future 0.9.0

Easy, safe support for Python 2/3 compatibility

future is a comprehensive new compatibility layer between Python 2 and Python 3. It allows you to use a single, clean Python 3.x-compatible codebase to support both Python 2 and Python 3 with minimal overhead.

Notable projects that use future for Python 2/3 compatibility are Mezzanine and xlwt-future.

It is designed to be used as follows:

from __future__ import (absolute_import, division,
                        print_function, unicode_literals)
from future import standard_library
from future.builtins import *     # or explicit imports: str, int, bytes,
                                  # open, super, range, zip, input, etc.

followed by predominantly standard, idiomatic Python 3 code that then runs similarly on Python 2.6/2.7 and Python 3.3+.

On Python 3, the import lines have zero effect.

On Python 2, from future import standard_library installs import hooks to allow renamed and moved standard library modules to be imported from their new Py3 locations. On Python 2, the from future.builtins import * line shadows all builtins with different behaviour in Python 3 versus 2 to provide their Python 3 semantics.

Automatic conversion

An included script called futurize aids in converting code (from either Python 2 or Python 3) to code compatible with both platforms. It is similar to python-modernize but goes further in providing Python 3 compatibility through the use of the backported types and builtin functions in future.

Documentation

See: http://python-future.org

Also see the docstrings for each of these modules for more info:

- future.standard_library
- future.builtins
- future.utils

Credits

Author:

Ed Schofield

Sponsor:

Python Charmers Pty Ltd, Australia, and Python Charmers Pte Ltd, Singapore. http://pythoncharmers.com

Others:

• The backported super() and range() functions are derived from Ryan Kelly’s magicsuper module and Dan Crosta’s xrange module.

• The futurize script uses lib2to3 and fixers from Joe Amenta’s lib3to2 and Armin Ronacher’s python-modernize.

• The python_2_unicode_compatible decorator is from Django. The implements_iterator and with_metaclass decorators are from Jinja2.

• Documentation is generated using sphinx and styled using sphinx-bootstrap-theme.

Licensing

Copyright 2013 Python Charmers Pty Ltd, Australia. The software is distributed under an MIT licence. See LICENSE.txt.