What's new in Python 3.16
*************************

Editor:
   TBD

This article explains the new features in Python 3.16, compared to
3.15.

For full details, see the changelog.

Note:

  Prerelease users should be aware that this document is currently in
  draft form. It will be updated substantially as Python 3.16 moves
  towards release, so it's worth checking back even after reading
  earlier versions.


Summary --- release highlights
==============================


New features
============


Other language changes
======================


New modules
===========

* None yet.


Improved modules
================


gzip
----

* "gzip.open()" now accepts an optional argument "mtime" which is
  passed on to the constructor of the "GzipFile" class. (Contributed
  by Marin Misur in gh-91372.)


lzma
----

* Add support of new BCJ filters ARM64 and RISC-V via
  "lzma.FILTER_ARM64" and "lzma.FILTER_RISCV".  Note that the new
  filters will work only if runtime library supports them. ARM64
  filter requires "lzma" 5.4.0 or newer while RISC-V requires 5.6.0 or
  newer. (Contributed by Chien Wong in gh-115988.)


os
--

* Add "os.pidfd_getfd()" for duplicating a file descriptor from
  another process via a pidfd.  Available on Linux 5.6+. (Contributed
  by Maurycy Pawłowski-Wieroński in gh-149464.)


xml
---

* Add support for multiple multi-byte encodings in the "XML parser":
  "cp932", "cp949", "cp950", "Big5","EUC-JP", "GB2312", "GBK",
  "johab", and "Shift_JIS". Add partial support (only BMP characters)
  for multi-byte encodings "Big5-HKSCS", "EUC_JIS-2004",
  "EUC_JISX0213", "Shift_JIS-2004", "Shift_JISX0213", "utf-8-sig" and
  non-standard aliases like "UTF8" (without hyphen). The parser now
  raises "ValueError" for known unsupported multi-byte encodings such
  us "ISO-2022-JP" or "raw-unicode-escape" instead of failing later,
  when encounter non-ASCII data. (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in
  gh-62259.)


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


module_name
-----------

* TODO


Removed
=======


annotationlib
-------------

* The "annotationlib.ForwardRef._evaluate()" method which has been
  deprecated since Python 3.14. Use
  "annotationlib.ForwardRef.evaluate()" or
  "typing.evaluate_forward_ref()" instead.


asyncio
-------

* The "asyncio.iscoroutinefunction()" which has been deprecated since
  Python 3.14. Use "inspect.iscoroutinefunction()" instead.


functools
---------

* Calling the Python implementation of "functools.reduce()" with
  *function* or *sequence* as keyword arguments has been deprecated
  since Python 3.14.


logging
-------

* Support for custom logging handlers with the *strm* argument is
  deprecated and scheduled for removal in Python 3.16. Define handlers
  with the *stream* argument instead.


mimetypes
---------

* Valid extensions start with a '.' or are empty for
  "mimetypes.MimeTypes.add_type()". Undotted extensions now raise a
  "ValueError".


shutil
------

* The "ExecError" exception which has been deprecated since Python
  3.14. It has not been used by any function in "shutil" since Python
  3.4. (Contributed by Stan Ulbrych in gh-149567.)


symtable
--------

* The "symtable.Class.get_methods()" method which has been deprecated
  since Python 3.14.


sys
---

* The "_enablelegacywindowsfsencoding()" function which has been
  deprecated since Python 3.13. Use the
  "PYTHONLEGACYWINDOWSFSENCODING" environment variable instead.
  (Contributed by Stan Ulbrych in gh-149595.)


sysconfig
---------

* The "sysconfig.expand_makefile_vars()" function which has been
  deprecated since Python 3.14. Use the "vars" argument of
  "sysconfig.get_paths()" instead. (Contributed by Stan Ulbrych in
  gh-149499.)


tarfile
-------

* The undocumented and unused "tarfile.TarFile.tarfile" attribute has
  been deprecated since Python 3.13.


Deprecated
==========

* "abc"

     * Soft-deprecated since Python 3.3 "abc.abstractclassmethod",
       "abc.abstractstaticmethod", and "abc.abstractproperty" now
       raise a "DeprecationWarning". These classes will be removed in
       Python 3.21, instead use "abc.abstractmethod()" with
       "classmethod()", "staticmethod()", and "property" respectively.

* "ast":

  * Classes "slice", "Index", "ExtSlice", "Suite", "Param", "AugLoad"
    and "AugStore", deprecated since Python 3.9, are no longer
    imported by "from ast import *" and issue a deprecation warning on
    use. The classes are slated for removal in Python 3.21. These
    types are not generated by the parser or accepted by the code
    generator.

  * The "dims" property of "ast.Tuple" objects, deprecated since
    Python 3.9, now issues a deprecation warning on use. This property
    is slated for removal in 3.21. Use "ast.Tuple.elts" instead.


Pending removal in Python 3.17
------------------------------

* "datetime":

  * "strptime()" calls using a format string containing "%e" (day of
    month) without a year. This has been deprecated since Python 3.15.
    (Contributed by Stan Ulbrych in gh-70647.)

* "collections.abc":

  * "collections.abc.ByteString" is scheduled for removal in Python
    3.17.

    Use "isinstance(obj, collections.abc.Buffer)" to test if "obj"
    implements the buffer protocol at runtime. For use in type
    annotations, either use "Buffer" or a union that explicitly
    specifies the types your code supports (e.g., "bytes | bytearray |
    memoryview").

    "ByteString" was originally intended to be an abstract class that
    would serve as a supertype of both "bytes" and "bytearray".
    However, since the ABC never had any methods, knowing that an
    object was an instance of "ByteString" never actually told you
    anything useful about the object. Other common buffer types such
    as "memoryview" were also never understood as subtypes of
    "ByteString" (either at runtime or by static type checkers).

    See **PEP 688** for more details. (Contributed by Shantanu Jain in
    gh-91896.)

* "encodings":

  * Passing non-ascii *encoding* names to
    "encodings.normalize_encoding()" is deprecated and scheduled for
    removal in Python 3.17. (Contributed by Stan Ulbrych in
    gh-136702.)

* "webbrowser":

  * "webbrowser.MacOSXOSAScript" is deprecated in favour of
    "webbrowser.MacOS". (gh-137586)

* "typing":

  * Before Python 3.14, old-style unions were implemented using the
    private class "typing._UnionGenericAlias". This class is no longer
    needed for the implementation, but it has been retained for
    backward compatibility, with removal scheduled for Python 3.17.
    Users should use documented introspection helpers like
    "typing.get_origin()" and "typing.get_args()" instead of relying
    on private implementation details.

  * "typing.ByteString", deprecated since Python 3.9, is scheduled for
    removal in Python 3.17.

    Use "isinstance(obj, collections.abc.Buffer)" to test if "obj"
    implements the buffer protocol at runtime. For use in type
    annotations, either use "Buffer" or a union that explicitly
    specifies the types your code supports (e.g., "bytes | bytearray |
    memoryview").

    "ByteString" was originally intended to be an abstract class that
    would serve as a supertype of both "bytes" and "bytearray".
    However, since the ABC never had any methods, knowing that an
    object was an instance of "ByteString" never actually told you
    anything useful about the object. Other common buffer types such
    as "memoryview" were also never understood as subtypes of
    "ByteString" (either at runtime or by static type checkers).

    See **PEP 688** for more details. (Contributed by Shantanu Jain in
    gh-91896.)


Pending removal in Python 3.19
------------------------------

* "ctypes":

  * Implicitly switching to the MSVC-compatible struct layout by
    setting "_pack_" but not "_layout_" on non-Windows platforms.

* "hashlib":

  * In hash function constructors such as "new()" or the direct hash-
    named constructors such as "md5()" and "sha256()", their optional
    initial data parameter could also be passed a keyword argument
    named "data=" or "string=" in various "hashlib" implementations.

    Support for the "string" keyword argument name is now deprecated
    and slated for removal in Python 3.19.

    Before Python 3.13, the "string" keyword parameter was not
    correctly supported depending on the backend implementation of
    hash functions. Prefer passing the initial data as a positional
    argument for maximum backwards compatibility.

* "http.cookies":

  * "http.cookies.Morsel.js_output()" is deprecated and will be
    removed in Python 3.19.

  * "http.cookies.BaseCookie.js_output()" is deprecated and will be
    removed in Python 3.19.

* "imaplib":

  * Altering "IMAP4.file" is now deprecated and slated for removal in
    Python 3.19. This property is now unused and changing its value
    does not automatically close the current file.

    Before Python 3.14, this property was used to implement the
    corresponding "read()" and "readline()" methods for "IMAP4" but
    this is no longer the case since then.


Pending removal in Python 3.20
------------------------------

* Calling the "__new__()" method of "struct.Struct" without the
  *format* argument is deprecated and will be removed in Python 3.20.
  Calling "__init__()" method on initialized "Struct" objects is
  deprecated and will be removed in Python 3.20.

  (Contributed by Sergey B Kirpichev and Serhiy Storchaka in
  gh-143715.)

* The "__version__", "version" and "VERSION" attributes have been
  deprecated in these standard library modules and will be removed in
  Python 3.20. Use "sys.version_info" instead.

  * "argparse"

  * "csv"

  * "ctypes"

  * "ctypes.macholib"

  * "decimal" (use "decimal.SPEC_VERSION" instead)

  * "http.server"

  * "imaplib"

  * "ipaddress"

  * "json"

  * "logging" ("__date__" also deprecated)

  * "optparse"

  * "pickle"

  * "platform"

  * "re"

  * "socketserver"

  * "tabnanny"

  * "tarfile"

  * "tkinter.font"

  * "tkinter.ttk"

  * "wsgiref.simple_server"

  * "xml.etree.ElementTree"

  * "xml.sax.expatreader"

  * "xml.sax.handler"

  * "zlib"

  (Contributed by Hugo van Kemenade and Stan Ulbrych in gh-76007.)

* Deprecations defined by **PEP 829**:

  * Warnings are produced for "import" lines found in "*name*.pth"
    files.

  * "*name*.pth" files are no longer decoded in the locale encoding by
    default.  They **MUST** be encoded in "utf-8-sig".

  (Contributed by Barry Warsaw in gh-148641.)

* "ast":

  * Creating instances of abstract AST nodes (such as "ast.AST" or
    "ast.expr") is deprecated and will raise an error in Python 3.20.


Pending removal in future versions
----------------------------------

The following APIs will be removed in the future, although there is
currently no date scheduled for their removal.

* "argparse":

  * Nesting argument groups and nesting mutually exclusive groups are
    deprecated.

  * Passing the undocumented keyword argument *prefix_chars* to
    "add_argument_group()" is now deprecated.

  * The "argparse.FileType" type converter is deprecated.

* "builtins":

  * Generators: "throw(type, exc, tb)" and "athrow(type, exc, tb)"
    signature is deprecated: use "throw(exc)" and "athrow(exc)"
    instead, the single argument signature.

  * Currently Python accepts numeric literals immediately followed by
    keywords, for example "0in x", "1or x", "0if 1else 2".  It allows
    confusing and ambiguous expressions like "[0x1for x in y]" (which
    can be interpreted as "[0x1 for x in y]" or "[0x1f or x in y]").
    A syntax warning is raised if the numeric literal is immediately
    followed by one of keywords "and", "else", "for", "if", "in", "is"
    and "or".  In a future release it will be changed to a syntax
    error. (gh-87999)

  * Support for "__index__()" and "__int__()" method returning non-int
    type: these methods will be required to return an instance of a
    strict subclass of "int".

  * Support for "__float__()" method returning a strict subclass of
    "float": these methods will be required to return an instance of
    "float".

  * Support for "__complex__()" method returning a strict subclass of
    "complex": these methods will be required to return an instance of
    "complex".

  * Passing a complex number as the *real* or *imag* argument in the
    "complex()" constructor is now deprecated; it should only be
    passed as a single positional argument. (Contributed by Serhiy
    Storchaka in gh-109218.)

* "calendar": "calendar.January" and "calendar.February" constants are
  deprecated and replaced by "calendar.JANUARY" and
  "calendar.FEBRUARY". (Contributed by Prince Roshan in gh-103636.)

* "codecs": use "open()" instead of "codecs.open()". (gh-133038)

* "codeobject.co_lnotab": use the "codeobject.co_lines()" method
  instead.

* "datetime":

  * "utcnow()": use "datetime.datetime.now(tz=datetime.UTC)".

  * "utcfromtimestamp()": use
    "datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(timestamp, tz=datetime.UTC)".

* "gettext": Plural value must be an integer.

* "importlib":

  * "cache_from_source()" *debug_override* parameter is deprecated:
    use the *optimization* parameter instead.

* "importlib.metadata":

  * "EntryPoints" tuple interface.

  * Implicit "None" on return values.

* "logging": the "warn()" method has been deprecated since Python 3.3,
  use "warning()" instead.

* "mailbox": Use of StringIO input and text mode is deprecated, use
  BytesIO and binary mode instead.

* "os": Calling "os.register_at_fork()" in a multi-threaded process.

* "os.path": "os.path.commonprefix()" is deprecated, use
  "os.path.commonpath()" for path prefixes. The
  "os.path.commonprefix()" function is being deprecated due to having
  a misleading name and module. The function is not safe to use for
  path prefixes despite being included in a module about path
  manipulation, meaning it is easy to accidentally introduce path
  traversal vulnerabilities into Python programs by using this
  function.

* "pydoc.ErrorDuringImport": A tuple value for *exc_info* parameter is
  deprecated, use an exception instance.

* "re": More strict rules are now applied for numerical group
  references and group names in regular expressions.  Only sequence of
  ASCII digits is now accepted as a numerical reference.  The group
  name in bytes patterns and replacement strings can now only contain
  ASCII letters and digits and underscore. (Contributed by Serhiy
  Storchaka in gh-91760.)

* "shutil": "rmtree()"'s *onerror* parameter is deprecated in Python
  3.12; use the *onexc* parameter instead.

* "ssl" options and protocols:

  * "ssl.SSLContext" without protocol argument is deprecated.

  * "ssl.SSLContext": "set_npn_protocols()" and
    "selected_npn_protocol()" are deprecated: use ALPN instead.

  * "ssl.OP_NO_SSL*" options

  * "ssl.OP_NO_TLS*" options

  * "ssl.PROTOCOL_SSLv3"

  * "ssl.PROTOCOL_TLS"

  * "ssl.PROTOCOL_TLSv1"

  * "ssl.PROTOCOL_TLSv1_1"

  * "ssl.PROTOCOL_TLSv1_2"

  * "ssl.TLSVersion.SSLv3"

  * "ssl.TLSVersion.TLSv1"

  * "ssl.TLSVersion.TLSv1_1"

* "threading" methods:

  * "threading.Condition.notifyAll()": use "notify_all()".

  * "threading.Event.isSet()": use "is_set()".

  * "threading.Thread.isDaemon()", "threading.Thread.setDaemon()": use
    "threading.Thread.daemon" attribute.

  * "threading.Thread.getName()", "threading.Thread.setName()": use
    "threading.Thread.name" attribute.

  * "threading.currentThread()": use "threading.current_thread()".

  * "threading.activeCount()": use "threading.active_count()".

* "typing.Text" (gh-92332).

* The internal class "typing._UnionGenericAlias" is no longer used to
  implement "typing.Union". To preserve compatibility with users using
  this private class, a compatibility shim will be provided until at
  least Python 3.17. (Contributed by Jelle Zijlstra in gh-105499.)

* "unittest.IsolatedAsyncioTestCase": it is deprecated to return a
  value that is not "None" from a test case.

* "urllib.parse" deprecated functions: "urlparse()" instead

  * "splitattr()"

  * "splithost()"

  * "splitnport()"

  * "splitpasswd()"

  * "splitport()"

  * "splitquery()"

  * "splittag()"

  * "splittype()"

  * "splituser()"

  * "splitvalue()"

  * "to_bytes()"

* "wsgiref": "SimpleHandler.stdout.write()" should not do partial
  writes.

* "xml.etree.ElementTree": Testing the truth value of an "Element" is
  deprecated. In a future release it will always return "True". Prefer
  explicit "len(elem)" or "elem is not None" tests instead.

* "sys._clear_type_cache()" is deprecated: use
  "sys._clear_internal_caches()" instead.


Porting to Python 3.16
======================

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


Build changes
=============

* Remove the bundled copy of the libmpdec decimal library from the
  CPython source tree to simplify maintenence and updates. The
  "decimal" module will now unconditionally use the system's libmpdec
  decimal library. Also remove the now unused "--with-system-libmpdec"
  **configure** flag. This change has no impact on binary releases of
  Python, which have been built against a separate copy of libmpdec
  for the past several releases.

  (Contributed by Sergey B Kirpichev in gh-115119.)

* Add a "--with-build-details-suffix" configure flag to allow Linux
  distributions that co-install multiple versions of Python in the
  same tree to avoid "build-details.json" clashes.

  (Contributed by Stefano Rivera in gh-131372.)


C API changes
=============


New features
------------

* TODO


Porting to Python 3.16
----------------------

* TODO


Deprecated C APIs
-----------------

* TODO


Removed C APIs
--------------
