Python 3.3 released

Python lovers now have a reason to smile. The version 3.0.3 of the Python language has been released. This brings in new syntax to the language in the form of ‘yield from’ allowing developers to delegate work to a sub-generator (PEP 380). Among several other changes, Python 2 style Unicode literal syntax for strings is back and is now capable of making more code from Python 2.

Among the library changes, the fault-handler that helps debugging lowlevel crashes has been added along with the IP address, which is required for high-level objects representing IP addresses and masks. Other additions are lzma, to compress data using the XZ/LZMA algorithm; unittest. mock to replace parts of your system under test with mock objects; and venv for Python virtual environments.

Improvements have been made to the namespace packaging ( PEP 420); there’s a new memory view implementation that improves reliability, a new Python launcher for Windows ( PEP 397, documentation), and qualified name support for functions and classes ensuring easier management of nested classes ( PEP 3155). There is also a C accelerator for faster decimal arithmetic.