[Python-Dev] Common subset of python 2 and python 3 (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Sun Jan 12 14:58:09 CET 2014

On 12 Jan 2014 23:39, "Nachshon David Armon" <nachshon.armon at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, I am Nachshon and this is my first post to the python mailing list. I have been porting some libraries from python 2 to python 3 recently with the goal of a common codebase that will run on both versions. I was thinking it would make my life, and a lot of other developers as well, a lot easier if there were a version of python that supported ONLY the features found both in python 2 and python 3. It should be a developer only version of python. It should use unicode strings and require that people use the from future syntax so that anything written in it will work in python 2.7 and in python 3.3+. Regarding name changes of standard library modules it should support the new stuff and have helper functions and guides that make the old modules likethe new ones. it should encourage using backports of the new standard library modules like enum so that developers are not stuck for features. I propose that this new version of python use the python 3 unicode model. As the version of python will be fully compatible with both python 2 and with python 3 but NOT necsesarily with all existing code in either. It is designed as a porting tool only.

Ah, I missed this on the first read through - that combination of requirements doesn't quite make sense (the text models are fundamentally incompatible in a way that forces developers to resolve ambiguities that Python 2 would silently tolerate until it hit a bad combination of input data).

You may want to take a look at the "python-future" project - that comes as close as anything else I am aware of to allowing you to write Python 2 code that reads like idiomatic Python 3 code.

Cheers, Nick.

I suggest that this new python version should be called python 2 and 9 tenths. Is it worth it for me to write a pep that suggests this?

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