in bpo-29302.)


cProfile
--------

The "cProfile" command line now accepts "-m module_name" as an
alternative to script path.  (Contributed by Sanyam Khurana in
bpo-21862.)


crypt
-----

The "crypt" module now supports the Blowfish hashing method.
(Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-31664.)

The "mksalt()" function now allows specifying the number of rounds for
hashing.  (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-31702.)


datetime
--------

The new "datetime.fromisoformat()" method constructs a "datetime"
object from a string in one of the formats output by
"datetime.isoformat()". (Contributed by Paul Ganssle in bpo-15873.)

The "tzinfo" class now supports sub-minute offsets. (Contributed by
Alexander Belopolsky in bpo-5288.)


dbm
---

"dbm.dumb" now supports reading read-only files and no longer writes
the index file when it is not changed.


decimal
-------

The "decimal" module now uses context variables to store the decimal
context. (Contributed by Yury Selivanov in bpo-32630.)


dis
---

The "dis()" function is now able to disassemble nested code objects
(the code of comprehensions, generator expressions and nested
functions, and the code used for building nested classes).  The
maximum depth of disassembly recursion is controlled by the new
*depth* parameter. (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-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 bpo-11913.)


enum
----

The "Enum" learned the new "_ignore_" class property, which allows
listing the names of properties which should not become enum members.
(Contributed by Ethan Furman in bpo-31801.)

In Python 3.8, attempting to check for non-Enum objects in "Enum"
classes will raise a "TypeError" (e.g. "1 in Color"); similarly,
attempting to check for non-Flag objects in a "Flag" member will raise
"TypeError" (e.g. "1 in Perm.RW"); currently, both operations return
"False" instead and are deprecated. (Contributed by Ethan Furman in
bpo-33217.)


functools
---------

"functools.singledispatch()" now supports registering implementations
using type annotations. (Contributed by Łukasz Langa in bpo-32227.)


gc
--

The new "gc.freeze()" function allows freezing all objects tracked by
the garbage collector and excluding them from future collections. This
can be used before a POSIX "fork()" call to make the GC copy-on-write
friendly or to speed up collection.  The new "gc.unfreeze()" functions
reverses this operation.  Additionally, "gc.get_freeze_count()" can be
used to obtain the number of frozen objects. (Contributed by Li Zekun
in bpo-31558.)


hmac
----

The "hmac" module now has an optimized one-shot "digest()" function,
which is up to three times faster than "HMAC()". (Contributed by
Christian Heimes in bpo-32433.)


http.client
-----------

"HTTPConnection" and "HTTPSConnection" now support the new *blocksize*
argument for improved upload throughput. (Contributed by Nir Soffer in
bpo-31945.)


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

"SimpleHTTPRequestHandler" now 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 bpo-29654.)

"SimpleHTTPRequestHandler" accepts the new *directory* argument, in
addition to the new "--directory" command line argument. 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 bpo-28707.)

The new "ThreadingHTTPServer" class uses threads to handle requests
using "ThreadingMixin". It is used when "http.server" is run with
"-m". (Contributed by Julien Palard in bpo-31639.)


idlelib and IDLE
----------------

Multiple fixes for autocompletion. (Contributed by Louie Lu in
bpo-15786.)

Module Browser (on the File menu, formerly called Class Browser), now
displays nested functions and classes in addition to top-level
functions and classes. (Contributed by Guilherme Polo, Cheryl Sabella,
and Terry Jan Reedy in bpo-1612262.)

The Settings dialog (Options, Configure IDLE) has been partly
rewritten to improve both appearance and function. (Contributed by
Cheryl Sabella and Terry Jan Reedy in multiple issues.)

The font sample now includes a selection of non-Latin characters so
that users can better see the effect of selecting a particular font.
(Contributed by Terry Jan Reedy in bpo-13802.) The sample can be
edited to include other characters. (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka
in bpo-31860.)

The IDLE features formerly implemented as extensions have been
reimplemented as normal features.  Their settings have been moved from
the Extensions tab to other dialog tabs. (Contributed by Charles
Wohlganger and Terry Jan Reedy in bpo-27099.)

Editor code context option revised.  Box displays all context lines up
to maxlines.  Clicking on a context line jumps the editor to that
line.  Context colors for custom themes is added to Highlights tab of
Settings dialog. (Contributed by Cheryl Sabella and Terry Jan Reedy in
bpo-33642, bpo-33768, and bpo-33679.)

On Windows, a new API call tells Windows that tk scales for DPI. On
Windows 8.1+ or 10, with DPI compatibility properties of the Python
binary unchanged, and a monitor resolution greater than 96 DPI, this
should make text and lines sharper.  It should otherwise have no
effect. (Contributed by Terry Jan Reedy in bpo-33656.)

New in 3.7.1:

Output over N lines (50 by default) is squeezed down to a button. N
can be changed in the PyShell section of the General page of the
Settings dialog.  Fewer, but possibly extra long, lines can be
squeezed by right clicking on the output.  Squeezed output can be
expanded in place by double-clicking the button or into the clipboard
or a separate window by right-clicking the button.  (Contributed by
Tal Einat in bpo-1529353.)

The changes above have been backported to 3.6 maintenance releases.

NEW in 3.7.4:

Add "Run Customized" to the Run menu to run a module with customized
settings. Any command line arguments entered are added to sys.argv.
They re-appear in the box for the next customized run.  One can also
suppress the normal Shell main module restart.  (Contributed by Cheryl
Sabella, Terry Jan Reedy, and others in bpo-5680 and bpo-37627.)

New in 3.7.5:

Add optional line numbers for IDLE editor windows. Windows open
without line numbers unless set otherwise in the General tab of the
configuration dialog.  Line numbers for an existing window are shown
and hidden in the Options menu. (Contributed by Tal Einat and
Saimadhav Heblikar in bpo-17535.)


importlib
---------

The "importlib.abc.ResourceReader" ABC was introduced to support the
loading of resources from packages.  See also importlib.resources.
(Contributed by Barry Warsaw, Brett Cannon in bpo-32248.)

"importlib.reload()" now raises "ModuleNotFoundError" if the module
lacks a spec. (Contributed by Garvit Khatri in bpo-29851.)

"importlib.find_spec()" now raises "ModuleNotFoundError" instead of
"AttributeError" if the specified parent module is not a package (i.e.
lacks a "__path__" attribute). (Contributed by Milan Oberkirch in
bpo-30436.)

The new "importlib.source_hash()" can be used to compute the hash of
the passed source.  A hash-based .pyc file embeds the value returned
by this function.


io
--

The new "TextIOWrapper.reconfigure()" method can be used to
reconfigure the text stream with the new settings. (Contributed by
Antoine Pitrou in bpo-30526 and INADA Naoki in bpo-15216.)


ipaddress
---------

The new "subnet_of()" and "supernet_of()" methods of
"ipaddress.IPv6Network" and "ipaddress.IPv4Network" can be used for
network containment tests. (Contributed by Michel Albert and Cheryl
Sabella in bpo-20825.)


itertools
---------

"itertools.islice()" now accepts "integer-like objects" as start,
stop, and slice arguments. (Contributed by Will Roberts in bpo-30537.)


locale
------

The new *monetary* argument to "locale.format_string()" can be used to
make the conversion use monetary thousands separators and grouping
strings.  (Contributed by Garvit in bpo-10379.)

The "locale.getpreferredencoding()" function now always returns
"'UTF-8'" on Android or when in the forced UTF-8 mode.


logging
-------

"Logger" instances can now be pickled. (Contributed by Vinay Sajip in
bpo-30520.)

The new "StreamHandler.setStream()" method can be used to replace the
logger stream after handler creation. (Contributed by Vinay Sajip in
bpo-30522.)

It is now possible to specify keyword arguments to handler
constructors in configuration passed to "logging.config.fileConfig()".
(Contributed by Preston Landers in bpo-31080.)


math
----

The new "math.remainder()" function implements the IEEE 754-style
remainder operation.  (Contributed by Mark Dickinson in bpo-29962.)


mimetypes
---------

The MIME type of .bmp has been changed from "'image/x-ms-bmp'" to
"'image/bmp'". (Contributed by Nitish Chandra in bpo-22589.)


msilib
------

The new "Database.Close()" method can be used to close the MSI
database. (Contributed by Berker Peksag in bpo-20486.)


multiprocessing
---------------

The new "Process.close()" method explicitly closes the process object
and releases all resources associated with it.  "ValueError" is raised
if the underlying process is still running. (Contributed by Antoine
Pitrou in bpo-30596.)

The new "Process.kill()" method can be used to terminate the process
using the "SIGKILL" signal on Unix. (Contributed by Vitor Pereira in
bpo-30794.)

Non-daemonic threads created by "Process" are now joined on process
exit. (Contributed by Antoine Pitrou in bpo-18966.)


os
--

"os.fwalk()" now accepts the *path* argument as "bytes". (Contributed
by Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-28682.)

"os.scandir()" gained support for file descriptors. (Contributed by
Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-25996.)

The new "register_at_fork()" function allows registering Python
callbacks to be executed at process fork. (Contributed by Antoine
Pitrou in bpo-16500.)

Added "os.preadv()" (combine the functionality of "os.readv()" and
"os.pread()") and "os.pwritev()" functions (combine the functionality
of "os.writev()" and "os.pwrite()"). (Contributed by Pablo Galindo in
bpo-31368.)

The mode argument of "os.makedirs()" no longer affects the file
permission bits of newly-created intermediate-level directories.
(Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-19930.)

"os.dup2()" now returns the new file descriptor.  Previously, "None"
was always returned. (Contributed by Benjamin Peterson in bpo-32441.)

The structure returned by "os.stat()" now contains the "st_fstype"
attribute on Solaris and its derivatives. (Contributed by Jesús Cea
Avión in bpo-32659.)


pathlib
-------

The new "Path.is_mount()" method is now available on POSIX systems and
can be used to determine whether a path is a mount point. (Contributed
by Cooper Ry Lees in bpo-30897.)


pdb
---

"pdb.set_trace()" now takes an optional *header* keyword-only
argument.  If given, it is printed to the console just before
debugging begins.  (Contributed by Barry Warsaw in bpo-31389.)

"pdb" command line now accepts "-m module_name" as an alternative to
script file.  (Contributed by Mario Corchero in bpo-32206.)


py_compile
----------

"py_compile.compile()" -- and by extension, "compileall" -- now
respects the "SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH" environment variable by
unconditionally creating ".pyc" files for hash-based validation. This
allows for guaranteeing reproducible builds of ".pyc" files when they
are created eagerly. (Contributed by Bernhard M. Wiedemann in
bpo-29708.)


pydoc
-----

The pydoc server can now bind to an arbitrary hostname specified by
the new "-n" command-line argument. (Contributed by Feanil Patel in
bpo-31128.)


queue
-----

The new "SimpleQueue" class is an unbounded FIFO queue. (Contributed
by Antoine Pitrou in bpo-14976.)


re
--

The flags "re.ASCII", "re.LOCALE" and "re.UNICODE" can be set within
the scope of a group. (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-31690.)

"re.split()" now supports splitting on a pattern like "r'\b'", "'^$'"
or "(?=-)" that matches an empty string. (Contributed by Serhiy
Storchaka in bpo-25054.)

Regular expressions compiled with the "re.LOCALE" flag no longer
depend on the locale at compile time.  Locale settings are applied
only when the compiled regular expression is used. (Contributed by
Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-30215.)

"FutureWarning" is now emitted if a regular expression contains
character set constructs that will change semantically in the future,
such as nested sets and set operations. (Contributed by Serhiy
Storchaka in bpo-30349.)

Compiled regular expression and match objects can now be copied using
"copy.copy()" and "copy.deepcopy()". (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka
in bpo-10076.)


signal
------

The new *warn_on_full_buffer* argument to the "signal.set_wakeup_fd()"
function makes it possible to specify whether Python prints a warning
on stderr when the wakeup buffer overflows. (Contributed by Nathaniel
J. Smith in bpo-30050.)


socket
------

The new "socket.getblocking()" method returns "True" if the socket is
in blocking mode and "False" otherwise. (Contributed by Yury Selivanov
in bpo-32373.)

The new "socket.close()" function closes the passed socket file
descriptor. This function should be used instead of "os.close()" for
better compatibility across platforms. (Contributed by Christian
Heimes in bpo-32454.)

The "socket" module now exposes the "socket.TCP_CONGESTION" (Linux
2.6.13), "socket.TCP_USER_TIMEOUT" (Linux 2.6.37), and
"socket.TCP_NOTSENT_LOWAT" (Linux 3.12) constants. (Contributed by
Omar Sandoval in bpo-26273 and Nathaniel J. Smith in bpo-29728.)

Support for "socket.AF_VSOCK" sockets has been added to allow
communication between virtual machines and their hosts. (Contributed
by Cathy Avery in bpo-27584.)

Sockets now auto-detect family, type and protocol from file descriptor
by default. (Contributed by Christian Heimes in bpo-28134.)


socketserver
------------

"socketserver.ThreadingMixIn.server_close()" now waits until all non-
daemon threads complete. "socketserver.ForkingMixIn.server_close()"
now waits until all child processes complete.

Add a new "socketserver.ForkingMixIn.block_on_close" class attribute
to "socketserver.ForkingMixIn" and "socketserver.ThreadingMixIn"
classes. Set the class attribute to "False" to get the pre-3.7
behaviour.


sqlite3
-------

"sqlite3.Connection" now exposes the "backup()" method when the
underlying SQLite library is at version 3.6.11 or higher. (Contributed
by Lele Gaifax in bpo-27645.)

The *database* argument of "sqlite3.connect()" now accepts any *path-
like object*, instead of just a string. (Contributed by Anders
Lorentsen in bpo-31843.)


ssl
---

The "ssl" module now uses OpenSSL's builtin API instead of
"match_hostname()" to check a host name or an IP address.  Values are
validated during TLS handshake.  Any certificate validation error
including failing the host name check now raises
"SSLCertVerificationError" and aborts the handshake with a proper TLS
Alert message.  The new exception contains additional information.
Host name validation can be customized with
"SSLContext.hostname_checks_common_name". (Contributed by Christian
Heimes in bpo-31399.)

Note:

  The improved host name check requires a *libssl* implementation
  compatible with OpenSSL 1.0.2 or 1.1.  Consequently, OpenSSL 0.9.8
  and 1.0.1 are no longer supported (see Platform Support Removals for
  more details). The ssl module is mostly compatible with LibreSSL
  2.7.2 and newer.

The "ssl" module no longer sends IP addresses in SNI TLS extension.
(Contributed by Christian Heimes in bpo-32185.)

"match_hostname()" no longer supports partial wildcards like
"www*.example.org". (Contributed by Mandeep Singh in bpo-23033 and
Christian Heimes in bpo-31399.)

The default cipher suite selection of the "ssl" module now uses a
blacklist approach rather than a hard-coded whitelist.  Python no
longer re-enables ciphers that have been blocked by OpenSSL security
updates.  Default cipher suite selection can be configured at compile
time. (Contributed by Christian Heimes in bpo-31429.)

Validation of server certificates containing internationalized domain
names (IDNs) is now supported.  As part of this change, the
"SSLSocket.server_hostname" attribute now stores the expected hostname
in A-label form (""xn--pythn-mua.org""), rather than the U-label form
(""pythön.org"").  (Contributed by Nathaniel J. Smith and Christian
Heimes in bpo-28414.)

The "ssl" module has preliminary and experimental support for TLS 1.3
and OpenSSL 1.1.1.  At the time of Python 3.7.0 release, OpenSSL 1.1.1
is still under development and TLS 1.3 hasn't been finalized yet.  The
TLS 1.3 handshake and protocol behaves slightly differently than TLS
1.2 and earlier, see TLS 1.3. (Contributed by Christian Heimes in
bpo-32947, bpo-20995, bpo-29136, bpo-30622 and bpo-33618)

"SSLSocket" and "SSLObject" no longer have a public constructor.
Direct instantiation was never a documented and supported feature.
Instances must be created with "SSLContext" methods "wrap_socket()"
and "wrap_bio()". (Contributed by Christian Heimes in bpo-32951)

OpenSSL 1.1 APIs for setting the minimum and maximum TLS protocol
version are available as "SSLContext.minimum_version" and
"SSLContext.maximum_version". Supported protocols are indicated by
several new flags, such as "HAS_TLSv1_1". (Contributed by Christian
Heimes in bpo-32609.)


string
------

"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 bpo-1198569.)


subprocess
----------

The "subprocess.run()" function accepts the new *capture_output*
keyword argument.  When true, stdout and stderr will be captured. This
is equivalent to passing "subprocess.PIPE" as *stdout* and *stderr*
arguments. (Contributed by Bo Bayles in bpo-32102.)

The "subprocess.run" function and the "subprocess.Popen" constructor
now accept the *text* keyword argument as an alias to
*universal_newlines*. (Contributed by Andrew Clegg in bpo-31756.)

On Windows the default for *close_fds* was changed from "False" to
"True" when redirecting the standard handles.  It's now possible to
set *close_fds* to true when redirecting the standard handles.  See
"subprocess.Popen".  This means that *close_fds* now defaults to
"True" on all supported platforms. (Contributed by Segev Finer in
bpo-19764.)

The subprocess module is now more graceful when handling
"KeyboardInterrupt" during "subprocess.call()", "subprocess.run()", or
in a "Popen" context manager.  It now waits a short amount of time for
the child to exit, before continuing the handling of the
"KeyboardInterrupt" exception. (Contributed by Gregory P. Smith in
bpo-25942.)


sys
---

The new "sys.breakpointhook()" hook function is called by the built-in
"breakpoint()". (Contributed by Barry Warsaw in bpo-31353.)

On Android, the new "sys.getandroidapilevel()" returns the build-time
Android API version. (Contributed by Victor Stinner in bpo-28740.)

The new "sys.get_coroutine_origin_tracking_depth()" function returns
the current coroutine origin tracking depth, as set by the new
"sys.set_coroutine_origin_tracking_depth()".  "asyncio" has been
converted to use this new API instead of the deprecated
"sys.set_coroutine_wrapper()". (Contributed by Nathaniel J. Smith in
bpo-32591.)


time
----

**PEP 564** adds six new functions with nanosecond resolution to the
"time" module:

* "time.clock_gettime_ns()"

* "time.clock_settime_ns()"

* "time.monotonic_ns()"

* "time.perf_counter_ns()"

* "time.process_time_ns()"

* "time.time_ns()"

New clock identifiers have been added:

* "time.CLOCK_BOOTTIME" (Linux): Identical to "time.CLOCK_MONOTONIC",
  except it also includes any time that the system is suspended.

* "time.CLOCK_PROF" (FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD): High-resolution
  per-process CPU timer.

* "time.CLOCK_UPTIME" (FreeBSD, OpenBSD): Time whose absolute value is
  the time the system has been running and not suspended, providing
  accurate uptime measurement.

The new "time.thread_time()" and "time.thread_time_ns()" functions can
be used to get per-thread CPU time measurements. (Contributed by
Antoine Pitrou in bpo-32025.)

The new "time.pthread_getcpuclockid()" function returns the clock ID
of the thread-specific CPU-time clock.


tkinter
-------

The new "tkinter.ttk.Spinbox" class is now available. (Contributed by
Alan Moore in bpo-32585.)


tracemalloc
-----------

"tracemalloc.Traceback" behaves more like regular tracebacks, sorting
the frames from oldest to most recent. "Traceback.format()" now
accepts negative *limit*, truncating the result to the "abs(limit)"
oldest frames.  To get the old behaviour, use the new
*most_recent_first* argument to "Traceback.format()". (Contributed by
Jesse Bakker in bpo-32121.)


types
-----

The new "WrapperDescriptorType", "MethodWrapperType",
"MethodDescriptorType", and "ClassMethodDescriptorType" classes are
now available. (Contributed by Manuel Krebber and Guido van Rossum in
bpo-29377, and Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-32265.)

The new "types.resolve_bases()" function resolves MRO entries
dynamically as specified by **PEP 560**. (Contributed by Ivan
Levkivskyi in bpo-32717.)


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

The internal "unicodedata" database has been upgraded to use Unicode
11. (Contributed by Benjamin Peterson.)


unittest
--------

The new "-k" command-line option allows filtering tests by a name
substring or a Unix shell-like pattern. For example, "python -m
unittest -k foo" runs "foo_tests.SomeTest.test_something",
"bar_tests.SomeTest.test_foo", but not
"bar_tests.FooTest.test_something". (Contributed by Jonas Haag in
bpo-32071.)


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

The "sentinel" attributes now preserve their identity when they are
"copied" or "pickled". (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-20804.)

The new "seal()" function allows sealing "Mock" instances, which will
disallow further creation of attribute mocks.  The seal is applied
recursively to all attributes that are themselves mocks. (Contributed
by Mario Corchero in bpo-30541.)


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

"urllib.parse.quote()" has been updated from **RFC 2396** to **RFC
3986**, adding "~" to the set of characters that are never quoted by
default. (Contributed by Christian Theune and Ratnadeep Debnath in
bpo-16285.)


uu
--

The "uu.encode()" function now accepts an optional *backtick* keyword
argument.  When it's true, zeros are represented by "'`'" instead of
spaces.  (Contributed by Xiang Zhang in bpo-30103.)


uuid
----

The new "UUID.is_safe" attribute relays information from the platform
about whether generated UUIDs are generated with a multiprocessing-
safe method. (Contributed by Barry Warsaw in bpo-22807.)

"uuid.getnode()" now prefers universally administered MAC addresses
over locally administered MAC addresses. This makes a better guarantee
for global uniqueness of UUIDs returned from "uuid.uuid1()".  If only
locally administered MAC addresses are available, the first such one
found is returned. (Contributed by Barry Warsaw in bpo-32107.)


warnings
--------

The initialization of the default warnings filters has changed as
follows:

* warnings enabled via command line options (including those for "-b"
  and the new CPython-specific "-X" "dev" option) are always passed to
  the warnings machinery via the "sys.warnoptions" attribute.

* warnings filters enabled via the command line or the environment now
  have the following order of precedence:

     * the "BytesWarning" filter for "-b" (or "-bb")

     * any filters specified with the "-W" option

     * any filters specified with the "PYTHONWARNINGS" environment
       variable

     * any other CPython specific filters (e.g. the "default" filter
       added for the new "-X dev" mode)

     * any implicit filters defined directly by the warnings machinery

* in CPython debug builds, all warnings are now displayed by default
  (the implicit filter list is empty)

(Contributed by Nick Coghlan and Victor Stinner in bpo-20361,
bpo-32043, and bpo-32230.)

Deprecation warnings are once again shown by default in single-file
scripts and at the interactive prompt.  See PEP 565: Show
DeprecationWarning in __main__ for details. (Contributed by Nick
Coghlan in bpo-31975.)


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

ElementPath predicates in the "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 bpo-31648.)


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

"SimpleXMLRPCDispatcher.register_function" can now be used as a
decorator.  (Contributed by Xiang Zhang in bpo-7769.)


zipapp
------

Function "create_archive()" now accepts an optional *filter* argument
to allow the user to select which files should be included in the
archive.  (Contributed by Irmen de Jong in bpo-31072.)

Function "create_archive()" now accepts an optional *compressed*
argument to generate a compressed archive.  A command line option "--
compress" has also been added to support compression. (Contributed by
Zhiming Wang in bpo-31638.)


zipfile
-------

"ZipFile" now accepts the new *compresslevel* parameter to control the
compression level. (Contributed by Bo Bayles in bpo-21417.)

Subdirectories in archives created by "ZipFile" are now stored in
alphabetical order. (Contributed by Bernhard M. Wiedemann in
bpo-30693.)


C API Changes
=============

A new API for thread-local storage has been implemented.  See PEP 539:
New C API for Thread-Local Storage for an overview and Thread Specific
Storage (TSS) API for a complete reference. (Contributed by Masayuki
Yamamoto in bpo-25658.)

The new context variables functionality exposes a number of new C
APIs.

The new "PyImport_GetModule()" function returns the previously
imported module with the given name. (Contributed by Eric Snow in
bpo-28411.)

The new "Py_RETURN_RICHCOMPARE" macro eases writing rich comparison
functions. (Contributed by Petr Victorin in bpo-23699.)

The new "Py_UNREACHABLE" macro can be used to mark unreachable code
paths. (Contributed by Barry Warsaw in bpo-31338.)

The "tracemalloc" now exposes a C API through the new
"PyTraceMalloc_Track()" and "PyTraceMalloc_Untrack()" functions.
(Contributed by Victor Stinner in bpo-30054.)

The new "import__find__load__start()" and "import__find__load__done()"
static markers can be used to trace module imports. (Contributed by
Christian Heimes in bpo-31574.)

The fields "name" and "doc" of structures "PyMemberDef",
"PyGetSetDef", "PyStructSequence_Field", "PyStructSequence_Desc", and
"wrapperbase" are now of type "const char *" rather of "char *".
(Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-28761.)

The result of "PyUnicode_AsUTF8AndSize()" and "PyUnicode_AsUTF8()" is
now of type "const char *" rather of "char *". (Contributed by Serhiy
Storchaka in bpo-28769.)

The result of "PyMapping_Keys()", "PyMapping_Values()" and
"PyMapping_Items()" is now always a list, rather than a list or a
tuple. (Contributed by Oren Milman in bpo-28280.)

Added functions "PySlice_Unpack()" and "PySlice_AdjustIndices()".
(Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-27867.)

"PyOS_AfterFork()" is deprecated in favour of the new functions
"PyOS_BeforeFork()", "PyOS_AfterFork_Parent()" and
"PyOS_AfterFork_Child()".  (Contributed by Antoine Pitrou in
bpo-16500.)

The "PyExc_RecursionErrorInst" singleton that was part of the public
API has been removed as its members being never cleared may cause a
segfault during finalization of the interpreter. Contributed by Xavier
de Gaye in bpo-22898 and bpo-30697.

Added C API support for timezones with timezone constructors
"PyTimeZone_FromOffset()" and "PyTimeZone_FromOffsetAndName()", and
access to the UTC singleton with "PyDateTime_TimeZone_UTC".
Contributed by Paul Ganssle in bpo-10381.

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

"PyUnicode_AsWideCharString()" now raises a "ValueError" if the second
argument is "NULL" and the *wchar_t** string contains null characters.
(Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-30708.)

Changes to the startup sequence and the management of dynamic memory
allocators mean that the long documented requirement to call
"Py_Initialize()" before calling most C API functions is now relied on
more heavily, and failing to abide by it may lead to segfaults in
embedding applications. See the Porting to Python 3.7 section in this
document and the Before Python Initialization section in the C API
documentation for more details.

The new "PyInterpreterState_GetID()" returns the unique ID for a given
interpreter. (Contributed by Eric Snow in bpo-29102.)

"Py_DecodeLocale()", "Py_EncodeLocale()" now use the UTF-8 encoding
when the UTF-8 mode is enabled. (Contributed by Victor Stinner in
bpo-29240.)

"PyUnicode_DecodeLocaleAndSize()" and "PyUnicode_EncodeLocale()" now
use the current locale encoding for "surrogateescape" error handler.
(Contributed by Victor Stinner in bpo-29240.)

The *start* and *end* parameters of "PyUnicode_FindChar()" are now
adjusted to behave like string slices. (Contributed by Xiang Zhang in
bpo-28822.)


Build Changes
=============

Support for building "--without-threads" has been removed.  The
"threading" module is now always available. (Contributed by Antoine
Pitrou in bpo-31370.).

A full copy of libffi is no longer bundled for use when building the
"_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 bpo-27979.)

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 bpo-30450.)

The "ssl" module requires OpenSSL 1.0.2 or 1.1 compatible libssl.
OpenSSL 1.0.1 has reached end of lifetime on 2016-12-31 and is no
longer supported. LibreSSL is temporarily not supported as well.
LibreSSL releases up to version 2.6.4 are missing required OpenSSL
1.0.2 APIs.


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

The overhead of calling many methods of various standard library
classes implemented in C has been significantly reduced by porting
more code to use the "METH_FASTCALL" convention. (Contributed by
Victor Stinner in bpo-29300, bpo-29507, bpo-29452, and bpo-29286.)

Various optimizations have reduced Python startup time by 10% on Linux
and up to 30% on macOS. (Contributed by Victor Stinner, INADA Naoki in
bpo-29585, and Ivan Levkivskyi in bpo-31333.)

Method calls are now up to 20% faster due to the bytecode changes
which avoid creating bound method instances. (Contributed by Yury
Selivanov and INADA Naoki in bpo-26110.)

The "asyncio" module received a number of notable optimizations for
commonly used functions:

* The "asyncio.get_event_loop()" function has been reimplemented in C
  to make it up to 15 times faster. (Contributed by Yury Selivanov in
  bpo-32296.)

* "asyncio.Future" callback management has been optimized.
  (Contributed by Yury Selivanov in bpo-32348.)

* "asyncio.gather()" is now up to 15% faster. (Contributed by Yury
  Selivanov in bpo-32355.)

* "asyncio.sleep()" is now up to 2 times faster when the *delay*
  argument is zero or negative. (Contributed by Andrew Svetlov in
  bpo-32351.)

* The performance overhead of asyncio debug mode has been reduced.
  (Contributed by Antoine Pitrou in bpo-31970.)

As a result of PEP 560 work, the import time of "typing" has been
reduced by a factor of 7, and many typing operations are now faster.
(Contributed by Ivan Levkivskyi in bpo-32226.)

"sorted()" and "list.sort()" have been optimized for common cases to
be up to 40-75% faster. (Contributed by Elliot Gorokhovsky in
bpo-28685.)

"dict.copy()" is now up to 5.5 times faster. (Contributed by Yury
Selivanov in bpo-31179.)

"hasattr()" and "getattr()" are now about 4 times faster when *name*
is not found and *obj* does not override "object.__getattr__()" or
"object.__getattribute__()". (Contributed by INADA Naoki in
bpo-32544.)

Searching for certain Unicode characters (like Ukrainian capital "Є")
in a string was up to 25 times slower than searching for other
characters. It is now only 3 times slower in the worst case.
(Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-24821.)

The "collections.namedtuple()" factory has been reimplemented to make
the creation of named tuples 4 to 6 times faster. (Contributed by
Jelle Zijlstra with further improvements by INADA Naoki, Serhiy
Storchaka, and Raymond Hettinger in bpo-28638.)

"date.fromordinal()" and "date.fromtimestamp()" are now up to 30%
faster in the common case. (Contributed by Paul Ganssle in bpo-32403.)

The "os.fwalk()" function is now up to 2 times faster thanks to the
use of "os.scandir()". (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-25996.)

The speed of the "shutil.rmtree()" function has been improved by 20--
40% thanks to the use of the "os.scandir()" function. (Contributed by
Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-28564.)

Optimized case-insensitive matching and searching of "regular
expressions".  Searching some patterns can now be up to 20 times
faster. (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-30285.)

"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 by about 10% depending on the pattern. (Contributed by INADA Naoki
in bpo-31671.)

The "modify()" methods of classes "selectors.EpollSelector",
"selectors.PollSelector" and "selectors.DevpollSelector" may be around
10% faster under heavy loads.  (Contributed by Giampaolo Rodola' in
bpo-30014)

Constant folding has been moved from the peephole optimizer to the new
AST optimizer, which is able perform optimizations more consistently.
(Contributed by Eugene Toder and INADA Naoki in bpo-29469 and
bpo-11549.)

Most functions and methods in "abc" have been rewritten in C. This
makes creation of abstract base classes, and calling "isinstance()"
and "issubclass()" on them 1.5x faster.  This also reduces Python
start-up time by up to 10%. (Contributed by Ivan Levkivskyi and INADA
Naoki in bpo-31333)

Significant speed improvements to alternate constructors for
"datetime.date" and "datetime.datetime" by using fast-path
constructors when not constructing subclasses. (Contributed by Paul
Ganssle in bpo-32403)

The speed of comparison of "array.array" instances has been improved
considerably in certain cases.  It is now from 10x to 70x faster when
comparing arrays holding values of the same integer type. (Contributed
by Adrian Wielgosik in bpo-24700.)

The "math.erf()" and "math.erfc()" functions now use the (faster) C
library implementation on most platforms. (Contributed by Serhiy
Storchaka in bpo-26121.)


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

* Trace hooks may now opt out of receiving the "line" and opt into
  receiving the "opcode" events from the interpreter by setting the
  corresponding new "f_trace_lines" and "f_trace_opcodes" attributes
  on the frame being traced. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan in
  bpo-31344.)

* Fixed some consistency problems with namespace package module
  attributes. Namespace module objects now have an "__file__" that is
  set to "None" (previously unset), and their "__spec__.origin" is
  also set to "None" (previously the string ""namespace"").  See
  bpo-32305.  Also, the namespace module object's "__spec__.loader" is
  set to the same value as "__loader__" (previously, the former was
  set to "None").  See bpo-32303.

* The "locals()" dictionary now displays in the lexical order that
  variables were defined.  Previously, the order was undefined.
  (Contributed by Raymond Hettinger in bpo-32690.)

* The "distutils" "upload" command no longer tries to change CR end-
  of-line characters to CRLF.  This fixes a corruption issue with
  sdists that ended with a byte equivalent to CR. (Contributed by Bo
  Bayles in bpo-32304.)


Deprecated Python Behavior
==========================

Yield expressions (both "yield" and "yield from" clauses) are now
deprecated in comprehensions and generator expressions (aside from the
iterable expression in the leftmost "for" clause). This ensures that
comprehensions always immediately return a container of the
appropriate type (rather than potentially returning a *generator
iterator* object), while generator expressions won't attempt to
interleave their implicit output with the output from any explicit
yield expressions.  In Python 3.7, such expressions emit
"DeprecationWarning" when compiled, in Python 3.8 this will be a
"SyntaxError". (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-10544.)

Returning a subclass of "complex" from "object.__complex__()" is
deprecated and will be an error in future Python versions.  This makes
"__complex__()" consistent with "object.__int__()" and
"object.__float__()". (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-28894.)


Deprecated Python modules, functions and methods
================================================


aifc
----

"aifc.openfp()" has been deprecated and will be removed in Python 3.9.
Use "aifc.open()" instead. (Contributed by Brian Curtin in bpo-31985.)


asyncio
-------

Support for directly "await"-ing instances of "asyncio.Lock" and other
asyncio synchronization primitives has been deprecated.  An
asynchronous context manager must be used in order to acquire and
release the synchronization resource. (Contributed by Andrew Svetlov
in bpo-32253.)

The "asyncio.Task.current_task()" and "asyncio.Task.all_tasks()"
methods have been deprecated. (Contributed by Andrew Svetlov in
bpo-32250.)


collections
-----------

In Python 3.8, the abstract base classes in "collections.abc" will no
longer be exposed in the regular "collections" module.  This will help
create a clearer distinction between the concrete classes and the
abstract base classes. (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-25988.)


dbm
---

"dbm.dumb" now supports reading read-only files and no longer writes
the index file when it is not changed.  A deprecation warning is now
emitted if the index file is missing and recreated in the "'r'" and
"'w'" modes (this will be an error in future Python releases).
(Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-28847.)


enum
----

In Python 3.8, attempting to check for non-Enum objects in "Enum"
classes will raise a "TypeError" (e.g. "1 in Color"); similarly,
attempting to check for non-Flag objects in a "Flag" member will raise
"TypeError" (e.g. "1 in Perm.RW"); currently, both operations return
"False" instead. (Contributed by Ethan Furman in bpo-33217.)


gettext
-------

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


importlib
---------

Methods "MetaPathFinder.find_module()" (replaced by
"MetaPathFinder.find_spec()") and "PathEntryFinder.find_loader()"
(replaced by "PathEntryFinder.find_spec()") both deprecated in Python
3.4 now emit "DeprecationWarning". (Contributed by Matthias Bussonnier
in bpo-29576)

The "importlib.abc.ResourceLoader" ABC has been deprecated in favour
of "importlib.abc.ResourceReader".


locale
------

"locale.format()" has been deprecated, use "locale.format_string()"
instead.  (Contributed by Garvit in bpo-10379.)


macpath
-------

The "macpath" is now deprecated and will be removed in Python 3.8.
(Contributed by Chi Hsuan Yen in bpo-9850.)


threading
---------

"dummy_threading" and "_dummy_thread" have been deprecated.  It is no
longer possible to build Python with threading disabled. Use
"threading" instead. (Contributed by Antoine Pitrou in bpo-31370.)


socket
------

The silent argument value truncation in "socket.htons()" and
"socket.ntohs()" has been deprecated.  In future versions of Python,
if the passed argument is larger than 16 bits, an exception will be
raised. (Contributed by Oren Milman in bpo-28332.)


ssl
---

"ssl.wrap_socket()" is deprecated.  Use "ssl.SSLContext.wrap_socket()"
instead. (Contributed by Christian Heimes in bpo-28124.)


sunau
-----

"sunau.openfp()" has been deprecated and will be removed in Python
3.9. Use "sunau.open()" instead. (Contributed by Brian Curtin in
bpo-31985.)


sys
---

Deprecated "sys.set_coroutine_wrapper()" and
"sys.get_coroutine_wrapper()".

The undocumented "sys.callstats()" function has been deprecated and
will be removed in a future Python version. (Contributed by Victor
Stinner in bpo-28799.)


wave
----

"wave.openfp()" has been deprecated and will be removed in Python 3.9.
Use "wave.open()" instead. (Contributed by Brian Curtin in bpo-31985.)


Deprecated functions and types of the C API
===========================================

Function "PySlice_GetIndicesEx()" is deprecated and replaced with a
macro if "Py_LIMITED_API" is not set or set to a value in the range
between "0x03050400" and "0x03060000" (not inclusive), or is
"0x03060100" or higher.  (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in
bpo-27867.)

"PyOS_AfterFork()" has been deprecated.  Use "PyOS_BeforeFork()",
"PyOS_AfterFork_Parent()" or "PyOS_AfterFork_Child()" instead.
(Contributed by Antoine Pitrou in bpo-16500.)


Platform Support Removals
=========================

* FreeBSD 9 and older are no longer officially supported.

* For full Unicode support, including within extension modules, *nix
  platforms are now expected to provide at least one of "C.UTF-8"
  (full locale), "C.utf8" (full locale) or "UTF-8" ("LC_CTYPE"-only
  locale) as an alternative to the legacy "ASCII"-based "C" locale.

* OpenSSL 0.9.8 and 1.0.1 are no longer supported, which means
  building CPython 3.7 with SSL/TLS support on older platforms still
  using these versions requires custom build options that link to a
  more recent version of OpenSSL.

  Notably, this issue affects the Debian 8 (aka "jessie") and Ubuntu
  14.04 (aka "Trusty") LTS Linux distributions, as they still use
  OpenSSL 1.0.1 by default.

  Debian 9 ("stretch") and Ubuntu 16.04 ("xenial"), as well as recent
  releases of other LTS Linux releases (e.g. RHEL/CentOS 7.5, SLES
  12-SP3), use OpenSSL 1.0.2 or later, and remain supported in the
  default build configuration.

  CPython's own CI configuration file provides an example of using the
  SSL compatibility testing infrastructure in CPython's test suite to
  build and link against OpenSSL 1.1.0 rather than an outdated system
  provided OpenSSL.


API and Feature Removals
========================

The following features and APIs have been removed from Python 3.7:

* The "os.stat_float_times()" function has been removed. It was
  introduced in Python 2.3 for backward compatibility with Python 2.2,
  and was deprecated since Python 3.1.

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

* Removed support of the *exclude* argument in
  "tarfile.TarFile.add()". It was deprecated in Python 2.7 and 3.2.
  Use the *filter* argument instead.

* The "splitunc()" function in the "ntpath" module was deprecated in
  Python 3.1, and has now been removed.  Use the "splitdrive()"
  function instead.

* "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 bpo-28638.)

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

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

* The "asyncio.windows_utils.socketpair()" function has been removed.
  Use the "socket.socketpair()" function instead, it is available on
  all platforms since Python 3.5. "asyncio.windows_utils.socketpair"
  was just an alias to "socket.socketpair" on Python 3.5 and newer.

* "asyncio" no longer exports the "selectors" and "_overlapped"
  modules as "asyncio.selectors" and "asyncio._overlapped". Replace
  "from asyncio import selectors" with "import selectors".

* Direct instantiation of "ssl.SSLSocket" and "ssl.SSLObject" objects
  is now prohibited. The constructors were never documented, tested,
  or designed as public constructors.  Users were supposed to use
  "ssl.wrap_socket()" or "ssl.SSLContext". (Contributed by Christian
  Heimes in bpo-32951.)

* The unused "distutils" "install_misc" command has been removed.
  (Contributed by Eric N. Vander Weele in bpo-29218.)


Module Removals
===============

The "fpectl" module has been removed.  It was never enabled by
default, never worked correctly on x86-64, and it changed the Python
ABI in ways that caused unexpected breakage of C extensions.
(Contributed by Nathaniel J. Smith in bpo-29137.)


Windows-only Changes
====================

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
bpo-30291.)

The launcher can be run as "py -0" to produce a list of the installed
pythons, *with default marked with an asterisk*. 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 bpo-30362.)


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

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


Changes in Python Behavior
--------------------------

* "async" and "await" names are now reserved keywords. Code using
  these names as identifiers will now raise a "SyntaxError".
  (Contributed by Jelle Zijlstra in bpo-30406.)

* **PEP 479** is enabled for all code in Python 3.7, meaning that
  "StopIteration" exceptions raised directly or indirectly in
  coroutines and generators are transformed into "RuntimeError"
  exceptions. (Contributed by Yury Selivanov in bpo-32670.)

* "object.__aiter__()" methods can no longer be declared as
  asynchronous.  (Contributed by Yury Selivanov in bpo-31709.)

* Due to an oversight, earlier Python versions erroneously accepted
  the following syntax:

     f(1 for x in [1],)

     class C(1 for x in [1]):
         pass

  Python 3.7 now correctly raises a "SyntaxError", as a generator
  expression always needs to be directly inside a set of parentheses
  and cannot have a comma on either side, and the duplication of the
  parentheses can be omitted only on calls. (Contributed by Serhiy
  Storchaka in bpo-32012 and bpo-32023.)

* When using the "-m" switch, the initial working directory is now
  added to "sys.path", rather than an empty string (which dynamically
  denoted the current working directory at the time of each import).
  Any programs that are checking for the empty string, or otherwise
  relying on the previous behaviour, will need to be updated
  accordingly (e.g. by also checking for "os.getcwd()" or
  "os.path.dirname(__main__.__file__)", depending on why the code was
  checking for the empty string in the first place).


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

* "socketserver.ThreadingMixIn.server_close()" now waits until all
  non-daemon threads complete.  Set the new
  "socketserver.ThreadingMixIn.block_on_close" class attribute to
  "False" to get the pre-3.7 behaviour. (Contributed by Victor Stinner
  in bpo-31233 and bpo-33540.)

* "socketserver.ForkingMixIn.server_close()" now waits until all child
  processes complete. Set the new
  "socketserver.ForkingMixIn.block_on_close" class attribute to
  "False" to get the pre-3.7 behaviour. (Contributed by Victor Stinner
  in bpo-31151 and bpo-33540.)

* The "locale.localeconv()" function now temporarily sets the
  "LC_CTYPE" locale to the value of "LC_NUMERIC" in some cases.
  (Contributed by Victor Stinner in bpo-31900.)

* "pkgutil.walk_packages()" now raises a "ValueError" if *path* is a
  string.  Previously an empty list was returned. (Contributed by
  Sanyam Khurana in bpo-24744.)

* A format string argument for "string.Formatter.format()" is now
  positional-only. Passing it as a keyword argument was deprecated in
  Python 3.5. (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-29193.)

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

* The *mode* argument of "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 bpo-19930.)

* The "struct.Struct.format" type is now "str" instead of "bytes".
  (Contributed by Victor Stinner in bpo-21071.)

* "parse_multipart()" now accepts the *encoding* and *errors*
  arguments and returns the same results as "FieldStorage": for non-
  file fields, the value associated to a key is a list of strings, not
  bytes. (Contributed by Pierre Quentel in bpo-29979.)

* Due to internal changes in "socket", calling "socket.fromshare()" on
  a socket created by "socket.share" in older Python versions is not
  supported.

* "repr" for "BaseException" has changed to not include the trailing
  comma.  Most exceptions are affected by this change. (Contributed by
  Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-30399.)

* "repr" for "datetime.timedelta" has changed to include the keyword
  arguments in the output. (Contributed by Utkarsh Upadhyay in
  bpo-30302.)

* Because "shutil.rmtree()" is now implemented using the
  "os.scandir()" function, the user specified handler *onerror* is now
  called with the first argument "os.scandir" instead of "os.listdir"
  when listing the directory is failed.

* Support for nested sets and set operations in regular expressions as
  in Unicode Technical Standard #18 might be added in the future.
  This would change the syntax.  To facilitate this future change a
  "FutureWarning" will be raised in ambiguous cases for the time
  being. That include sets starting with a literal "'['" or containing
  literal character sequences "'--'", "'&&'", "'~~'", and "'||'".  To
  avoid a warning, escape them with a backslash. (Contributed by
  Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-30349.)

* The result of splitting a string on a "regular expression" that
  could match an empty string has been changed.  For example splitting
  on "r'\s*'" will now split not only on whitespaces as it did
  previously, but also on empty strings before all non-whitespace
  characters and just before the end of the string. The previous
  behavior can be restored by changing the pattern to "r'\s+'".  A
  "FutureWarning" was emitted for such patterns since Python 3.5.

  For patterns that match both empty and non-empty strings, the result
  of searching for all matches may also be changed in other cases.
  For example in the string "'a\n\n'", the pattern "r'(?m)^\s*?$'"
  will not only match empty strings at positions 2 and 3, but also the
  string "'\n'" at positions 2--3.  To match only blank lines, the
  pattern should be rewritten as "r'(?m)^[^\S\n]*$'".

  "re.sub()" now replaces empty matches adjacent to a previous non-
  empty match.  For example "re.sub('x*', '-', 'abxd')" returns now
  "'-a-b--d-'" instead of "'-a-b-d-'" (the first minus between 'b' and
  'd' replaces 'x', and the second minus replaces an empty string
  between 'x' and 'd').

  (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-25054 and bpo-32308.)

* Change "re.escape()" to only escape regex special characters instead
  of escaping all characters other than ASCII letters, numbers, and
  "'_'". (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in bpo-29995.)

* "tracemalloc.Traceback" frames are now sorted from oldest to most
  recent to be more consistent with "traceback". (Contributed by Jesse
  Bakker in bpo-32121.)

* On OSes that support "socket.SOCK_NONBLOCK" or "socket.SOCK_CLOEXEC"
  bit flags, the "socket.type" no longer has them applied. Therefore,
  checks like "if sock.type == socket.SOCK_STREAM" work as expected on
  all platforms. (Contributed by Yury Selivanov in bpo-32331.)

* On Windows the default for the *close_fds* argument of
  "subprocess.Popen" was changed from "False" to "True" when
  redirecting the standard handles. If you previously depended on
  handles being inherited when using "subprocess.Popen" with standard
  io redirection, you will have to pass "close_fds=False" to preserve
  the previous behaviour, or use "STARTUPINFO.lpAttributeList".

* "importlib.machinery.PathFinder.invalidate_caches()" -- which
  implicitly affects "importlib.invalidate_caches()" -- now deletes
  entries in "sys.path_importer_cache" which are set to "None".
  (Contributed by Brett Cannon in bpo-33169.)

* In "asyncio", "loop.sock_recv()", "loop.sock_sendall()",
  "loop.sock_accept()", "loop.getaddrinfo()", "loop.getnameinfo()"
  have been changed to be proper coroutine methods to match their
  documentation.  Previously, these methods returned "asyncio.Future"
  instances. (Contributed by Yury Selivanov in bpo-32327.)

* "asyncio.Server.sockets" now returns a copy of the internal list of
  server sockets, instead of returning it directly. (Contributed by
  Yury Selivanov in bpo-32662.)

* "Struct.format" is now a "str" instance instead of a "bytes"
  instance. (Contributed by Victor Stinner in bpo-21071.)

* "argparse" subparsers can now be made mandatory by passing
  "required=True" to "ArgumentParser.add_subparsers()". (Contributed
  by Anthony Sottile in bpo-26510.)

* "ast.literal_eval()" is now stricter.  Addition and subtraction of
  arbitrary numbers are no longer allowed. (Contributed by Serhiy
  Storchaka in bpo-31778.)

* "Calendar.itermonthdates" will now consistently raise an exception
  when a date falls outside of the "0001-01-01" through "9999-12-31"
  range.  To support applications that cannot tolerate such
  exceptions, the new "Calendar.itermonthdays3" and
  "Calendar.itermonthdays4" can be used. The new methods return tuples
  and are not restricted by the range supported by "datetime.date".
  (Contributed by Alexander Belopolsky in bpo-28292.)

* "collections.ChainMap" now preserves the order of the underlying
  mappings.  (Contributed by Raymond Hettinger in bpo-32792.)

* The "submit()" method of "concurrent.futures.ThreadPoolExecutor" and
  "concurrent.futures.ProcessPoolExecutor" now raises a "RuntimeError"
  if called during interpreter shutdown. (Contributed by Mark Nemec in
  bpo-33097.)

* The "configparser.ConfigParser" constructor now uses "read_dict()"
  to process the default values, making its behavior consistent with
  the rest of the parser.  Non-string keys and values in the defaults
  dictionary are now being implicitly converted to strings.
  (Contributed by James Tocknell in bpo-23835.)

* Several undocumented internal imports were removed. One example is
  that "os.errno" is no longer available; use "import errno" directly
  instead. Note that such undocumented internal imports may be removed
  any time without notice, even in micro version releases.


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

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


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

There are two new opcodes: "LOAD_METHOD" and "CALL_METHOD".
(Contributed by Yury Selivanov and INADA Naoki in bpo-26110.)

The "STORE_ANNOTATION" opcode has been removed. (Contributed by Mark
Shannon in bpo-32550.)


Windows-only Changes
--------------------

The file used to override "sys.path" is now called "<python-
executable>._pth" instead of "'sys.path'". See Finding modules for
more information. (Contributed by Steve Dower in bpo-28137.)


Other CPython implementation changes
------------------------------------

In preparation for potential future changes to the public CPython
runtime initialization API (see **PEP 432** for an initial, but
somewhat outdated, draft), CPython's internal startup and
configuration management logic has been significantly refactored.
While these updates are intended to be entirely transparent to both
embedding applications and users of the regular CPython CLI, they're
being mentioned here as the refactoring changes the internal order of
various operations during interpreter startup, and hence may uncover
previously latent defects, either in embedding applications, or in
CPython itself. (Initially contributed by Nick Coghlan and Eric Snow
as part of bpo-22257, and further updated by Nick, Eric, and Victor
Stinner in a number of other issues). Some known details affected:

* "PySys_AddWarnOptionUnicode()" is not currently usable by embedding
  applications due to the requirement to create a Unicode object prior
  to calling *Py_Initialize*. Use "PySys_AddWarnOption()" instead.

* warnings filters added by an embedding application with
  "PySys_AddWarnOption()" should now more consistently take precedence
  over the default filters set by the interpreter

Due to changes in the way the default warnings filters are configured,
setting "Py_BytesWarningFlag" to a value greater than one is no longer
sufficient to both emit "BytesWarning" messages and have them
converted to exceptions.  Instead, the flag must be set (to cause the
warnings to be emitted in the first place), and an explicit
"error::BytesWarning" warnings filter added to convert them to
exceptions.

Due to a change in the way docstrings are handled by the compiler, the
implicit "return None" in a function body consisting solely of a
docstring is now marked as occurring on the same line as the
docstring, not on the function's header line.

The current exception state has been moved from the frame object to
the co-routine. This simplified the interpreter and fixed a couple of
obscure bugs caused by having swap exception state when entering or
exiting a generator. (Contributed by Mark Shannon in bpo-25612.)


Notable changes in Python 3.7.1
===============================

Starting in 3.7.1, "Py_Initialize()" now consistently reads and
respects all of the same environment settings as "Py_Main()" (in
earlier Python versions, it respected an ill-defined subset of those
environment variables, while in Python 3.7.0 it didn't read any of
them due to bpo-34247). If this behavior is unwanted, set
"Py_IgnoreEnvironmentFlag" to 1 before calling "Py_Initialize()".

In 3.7.1 the C API for Context Variables was updated to use "PyObject"
pointers.  See also bpo-34762.

In 3.7.1 the "tokenize" module now implicitly emits a "NEWLINE" token
when provided with input that does not have a trailing new line.  This
behavior now matches what the C tokenizer does internally.
(Contributed by Ammar Askar in bpo-33899.)


Notable changes in Python 3.7.2
===============================

In 3.7.2, "venv" on Windows no longer copies the original binaries,
but creates redirector scripts named "python.exe" and "pythonw.exe"
instead. This resolves a long standing issue where all virtual
environments would have to be upgraded or recreated with each Python
update. However, note that this release will still require recreation
of virtual environments in order to get the new scripts.


Notable changes in Python 3.7.6
===============================

Due to significant security concerns, the *reuse_address* parameter of
"asyncio.loop.create_datagram_endpoint()" is no longer supported. This
is because of the behavior of the socket option "SO_REUSEADDR" in UDP.
For more details, see the documentation for
"loop.create_datagram_endpoint()". (Contributed by Kyle Stanley,
Antoine Pitrou, and Yury Selivanov in bpo-37228.)
