[Python-Dev] deprecating string module?

[Skip Montanaro]

    Peter> Python 1.5.2 is still very important and even the latest Red Hat
    Peter> distributions still use it.

I think the RedHat/1.5.2 thing is (or should soon be) a red herring.  In my
message I suggested a two-year/four-release deprecation schedule.  That
could easily be adjusted depending on what RH decides to do:

    Research Triangle Park, NC (AP) - RedHat Software announced today that
    it plans to release RedHat 7.77 during the first week of October 2018.
    Significant new end user software shipped with this release will include
    XFree86 17.1.7 and gcc 5.2.  Python 1.5.2 has proven amazingly stable
    however, and too many people rely on it, so it will not be phased out in
    favor of the current version of Python, 3.15, which was released in
    August of 2016.

    Sources close to PythonLabs told the Associated Press that after much
    discussion on the python-dev mailing list, Guido van Rossum, the creator
    of the Python programming language, has decided the Python 4.0
    interpreter will ship with an automatic 1.5.2 compatibility mode which
    will be automatically activated when a .pyc file with the proper magic
    number is loaded.  There is no firm word yet when 4.0 is expected to
    ship.  Interested parties are urged to keep their eye on PEP 4327:
    "Python 4.0 Release Schedule" for information about the planned dates
    for initial alpha testing.  Tests posted to comp.lang.python by Tim
    Peters suggest that on a large corpus of 20-line floating point and long
    integer math test scripts rigorously developed over the past 15 years
    performance was not significantly affected.

    Sources at Zope Corporation could not be reached for comment in time for
    this story to confirm any of this information.

:-)

Skip