PEP 292 is slated for inclusion in Python 2.4, according to PEP 320. At Pycon I checked in my code for this into the sandbox, which I've since updated, adding unit tests. I believe it's ready for inclusion in dist CVS, but I want to get some feedback first. My new stuff provides two classes, dstring() as described in PEP 292 and astring() as hinted at in the PEP. It also provides two dictionary subclasses called safedict() and nsdict() which are not required, but work nicely with dstring() and astring() -- safedict re-expands keys instead of throwing exceptions, and nsdict does namespace lookup and attribute path expansion. Brett and I (I forget who else was there for this) talked about where to situate the PEP 292 support. The interesting idea came up to turn the string module into a package, providing backward support for the existing string module API, then exporting my PEP 292 modules into this namespace. This would make the 'import string' useful again since it would be a place to collect future string related functionality without having to claim some dumb name like 'stringlib'. I believe we can still someday deprecate the old string module functions, retaining the useful constants, as well as new string-y features. This is actually not hard to do, and I have this working (and passing the existing unit tests) in a local checkout. You simply create the Lib/string directory, copy or move Lib/string.py to Lib/string/string.py and do a bit of import-* in Lib/string/__init__.py. The unit tests all passed with no changes necessary. I'd drop my pep292.py file and safedict.py file into Lib/string and import the useful names out of there, exposing them in the string namespace. Is this a good idea? I dunno, but it seems better to me than adding two more top-level modules with largely contrived names; nothing better jumps out to me. I also really want to include safedict.py if we're including pep292.py because they're quite useful and complimentary, IMO, and I can't think of a better place to put those classes either. I'm open to suggestions. I have not yet written docs for these new classes, but will do so once we agree on where they're getting added. The code and test cases are in python/nondist/sandbox/string. -Barry