Python-Dev October 2017

python-dev@python.org

76 participants
47 discussions

by barry＠zope.com

It has been a while since I posted a copy of PEP 1 to the mailing lists and newsgroups. I've recently done some updating of a few sections, so in the interest of gaining wider community participation in the Python development process, I'm posting the latest revision of PEP 1 here. A version of the PEP is always available on-line at http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0001.html Enjoy, -Barry -------------------- snip snip -------------------- PEP: 1 Title: PEP Purpose and Guidelines Version: $Revision: 1.36 $ Last-Modified: $Date: 2002/07/29 18:34:59 $ Author: Barry A. Warsaw, Jeremy Hylton Status: Active Type: Informational Created: 13-Jun-2000 Post-History: 21-Mar-2001, 29-Jul-2002 What is a PEP? PEP stands for Python Enhancement Proposal. A PEP is a design document providing information to the Python community, or describing a new feature for Python. The PEP should provide a concise technical specification of the feature and a rationale for the feature. We intend PEPs to be the primary mechanisms for proposing new features, for collecting community input on an issue, and for documenting the design decisions that have gone into Python. The PEP author is responsible for building consensus within the community and documenting dissenting opinions. Because the PEPs are maintained as plain text files under CVS control, their revision history is the historical record of the feature proposal[1]. Kinds of PEPs There are two kinds of PEPs. A standards track PEP describes a new feature or implementation for Python. An informational PEP describes a Python design issue, or provides general guidelines or information to the Python community, but does not propose a new feature. Informational PEPs do not necessarily represent a Python community consensus or recommendation, so users and implementors are free to ignore informational PEPs or follow their advice. PEP Work Flow The PEP editor, Barry Warsaw <peps(a)python.org>, assigns numbers for each PEP and changes its status. The PEP process begins with a new idea for Python. It is highly recommended that a single PEP contain a single key proposal or new idea. The more focussed the PEP, the more successfully it tends to be. The PEP editor reserves the right to reject PEP proposals if they appear too unfocussed or too broad. If in doubt, split your PEP into several well-focussed ones. Each PEP must have a champion -- someone who writes the PEP using the style and format described below, shepherds the discussions in the appropriate forums, and attempts to build community consensus around the idea. The PEP champion (a.k.a. Author) should first attempt to ascertain whether the idea is PEP-able. Small enhancements or patches often don't need a PEP and can be injected into the Python development work flow with a patch submission to the SourceForge patch manager[2] or feature request tracker[3]. The PEP champion then emails the PEP editor <peps(a)python.org> with a proposed title and a rough, but fleshed out, draft of the PEP. This draft must be written in PEP style as described below. If the PEP editor approves, he will assign the PEP a number, label it as standards track or informational, give it status 'draft', and create and check-in the initial draft of the PEP. The PEP editor will not unreasonably deny a PEP. Reasons for denying PEP status include duplication of effort, being technically unsound, not providing proper motivation or addressing backwards compatibility, or not in keeping with the Python philosophy. The BDFL (Benevolent Dictator for Life, Guido van Rossum) can be consulted during the approval phase, and is the final arbitrator of the draft's PEP-ability. If a pre-PEP is rejected, the author may elect to take the pre-PEP to the comp.lang.python newsgroup (a.k.a. python-list(a)python.org mailing list) to help flesh it out, gain feedback and consensus from the community at large, and improve the PEP for re-submission. The author of the PEP is then responsible for posting the PEP to the community forums, and marshaling community support for it. As updates are necessary, the PEP author can check in new versions if they have CVS commit permissions, or can email new PEP versions to the PEP editor for committing. Standards track PEPs consists of two parts, a design document and a reference implementation. The PEP should be reviewed and accepted before a reference implementation is begun, unless a reference implementation will aid people in studying the PEP. Standards Track PEPs must include an implementation - in the form of code, patch, or URL to same - before it can be considered Final. PEP authors are responsible for collecting community feedback on a PEP before submitting it for review. A PEP that has not been discussed on python-list(a)python.org and/or python-dev(a)python.org will not be accepted. However, wherever possible, long open-ended discussions on public mailing lists should be avoided. Strategies to keep the discussions efficient include, setting up a separate SIG mailing list for the topic, having the PEP author accept private comments in the early design phases, etc. PEP authors should use their discretion here. Once the authors have completed a PEP, they must inform the PEP editor that it is ready for review. PEPs are reviewed by the BDFL and his chosen consultants, who may accept or reject a PEP or send it back to the author(s) for revision. Once a PEP has been accepted, the reference implementation must be completed. When the reference implementation is complete and accepted by the BDFL, the status will be changed to `Final.' A PEP can also be assigned status `Deferred.' The PEP author or editor can assign the PEP this status when no progress is being made on the PEP. Once a PEP is deferred, the PEP editor can re-assign it to draft status. A PEP can also be `Rejected'. Perhaps after all is said and done it was not a good idea. It is still important to have a record of this fact. PEPs can also be replaced by a different PEP, rendering the original obsolete. This is intended for Informational PEPs, where version 2 of an API can replace version 1. PEP work flow is as follows: Draft -> Accepted -> Final -> Replaced ^ +----> Rejected v Deferred Some informational PEPs may also have a status of `Active' if they are never meant to be completed. E.g. PEP 1. What belongs in a successful PEP? Each PEP should have the following parts: 1. Preamble -- RFC822 style headers containing meta-data about the PEP, including the PEP number, a short descriptive title (limited to a maximum of 44 characters), the names, and optionally the contact info for each author, etc. 2. Abstract -- a short (~200 word) description of the technical issue being addressed. 3. Copyright/public domain -- Each PEP must either be explicitly labelled as placed in the public domain (see this PEP as an example) or licensed under the Open Publication License[4]. 4. Specification -- The technical specification should describe the syntax and semantics of any new language feature. The specification should be detailed enough to allow competing, interoperable implementations for any of the current Python platforms (CPython, JPython, Python .NET). 5. Motivation -- The motivation is critical for PEPs that want to change the Python language. It should clearly explain why the existing language specification is inadequate to address the problem that the PEP solves. PEP submissions without sufficient motivation may be rejected outright. 6. Rationale -- The rationale fleshes out the specification by describing what motivated the design and why particular design decisions were made. It should describe alternate designs that were considered and related work, e.g. how the feature is supported in other languages. The rationale should provide evidence of consensus within the community and discuss important objections or concerns raised during discussion. 7. Backwards Compatibility -- All PEPs that introduce backwards incompatibilities must include a section describing these incompatibilities and their severity. The PEP must explain how the author proposes to deal with these incompatibilities. PEP submissions without a sufficient backwards compatibility treatise may be rejected outright. 8. Reference Implementation -- The reference implementation must be completed before any PEP is given status 'Final,' but it need not be completed before the PEP is accepted. It is better to finish the specification and rationale first and reach consensus on it before writing code. The final implementation must include test code and documentation appropriate for either the Python language reference or the standard library reference. PEP Template PEPs are written in plain ASCII text, and should adhere to a rigid style. There is a Python script that parses this style and converts the plain text PEP to HTML for viewing on the web[5]. PEP 9 contains a boilerplate[7] template you can use to get started writing your PEP. Each PEP must begin with an RFC822 style header preamble. The headers must appear in the following order. Headers marked with `*' are optional and are described below. All other headers are required. PEP: <pep number> Title: <pep title> Version: <cvs version string> Last-Modified: <cvs date string> Author: <list of authors' real names and optionally, email addrs> * Discussions-To: <email address> Status: <Draft | Active | Accepted | Deferred | Final | Replaced> Type: <Informational | Standards Track> * Requires: <pep numbers> Created: <date created on, in dd-mmm-yyyy format> * Python-Version: <version number> Post-History: <dates of postings to python-list and python-dev> * Replaces: <pep number> * Replaced-By: <pep number> The Author: header lists the names and optionally, the email addresses of all the authors/owners of the PEP. The format of the author entry should be address(a)dom.ain (Random J. User) if the email address is included, and just Random J. User if the address is not given. If there are multiple authors, each should be on a separate line following RFC 822 continuation line conventions. Note that personal email addresses in PEPs will be obscured as a defense against spam harvesters. Standards track PEPs must have a Python-Version: header which indicates the version of Python that the feature will be released with. Informational PEPs do not need a Python-Version: header. While a PEP is in private discussions (usually during the initial Draft phase), a Discussions-To: header will indicate the mailing list or URL where the PEP is being discussed. No Discussions-To: header is necessary if the PEP is being discussed privately with the author, or on the python-list or python-dev email mailing lists. Note that email addresses in the Discussions-To: header will not be obscured. Created: records the date that the PEP was assigned a number, while Post-History: is used to record the dates of when new versions of the PEP are posted to python-list and/or python-dev. Both headers should be in dd-mmm-yyyy format, e.g. 14-Aug-2001. PEPs may have a Requires: header, indicating the PEP numbers that this PEP depends on. PEPs may also have a Replaced-By: header indicating that a PEP has been rendered obsolete by a later document; the value is the number of the PEP that replaces the current document. The newer PEP must have a Replaces: header containing the number of the PEP that it rendered obsolete. PEP Formatting Requirements PEP headings must begin in column zero and the initial letter of each word must be capitalized as in book titles. Acronyms should be in all capitals. The body of each section must be indented 4 spaces. Code samples inside body sections should be indented a further 4 spaces, and other indentation can be used as required to make the text readable. You must use two blank lines between the last line of a section's body and the next section heading. You must adhere to the Emacs convention of adding two spaces at the end of every sentence. You should fill your paragraphs to column 70, but under no circumstances should your lines extend past column 79. If your code samples spill over column 79, you should rewrite them. Tab characters must never appear in the document at all. A PEP should include the standard Emacs stanza included by example at the bottom of this PEP. A PEP must contain a Copyright section, and it is strongly recommended to put the PEP in the public domain. When referencing an external web page in the body of a PEP, you should include the title of the page in the text, with a footnote reference to the URL. Do not include the URL in the body text of the PEP. E.g. Refer to the Python Language web site [1] for more details. ... [1] http://www.python.org When referring to another PEP, include the PEP number in the body text, such as "PEP 1". The title may optionally appear. Add a footnote reference that includes the PEP's title and author. It may optionally include the explicit URL on a separate line, but only in the References section. Note that the pep2html.py script will calculate URLs automatically, e.g.: ... Refer to PEP 1 [7] for more information about PEP style ... References [7] PEP 1, PEP Purpose and Guidelines, Warsaw, Hylton http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0001.html If you decide to provide an explicit URL for a PEP, please use this as the URL template: http://www.python.org/peps/pep-xxxx.html PEP numbers in URLs must be padded with zeros from the left, so as to be exactly 4 characters wide, however PEP numbers in text are never padded. Reporting PEP Bugs, or Submitting PEP Updates How you report a bug, or submit a PEP update depends on several factors, such as the maturity of the PEP, the preferences of the PEP author, and the nature of your comments. For the early draft stages of the PEP, it's probably best to send your comments and changes directly to the PEP author. For more mature, or finished PEPs you may want to submit corrections to the SourceForge bug manager[6] or better yet, the SourceForge patch manager[2] so that your changes don't get lost. If the PEP author is a SF developer, assign the bug/patch to him, otherwise assign it to the PEP editor. When in doubt about where to send your changes, please check first with the PEP author and/or PEP editor. PEP authors who are also SF committers, can update the PEPs themselves by using "cvs commit" to commit their changes. Remember to also push the formatted PEP text out to the web by doing the following: % python pep2html.py -i NUM where NUM is the number of the PEP you want to push out. See % python pep2html.py --help for details. Transferring PEP Ownership It occasionally becomes necessary to transfer ownership of PEPs to a new champion. In general, we'd like to retain the original author as a co-author of the transferred PEP, but that's really up to the original author. A good reason to transfer ownership is because the original author no longer has the time or interest in updating it or following through with the PEP process, or has fallen off the face of the 'net (i.e. is unreachable or not responding to email). A bad reason to transfer ownership is because you don't agree with the direction of the PEP. We try to build consensus around a PEP, but if that's not possible, you can always submit a competing PEP. If you are interested assuming ownership of a PEP, send a message asking to take over, addressed to both the original author and the PEP editor <peps(a)python.org>. If the original author doesn't respond to email in a timely manner, the PEP editor will make a unilateral decision (it's not like such decisions can be reversed. :). References and Footnotes [1] This historical record is available by the normal CVS commands for retrieving older revisions. For those without direct access to the CVS tree, you can browse the current and past PEP revisions via the SourceForge web site at http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/python/nondist/peps/?cvsroot=… [2] http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=5470&atid=305470 [3] http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=355470&group_id=5470&func=browse [4] http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/ [5] The script referred to here is pep2html.py, which lives in the same directory in the CVS tree as the PEPs themselves. Try "pep2html.py --help" for details. The URL for viewing PEPs on the web is http://www.python.org/peps/ [6] http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=5470&atid=305470 [7] PEP 9, Sample PEP Template http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0009.html Copyright This document has been placed in the public domain. Local Variables: mode: indented-text indent-tabs-mode: nil sentence-end-double-space: t fill-column: 70 End:

2 months, 1 week

congrats on 3.5! Alas, windows 7 users are having problems installing it

by Laura Creighton

webmaster has already heard from 4 people who cannot install it. I sent them to the bug tracker or to python-list but they seem not to have gone either place. Is there some guide I should be sending them to, 'how to debug installation problems'? Laura

1 year, 10 months

Python startup time

by Victor Stinner

Hi, On Twitter, Raymond Hettinger wrote: "The decision making process on Python-dev is an anti-pattern, governed by anecdotal data and ambiguity over what problem is solved." https://twitter.com/raymondh/status/887069454693158912 About "anecdotal data", I would like to discuss the Python startup time. == Python 3.7 compared to 2.7 == First of all, on speed.python.org, we have: * Python 2.7: 6.4 ms with site, 3.0 ms without site (-S) * master (3.7): 14.5 ms with site, 8.4 ms without site (-S) Python 3.7 startup time is 2.3x slower with site (default mode), or 2.8x slower without site (-S command line option). (I will skip Python 3.4, 3.5 and 3.6 which are much worse than Python 3.7...) So if an user complained about Python 2.7 startup time: be prepared for a 2x - 3x more angry user when "forced" to upgrade to Python 3! == Mercurial vs Git, Python vs C, startup time == Startup time matters a lot for Mercurial since Mercurial is compared to Git. Git and Mercurial have similar features, but Git is written in C whereas Mercurial is written in Python. Quick benchmark on the speed.python.org server: * hg version: 44.6 ms +- 0.2 ms * git --version: 974 us +- 7 us Mercurial startup time is already 45.8x slower than Git whereas tested Mercurial runs on Python 2.7.12. Now try to sell Python 3 to Mercurial developers, with a startup time 2x - 3x slower... I tested Mecurial 3.7.3 and Git 2.7.4 on Ubuntu 16.04.1 using "python3 -m perf command -- ...". == CPython core developers don't care? no, they do care == Christian Heimes, Naoki INADA, Serhiy Storchaka, Yury Selivanov, me (Victor Stinner) and other core developers made multiple changes last years to reduce the number of imports at startup, optimize impotlib, etc. IHMO all these core developers are well aware of the competition of programming languages, and honesty Python startup time isn't "good". So let's compare it to other programming languages similar to Python. == PHP, Ruby, Perl == I measured the startup time of other programming languages which are similar to Python, still on the speed.python.org server using "python3 -m perf command -- ...": * perl -e ' ': 1.18 ms +- 0.01 ms * php -r ' ': 8.57 ms +- 0.05 ms * ruby -e ' ': 32.8 ms +- 0.1 ms Wow, Perl is quite good! PHP seems as good as Python 2 (but Python 3 is worse). Ruby startup time seems less optimized than other languages. Tested versions: * perl 5, version 22, subversion 1 (v5.22.1) * PHP 7.0.18-0ubuntu0.16.04.1 (cli) ( NTS ) * ruby 2.3.1p112 (2016-04-26) [x86_64-linux-gnu] == Quick Google search == I also searched for "python startup time" and "python slow startup time" on Google and found many articles. Some examples: "Reducing the Python startup time" http://www.draketo.de/book/export/html/498 => "The python startup time always nagged me (17-30ms) and I just searched again for a way to reduce it, when I found this: The Python-Launcher caches GTK imports and forks new processes to reduce the startup time of python GUI programs." https://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/python-startup-time/ => "Wow, Python startup time is worse than I thought." "How to speed up python starting up and/or reduce file search while loading libraries?" https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15474160/how-to-speed-up-python-startin… => "The first time I log to the system and start one command it takes 6 seconds just to show a few line of help. If I immediately issue the same command again it takes 0.1s. After a couple of minutes it gets back to 6s. (proof of short-lived cache)" "How does one optimise the startup of a Python script/program?" https://www.quora.com/How-does-one-optimise-the-startup-of-a-Python-script-… => "I wrote a Python program that would be used very often (imagine 'cd' or 'ls') for very short runtimes, how would I make it start up as fast as possible?" "Python Interpreter Startup time" https://bytes.com/topic/python/answers/34469-pyhton-interpreter-startup-time "Python is very slow to start on Windows 7" https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29997274/python-is-very-slow-to-start-o… => "Python takes 17 times longer to load on my Windows 7 machine than Ubuntu 14.04 running on a VM" => "returns in 0.614s on Windows and 0.036s on Linux" "How to make a fast command line tool in Python" (old article Python 2.5.2) https://files.bemusement.org/talks/OSDC2008-FastPython/ => "(...) some techniques Bazaar uses to start quickly, such as lazy imports." -- So please continue efforts for make Python startup even faster to beat all other programming languages, and finally convince Mercurial to upgrade ;-) Victor

2 years, 9 months

iso8601 parsing

by Mike Miller

Hi, Could anyone put this five year-old bug about parsing iso8601 format date-times on the front burner? http://bugs.python.org/issue15873 In the comments there's a lot of hand-wringing about different variations that bogged it down, but right now I only need it to handle the output of datetime.isoformat(): >>> dt.isoformat() '2017-10-20T08:20:08.986166+00:00' Perhaps if we could get that minimum first step in, it could be iterated on and made more lenient in the future. Thank you, -Mike

3 years, 7 months

PEP 559 - built-in noop()

by Barry Warsaw

I couldn’t resist one more PEP from the Core sprint. I won’t reveal where or how this one came to me. -Barry PEP: 559 Title: Built-in noop() Author: Barry Warsaw <barry(a)python.org> Status: Draft Type: Standards Track Content-Type: text/x-rst Created: 2017-09-08 Python-Version: 3.7 Post-History: 2017-09-09 Abstract ======== This PEP proposes adding a new built-in function called ``noop()`` which does nothing but return ``None``. Rationale ========= It is trivial to implement a no-op function in Python. It's so easy in fact that many people do it many times over and over again. It would be useful in many cases to have a common built-in function that does nothing. One use case would be for PEP 553, where you could set the breakpoint environment variable to the following in order to effectively disable it:: $ setenv PYTHONBREAKPOINT=noop Implementation ============== The Python equivalent of the ``noop()`` function is exactly:: def noop(*args, **kws): return None The C built-in implementation is available as a pull request. Rejected alternatives ===================== ``noop()`` returns something ---------------------------- YAGNI. This is rejected because it complicates the semantics. For example, if you always return both ``*args`` and ``**kws``, what do you return when none of those are given? Returning a tuple of ``((), {})`` is kind of ugly, but provides consistency. But you might also want to just return ``None`` since that's also conceptually what the function was passed. Or, what if you pass in exactly one positional argument, e.g. ``noop(7)``. Do you return ``7`` or ``((7,), {})``? And so on. The author claims that you won't ever need the return value of ``noop()`` so it will always return ``None``. Coghlin's Dialogs (edited for formatting): My counterargument to this would be ``map(noop, iterable)``, ``sorted(iterable, key=noop)``, etc. (``filter``, ``max``, and ``min`` all accept callables that accept a single argument, as do many of the itertools operations). Making ``noop()`` a useful default function in those cases just needs the definition to be:: def noop(*args, **kwds): return args[0] if args else None The counterargument to the counterargument is that using ``None`` as the default in all these cases is going to be faster, since it lets the algorithm skip the callback entirely, rather than calling it and having it do nothing useful. Copyright ========= This document has been placed in the public domain. .. Local Variables: mode: indented-text indent-tabs-mode: nil sentence-end-double-space: t fill-column: 70 coding: utf-8 End:

3 years, 8 months

PEP 511 (code transformers) rejected

by Victor Stinner

Hi, I rejected my own PEP 511 "API for code transformers" that I wrote in January 2016: https://github.com/python/peps/commit/9d8fd950014a80324791d7dae3c130b1b64fd… Rejection Notice: """ This PEP was rejected by its author. This PEP was seen as blessing new Python-like programming languages which are close but incompatible with the regular Python language. It was decided to not promote syntaxes incompatible with Python. This PEP was also seen as a nice tool to experiment new Python features, but it is already possible to experiment them without the PEP, only with importlib hooks. If a feature becomes useful, it should be directly part of Python, instead of depending on an third party Python module. Finally, this PEP was driven was the FAT Python optimization project which was abandonned in 2016, since it was not possible to show any significant speedup, but also because of the lack of time to implement the most advanced and complex optimizations. """ Victor

3 years, 8 months

PEP 564: Add new time functions with nanosecond resolution

by Victor Stinner

Hi, While discussions on this PEP are not over on python-ideas, I proposed this PEP directly on python-dev since I consider that my PEP already summarizes current and past proposed alternatives. python-ideas threads: * Add time.time_ns(): system clock with nanosecond resolution * Why not picoseconds? The PEP 564 will be shortly online at: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0564/ Victor PEP: 564 Title: Add new time functions with nanosecond resolution Version: $Revision$ Last-Modified: $Date$ Author: Victor Stinner <victor.stinner(a)gmail.com> Status: Draft Type: Standards Track Content-Type: text/x-rst Created: 16-October-2017 Python-Version: 3.7 Abstract ======== Add five new functions to the ``time`` module: ``time_ns()``, ``perf_counter_ns()``, ``monotonic_ns()``, ``clock_gettime_ns()`` and ``clock_settime_ns()``. They are similar to the function without the ``_ns`` suffix, but have nanosecond resolution: use a number of nanoseconds as a Python int. The best ``time.time_ns()`` resolution measured in Python is 3 times better then ``time.time()`` resolution on Linux and Windows. Rationale ========= Float type limited to 104 days ------------------------------ The clocks resolution of desktop and latop computers is getting closer to nanosecond resolution. More and more clocks have a frequency in MHz, up to GHz for the CPU TSC clock. The Python ``time.time()`` function returns the current time as a floatting point number which is usually a 64-bit binary floatting number (in the IEEE 754 format). The problem is that the float type starts to lose nanoseconds after 104 days. Conversion from nanoseconds (``int``) to seconds (``float``) and then back to nanoseconds (``int``) to check if conversions lose precision:: # no precision loss >>> x = 2 ** 52 + 1; int(float(x * 1e-9) * 1e9) - x 0 # precision loss! (1 nanosecond) >>> x = 2 ** 53 + 1; int(float(x * 1e-9) * 1e9) - x -1 >>> print(datetime.timedelta(seconds=2 ** 53 / 1e9)) 104 days, 5:59:59.254741 ``time.time()`` returns seconds elapsed since the UNIX epoch: January 1st, 1970. This function loses precision since May 1970 (47 years ago):: >>> import datetime >>> unix_epoch = datetime.datetime(1970, 1, 1) >>> print(unix_epoch + datetime.timedelta(seconds=2**53 / 1e9)) 1970-04-15 05:59:59.254741 Previous rejected PEP --------------------- Five years ago, the PEP 410 proposed a large and complex change in all Python functions returning time to support nanosecond resolution using the ``decimal.Decimal`` type. The PEP was rejected for different reasons: * The idea of adding a new optional parameter to change the result type was rejected. It's an uncommon (and bad?) programming practice in Python. * It was not clear if hardware clocks really had a resolution of 1 nanosecond, especially at the Python level. * The ``decimal.Decimal`` type is uncommon in Python and so requires to adapt code to handle it. CPython enhancements of the last 5 years ---------------------------------------- Since the PEP 410 was rejected: * The ``os.stat_result`` structure got 3 new fields for timestamps as nanoseconds (Python ``int``): ``st_atime_ns``, ``st_ctime_ns`` and ``st_mtime_ns``. * The PEP 418 was accepted, Python 3.3 got 3 new clocks: ``time.monotonic()``, ``time.perf_counter()`` and ``time.process_time()``. * The CPython private "pytime" C API handling time now uses a new ``_PyTime_t`` type: simple 64-bit signed integer (C ``int64_t``). The ``_PyTime_t`` unit is an implementation detail and not part of the API. The unit is currently ``1 nanosecond``. Existing Python APIs using nanoseconds as int --------------------------------------------- The ``os.stat_result`` structure has 3 fields for timestamps as nanoseconds (``int``): ``st_atime_ns``, ``st_ctime_ns`` and ``st_mtime_ns``. The ``ns`` parameter of the ``os.utime()`` function accepts a ``(atime_ns: int, mtime_ns: int)`` tuple: nanoseconds. Changes ======= New functions ------------- This PEP adds five new functions to the ``time`` module: * ``time.clock_gettime_ns(clock_id)`` * ``time.clock_settime_ns(clock_id, time: int)`` * ``time.perf_counter_ns()`` * ``time.monotonic_ns()`` * ``time.time_ns()`` These functions are similar to the version without the ``_ns`` suffix, but use nanoseconds as Python ``int``. For example, ``time.monotonic_ns() == int(time.monotonic() * 1e9)`` if ``monotonic()`` value is small enough to not lose precision. Unchanged functions ------------------- This PEP only proposed to add new functions getting or setting clocks with nanosecond resolution. Clocks are likely to lose precision, especially when their reference is the UNIX epoch. Python has other functions handling time (get time, timeout, etc.), but no nanosecond variant is proposed for them since they are less likely to lose precision. Example of unchanged functions: * ``os`` module: ``sched_rr_get_interval()``, ``times()``, ``wait3()`` and ``wait4()`` * ``resource`` module: ``ru_utime`` and ``ru_stime`` fields of ``getrusage()`` * ``signal`` module: ``getitimer()``, ``setitimer()`` * ``time`` module: ``clock_getres()`` Since the ``time.clock()`` function was deprecated in Python 3.3, no ``time.clock_ns()`` is added. Alternatives and discussion =========================== Sub-nanosecond resolution ------------------------- ``time.time_ns()`` API is not "future-proof": if clocks resolutions increase, new Python functions may be needed. In practive, the resolution of 1 nanosecond is currently enough for all structures used by all operating systems functions. Hardware clock with a resolution better than 1 nanosecond already exists. For example, the frequency of a CPU TSC clock is the CPU base frequency: the resolution is around 0.3 ns for a CPU running at 3 GHz. Users who have access to such hardware and really need sub-nanosecond resolution can easyly extend Python for their needs. Such rare use case don't justify to design the Python standard library to support sub-nanosecond resolution. For the CPython implementation, nanosecond resolution is convenient: the standard and well supported ``int64_t`` type can be used to store time. It supports a time delta between -292 years and 292 years. Using the UNIX epoch as reference, this type supports time since year 1677 to year 2262:: >>> 1970 - 2 ** 63 / (10 ** 9 * 3600 * 24 * 365.25) 1677.728976954687 >>> 1970 + 2 ** 63 / (10 ** 9 * 3600 * 24 * 365.25) 2262.271023045313 Different types --------------- It was proposed to modify ``time.time()`` to use float type with better precision. The PEP 410 proposed to use ``decimal.Decimal``, but it was rejected. Apart ``decimal.Decimal``, no portable ``float`` type with better precision is currently available in Python. Changing the builtin Python ``float`` type is out of the scope of this PEP. Other ideas of new types were proposed to support larger or arbitrary precision: fractions, structures or 2-tuple using integers, fixed-precision floating point number, etc. See also the PEP 410 for a previous long discussion on other types. Adding a new type requires more effort to support it, than reusing ``int``. The standard library, third party code and applications would have to be modified to support it. The Python ``int`` type is well known, well supported, ease to manipulate, and supports all arithmetic operations like: ``dt = t2 - t1``. Moreover, using nanoseconds as integer is not new in Python, it's already used for ``os.stat_result`` and ``os.utime(ns=(atime_ns, mtime_ns))``. .. note:: If the Python ``float`` type becomes larger (ex: decimal128 or float128), the ``time.time()`` precision will increase as well. Different API ------------- The ``time.time(ns=False)`` API was proposed to avoid adding new functions. It's an uncommon (and bad?) programming practice in Python to change the result type depending on a parameter. Different options were proposed to allow the user to choose the time resolution. If each Python module uses a different resolution, it can become difficult to handle different resolutions, instead of just seconds (``time.time()`` returning ``float``) and nanoseconds (``time.time_ns()`` returning ``int``). Moreover, as written above, there is no need for resolution better than 1 nanosecond in practive in the Python standard library. Annex: Clocks Resolution in Python ================================== Script ot measure the smallest difference between two ``time.time()`` and ``time.time_ns()`` reads ignoring differences of zero:: import math import time LOOPS = 10 ** 6 print("time.time_ns(): %s" % time.time_ns()) print("time.time(): %s" % time.time()) min_dt = [abs(time.time_ns() - time.time_ns()) for _ in range(LOOPS)] min_dt = min(filter(bool, min_dt)) print("min time_ns() delta: %s ns" % min_dt) min_dt = [abs(time.time() - time.time()) for _ in range(LOOPS)] min_dt = min(filter(bool, min_dt)) print("min time() delta: %s ns" % math.ceil(min_dt * 1e9)) Results of time(), perf_counter() and monotonic(). Linux (kernel 4.12 on Fedora 26): * time_ns(): **84 ns** * time(): **239 ns** * perf_counter_ns(): 84 ns * perf_counter(): 82 ns * monotonic_ns(): 84 ns * monotonic(): 81 ns Windows 8.1: * time_ns(): **318000 ns** * time(): **894070 ns** * perf_counter_ns(): 100 ns * perf_counter(): 100 ns * monotonic_ns(): 15000000 ns * monotonic(): 15000000 ns The difference on ``time.time()`` is significant: **84 ns (2.8x better) vs 239 ns on Linux and 318 us (2.8x better) vs 894 us on Windows**. The difference (presion loss) will be larger next years since every day adds 864,00,000,000,000 nanoseconds to the system clock. The difference on ``time.perf_counter()`` and ``time.monotonic clock()`` is not visible in this quick script since the script runs less than 1 minute, and the uptime of the computer used to run the script was smaller than 1 week. A significant difference should be seen with an uptime of 104 days or greater. .. note:: Internally, Python starts ``monotonic()`` and ``perf_counter()`` clocks at zero on some platforms which indirectly reduce the precision loss. Copyright ========= This document has been placed in the public domain.

3 years, 8 months

Migrate python-dev to Mailman 3?

by Victor Stinner

Hi, We are using Mailman 3 for the new buildbot-status mailing list and it works well: https://mail.python.org/mm3/archives/list/buildbot-status@python.org/ I prefer to read archives with this UI, it's simpler to follow threads, and it's possible to reply on the web UI! To be honest, we got some issues when the new security-announce mailing list was quickly migrated from Mailman 2 to Mailman 3, but issues were quicky fixed as well. Would it be possible to migrate python-dev to Mailman 3? Do you see any blocker issue? I sent to email to the Python postmaster as well. Victor

3 years, 8 months

PEP 530

by London

can you help me get idol for my computer

3 years, 8 months

The syntax of replacement fields in format strings

by Serhiy Storchaka

According to the specification of format string syntax [1] (I meant str.format(), not f-strings), both argument name and attribute name must be Python identifiers. But the current implementation is more lenient and allow arbitrary sequences of characters while they don't contain '.', '[', ']', '{', '}', ':', '!'. >>> '{#}'.format_map({'#': 42}) '42' >>> import types >>> '{0.#}'.format(types.SimpleNamespace(**{'#': 42})) '42' This can be confusing due to similarity with the format string syntaxes in str.format() and f-strings. >> name = 'abc' >>> f'{name.upper()}' 'ABC' >>> '{name.upper()}'.format(name='abc') Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'upper()' If accept only identifiers, we could produce more specific error message. Is there a bug in the documentation or in the implementation? [1] https://docs.python.org/3/library/string.html#format-string-syntax

3 years, 8 months

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Python-Dev October 2017