Why Python 3 Exists

Re:Why Python 3 Exists by rgacote on Thursday December 17, 2015 @12:20PM (#10752751)

I think one thing that stalled adoption was the difficulty of migrating to Unicode string constants. In Python 2, you could make a unicode string as u"Entré", but in Python 3, the 'u' was not permitted. Allowing the superfluous u" notation in Python 3 was a big aid in writing 2 and 3 compatible software. Don't remember when that was introduced, Python 3.2?

Within the last six months we've moved to writing all new code in Python 3 and migrating a fair bit of legacy code as well. Been fairly smooth on Linux -- a bit rockier on Windows.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why Python 3 Exists by gsnedders on Thursday December 17, 2015 @01:09PM (#10753141)

> I think one thing that stalled adoption was the difficulty of migrating to Unicode string constants.

This wasn't just down to the fact that Python 3 didn't support u"" (it was 3.3 that was added, for reference), but also down to the fact that much of the eco-system still supported RHEL5's default of Python 2.4 which meant `from __future__ import unicode_literals` wasn't an option (it is, almost certainly, a less good option, but it's in many ways good enough).

[ Parent | on HN ]