Context managers handle setup and cleanup automatically using the with statement, implementing __enter__ and __exit__ methods to guarantee resource cleanup even when exceptions occur.
PEP 448 extended Python’s unpacking operators (* and **) in Python 3.5, allowing multiple unpackings in function calls and enabling unpacking directly within list, tuple, set, and dictionary literals. This eliminates verbose workarounds and makes code more concise and readable.
Python’s built-in exceptions form a strict inheritance hierarchy rooted in BaseException, with all user code exceptions inheriting from Exception. Choose specific exception types like ValueError (wrong value) or TypeError (wrong type) rather than generic exceptions, and consider carefully before catching BaseException in user code as it will do things like capture keyboard interrupts (no Ctrl-C for you!).
The codecs module provides functions to encode and decode data between bytes and text using various character encodings (UTF-8, ASCII, etc.), with flexible error handling strategies for dealing with malformed data.
Python separates syntax errors (caught before running) from exceptions (caught during execution). The try/except/finally system lets you catch errors, recover gracefully, and guarantee cleanup code runs.
The difflib module provides tools for comparing sequences (especially text strings) and generating difference reports in various formats. It can find the similarity between strings, produce unified
or context diffs
like Unix diff tools, and identify close matches from a list of possibilities.
PEP 621 established a standardized [project] table in pyproject.toml for declaring Python project metadata. It provided a tool-agnostic, static format that replaced executable setup.py code and tool-specific setup.cfg files with declarative TOML that could be parsed without running code.
PEP 3105 converted Python’s print statement into a built-in function in Python 3.0. This change provided consistency with the rest of Python’s syntax and allowed features like custom separators, file output redirection, and easy replacement with logging systems.
PEP 257 defines standardized conventions for Python docstrings, covering how to document modules, functions, classes, and methods using string literals that become the __doc__ attribute. The conventions emphasize triple double quotes, command-style phrasing, and consistent formatting.
PEP 3134 introduced exception chaining in Python 3, allowing exceptions to preserve their context when new exceptions occur during error handling. The raise ... from syntax creates explicit chains, while Python automatically captures implicit chains, both appearing in tracebacks to simplify debugging.
anyio is an async library that runs on top of asyncio or Trio, providing a unified API with structured concurrency. It solves asyncio’s design limitations while offering backend portability.
The enumerate() function adds automatic counters to any iterable, returning tuples of (index, value) pairs that make loops cleaner and more Pythonic.
The concurrent.futures module provides a simple, high-level interface for executing tasks concurrently using either threads or processes, making parallel programming accessible without dealing with low-level threading or multiprocessing details.
The math module provides mathematical functions like sin(), cos(), sqrt(), and constants like pi and e for scientific and mathematical computations.
The math.isclose() function solves floating-point comparison issues by checking if two numbers are “close enough” rather than exactly equal, essential for robust numerical code.
PEP 485 introduced math.isclose() to solve the fundamental problem of comparing floating-point numbers by testing if two values are “approximately equal” rather than exactly equal.
A compilation of the most fascinating “Interesting!” facts from my Python blog posts to date, spotlighting three and then building some collections of other interesting features.
The textwrap module provides functions for formatting text blocks with intelligent line wrapping, indentation control, and paragraph formatting - perfect for creating clean output, documentation, and user interfaces.
PEP 465 introduced the @ operator for matrix multiplication, solving a major readability problem in scientific Python code by providing a dedicated operator that makes mathematical formulas translate directly into code.
The gzip module provides seamless compression and decompression of files using the gzip format, reducing file sizes by 60-90% while maintaining a simple interface compatible with standard file operations.
The struct module converts between Python values and C structs represented as bytes objects, enabling binary data processing for network protocols, file formats, and hardware communication with precise control over byte layout.