If you’re a regular reader of this site, you’re probably in tune with
what’s going on in the world of Python, in which case I don’t have to
tell you that Python 2.3 was
released last week.
The advantage of reporting news a week late is, I suppose, that I can
take the time to explore it a bit before writing. So I think I can state
firmly that Python 2.3 is very nice. In fact, it has enough improvements and new
modules that I’m seriously considering throwing backwards compatibility
out the window and enthusiastically adopting Python 2.3 for all my current
and future projects.
Some of the new features I’ll be using:
- csv – this could have saved me many hours of work at my day job,
had I known about it 4 months ago.
- datetime – finally, real datetime types, and methods to convert
datetime objects into all the commonly used string formats.
- DocXMLRPCServer – I probably won’t use this directly, as I don’t
think it will integrate with Twisted, but the concept is very cool and I
may be able to port/import some code.
- logging
- optparse – easy command line parsing and –help option printing
- textwrap – utilities for wrapping long lines of text by inserting
line breaks. This will be a big help in the Hep messaging library.
- sets – compare and combine dictionaries without nested-loop
silliness.
For more details on the new features of Python 2.3, see
the Python 2.3
Highlights page, and
>the effbot Python Standard Library New Modules page
.