**************************** What's New In Python 3.7 **************************** :Release: |release| :Date: |today| .. Rules for maintenance: * Anyone can add text to this document. Do not spend very much time on the wording of your changes, because your text will probably get rewritten to some degree. * The maintainer will go through Misc/NEWS periodically and add changes; it's therefore more important to add your changes to Misc/NEWS than to this file. * This is not a complete list of every single change; completeness is the purpose of Misc/NEWS. Some changes I consider too small or esoteric to include. If such a change is added to the text, I'll just remove it. (This is another reason you shouldn't spend too much time on writing your addition.) * If you want to draw your new text to the attention of the maintainer, add 'XXX' to the beginning of the paragraph or section. * It's OK to just add a fragmentary note about a change. For example: "XXX Describe the transmogrify() function added to the socket module." The maintainer will research the change and write the necessary text. * You can comment out your additions if you like, but it's not necessary (especially when a final release is some months away). * Credit the author of a patch or bugfix. Just the name is sufficient; the e-mail address isn't necessary. * It's helpful to add the bug/patch number as a comment: XXX Describe the transmogrify() function added to the socket module. (Contributed by P.Y. Developer in :issue:`12345`.) This saves the maintainer the effort of going through the Mercurial log when researching a change. This article explains the new features in Python 3.7, compared to 3.6. For full details, see the :ref:`changelog `. .. note:: Prerelease users should be aware that this document is currently in draft form. It will be updated substantially as Python 3.7 moves towards release, so it's worth checking back even after reading earlier versions. Summary -- Release highlights ============================= .. This section singles out the most important changes in Python 3.7. Brevity is key. .. PEP-sized items next. New Features ============ Other Language Changes ====================== * 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 :issue:`12844` and :issue:`18896`.) * :meth:`bytes.fromhex` and :meth:`bytearray.fromhex` now ignore all ASCII whitespace, not only spaces. (Contributed by Robert Xiao in :issue:`28927`.) New Modules =========== * None yet. Improved Modules ================ unittest.mock ------------- The :const:`~unittest.mock.sentinel` attributes now preserve their identity when they are :mod:`copied ` or :mod:`pickled `. (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`20804`.) Optimizations ============= * Added two new opcodes: ``LOAD_METHOD`` and ``CALL_METHOD`` to avoid instantiation of bound method objects for method calls, which results in method calls being faster up to 20%. (Contributed by Yury Selivanov and INADA Naoki in :issue:`26110`.) Build and C API Changes ======================= * A full copy of libffi is no longer bundled for use when building the :mod:`_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 :issue:`27979`. * The fields :c:member:`name` and :c:member:`doc` of structures :c:type:`PyMemberDef`, :c:type:`PyGetSetDef`, :c:type:`PyStructSequence_Field`, :c:type:`PyStructSequence_Desc`, and :c:type:`wrapperbase` are now of type ``const char *`` rather of ``char *``. (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`28761`.) * The result of :c:func:`PyUnicode_AsUTF8AndSize` and :c:func:`PyUnicode_AsUTF8` is now of type ``const char *`` rather of ``char *``. (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`28769`.) * Added functions :c:func:`PySlice_Unpack` and :c:func:`PySlice_AdjustIndices`. (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`27867`.) Deprecated ========== - Function :c:func:`PySlice_GetIndicesEx` is deprecated and replaced with a macro if ``Py_LIMITED_API`` is not set or set to the value between ``0x03050400`` and ``0x03060000`` (not including) or ``0x03060100`` or higher. (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`27867`.) Removed ======= API and Feature Removals ------------------------ * Unknown escapes consisting of ``'\'`` and an ASCII letter in replacement templates for :func:`re.sub` were deprecated in Python 3.5, and will now cause an error. * Removed support of the *exclude* argument in :meth:`tarfile.TarFile.add`. It was deprecated in Python 2.7 and 3.2. Use the *filter* argument instead. * The ``splitunc()`` function in the :mod:`ntpath` module was deprecated in Python 3.1, and has now been removed. Use the :func:`~os.path.splitdrive` function instead. Porting to Python 3.7 ===================== This section lists previously described changes and other bugfixes that may require changes to your code. Changes in the Python API ------------------------- * A format string argument for :meth:`string.Formatter.format` is now :ref:`positional-only `. Passing it as a keyword argument was deprecated in Python 3.5. (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`29193`.) * Attributes :attr:`~http.cookies.Morsel.key`, :attr:`~http.cookies.Morsel.value` and :attr:`~http.cookies.Morsel.coded_value` of class :class:`http.cookies.Morsel` are now read-only. Assigning to them was deprecated in Python 3.5. Use the :meth:`~http.cookies.Morsel.set` method for setting them. (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :issue:`29192`.) CPython bytecode changes ------------------------ * Added two new opcodes: :opcode:`LOAD_METHOD` and :opcode:`CALL_METHOD`. (Contributed by Yury Selivanov and INADA Naoki in :issue:`26110`.)