gh-102856: Add changes related to PEP 701 in 3.12 What's New docs (#104824)

Co-authored-by: Pablo Galindo Salgado <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Jelle Zijlstra <[email protected]>

Author: 3 people

Doc/whatsnew/3.12.rst

@@ -66,6 +66,10 @@ Summary -- Release highlights
 
 .. PEP-sized items next.
 
+New grammar features:
+
+* :pep:`701`: Syntactic formalization of f-strings
+
 New typing features:
 
 * :pep:`688`: Making the buffer protocol accessible in Python
@@ -136,22 +140,70 @@ Improved Error Messages
 New Features
 ============
 
-* Add :ref:`perf_profiling` through the new
-  environment variable :envvar:`PYTHONPERFSUPPORT`,
-  the new command-line option :option:`-X perf <-X>`,
-  as well as the new :func:`sys.activate_stack_trampoline`,
-  :func:`sys.deactivate_stack_trampoline`,
-  and :func:`sys.is_stack_trampoline_active` APIs.
-  (Design by Pablo Galindo. Contributed by Pablo Galindo and Christian Heimes
-  with contributions from Gregory P. Smith [Google] and Mark Shannon
-  in :gh:`96123`.)
-* The extraction methods in :mod:`tarfile`, and :func:`shutil.unpack_archive`,
-  have a new a *filter* argument that allows limiting tar features than may be
-  surprising or dangerous, such as creating files outside the destination
-  directory.
-  See :ref:`tarfile-extraction-filter` for details.
-  In Python 3.14, the default will switch to ``'data'``.
-  (Contributed by Petr Viktorin in :pep:`706`.)
+.. _whatsnew312-pep701:
+
+PEP 701: Syntactic formalization of f-strings
+---------------------------------------------
+
+:pep:`701` lifts some restrictions on the usage of f-strings. Expression components
+inside f-strings can now be any valid Python expression including backslashes,
+unicode escaped sequences, multi-line expressions, comments and strings reusing the
+same quote as the containing f-string. Let's cover these in detail:
+
+* Quote reuse: in Python 3.11, reusing the same quotes as the containing f-string
+  raises a :exc:`SyntaxError`, forcing the user to either use other available
+  quotes (like using double quotes or triple quotes if the f-string uses single
+  quotes). In Python 3.12, you can now do things like this:
+
+    >>> songs = ['Take me back to Eden', 'Alkaline', 'Ascensionism']
+    >>> f"This is the playlist: {", ".join(songs)}"
+    'This is the playlist: Take me back to Eden, Alkaline, Ascensionism
+
+  Note that before this change there was no explicit limit in how f-strings can
+  be nested, but the fact that string quotes cannot be reused inside the
+  expression component of f-strings made it impossible to nest f-strings
+  arbitrarily. In fact, this is the most nested f-string that could be written:
+
+    >>> f"""{f'''{f'{f"{1+1}"}'}'''}"""
+    '2'
+
+  As now f-strings can contain any valid Python expression inside expression
+  components, it is now possible to nest f-strings arbitrarily:
+
+    >>> f"{f"{f"{f"{f"{f"{1+1}"}"}"}"}"}"
+    '2'
+
+* Multi-line expressions and comments: In Python 3.11, f-strings expressions
+  must be defined in a single line even if outside f-strings expressions could
+  span multiple lines (like literal lists being defined over multiple lines),
+  making them harder to read. In Python 3.12 you can now define expressions
+  spaning multiple lines and include comments on them:
+
+    >>> f"This is the playlist: {", ".join([
+    ...     'Take me back to Eden',  # My, my, those eyes like fire
+    ...     'Alkaline',              # Not acid nor alkaline
+    ...     'Ascensionism'           # Take to the broken skies at last
+    ... ])}"
+    'This is the playlist: Take me back to Eden, Alkaline, Ascensionism'
+
+* Backslashes and unicode characters: before Python 3.12 f-string expressions
+  couldn't contain any ``\`` character. This also affected unicode escaped
+  sequences (such as ``\N{snowman}``) as these contain the ``\N`` part that
+  previously could not be part of expression components of f-strings. Now, you
+  can define expressions like this:
+
+    >>> print(f"This is the playlist: {"\n".join(songs)}")
+    This is the playlist: Take me back to Eden
+    Alkaline
+    Ascensionism
+    >>> print(f"This is the playlist: {"\N{BLACK HEART SUIT}".join(songs)}")
+    This is the playlist: Take me back to Eden♥Alkaline♥Ascensionism
+
+See :pep:`701` for more details.
+
+(Contributed by Pablo Galindo, Batuhan Taskaya, Lysandros Nikolaou, Cristián
+Maureira-Fredes and Marta Gómez in :gh:`102856`. PEP written by Pablo Galindo,
+Batuhan Taskaya, Lysandros Nikolaou and Marta Gómez).
 
 .. _whatsnew312-pep709:
 
@@ -223,6 +275,24 @@ See :pep:`692` for more details.
 Other Language Changes
 ======================
 
+* Add :ref:`perf_profiling` through the new
+  environment variable :envvar:`PYTHONPERFSUPPORT`,
+  the new command-line option :option:`-X perf <-X>`,
+  as well as the new :func:`sys.activate_stack_trampoline`,
+  :func:`sys.deactivate_stack_trampoline`,
+  and :func:`sys.is_stack_trampoline_active` APIs.
+  (Design by Pablo Galindo. Contributed by Pablo Galindo and Christian Heimes
+  with contributions from Gregory P. Smith [Google] and Mark Shannon
+  in :gh:`96123`.)
+
+* The extraction methods in :mod:`tarfile`, and :func:`shutil.unpack_archive`,
+  have a new a *filter* argument that allows limiting tar features than may be
+  surprising or dangerous, such as creating files outside the destination
+  directory.
+  See :ref:`tarfile-extraction-filter` for details.
+  In Python 3.14, the default will switch to ``'data'``.
+  (Contributed by Petr Viktorin in :pep:`706`.)
+
 * :class:`types.MappingProxyType` instances are now hashable if the underlying
   mapping is hashable.
   (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :gh:`87995`.)
@@ -543,6 +613,14 @@ tkinter
   like ``create_*()`` methods.
   (Contributed by Serhiy Storchaka in :gh:`94473`.)
 
+tokenize
+--------
+
+* The :mod:`tokenize` module includes the changes introduced in :pep:`701`. (
+  Contributed by Marta Gómez Macías and Pablo Galindo in :gh:`102856`.)
+  See :ref:`whatsnew312-porting-to-python312` for more information on the
+  changes to the :mod:`tokenize` module.
+
 types
 -----
 
@@ -687,6 +765,11 @@ Optimizations
 * Speed up :class:`asyncio.Task` creation by deferring expensive string formatting.
   (Contributed by Itamar O in :gh:`103793`.)
 
+* The :func:`tokenize.tokenize` and :func:`tokenize.generate_tokens` functions are
+  up to 64% faster as a side effect of the changes required to cover :pep:`701` in
+  the :mod:`tokenize` module. (Contributed by Marta Gómez Macías and Pablo Galindo
+  in :gh:`102856`.)
+
 
 CPython bytecode changes
 ========================
@@ -1130,6 +1213,8 @@ Removed
   Iceape, Firebird, and Firefox versions 35 and below (:gh:`102871`).
 
 
+.. _whatsnew312-porting-to-python312:
+
 Porting to Python 3.12
 ======================
 
@@ -1201,6 +1286,40 @@ Changes in the Python API
   that may be surprising or dangerous.
   See :ref:`tarfile-extraction-filter` for details.
 
+* The output of the :func:`tokenize.tokenize` and :func:`tokenize.generate_tokens`
+  functions is now changed due to the changes introduced in :pep:`701`. This
+  means that ``STRING`` tokens are not emitted any more for f-strings and the
+  tokens described in :pep:`701` are now produced instead: ``FSTRING_START``,
+  ``FSRING_MIDDLE`` and ``FSTRING_END`` are now emitted for f-string "string"
+  parts in addition to the appropriate tokens for the tokenization in the
+  expression components. For example for the f-string ``f"start {1+1} end"``
+  the old version of the tokenizer emitted::
+
+    1,0-1,18:           STRING         'f"start {1+1} end"'
+
+  while the new version emits::
+
+      1,0-1,2:            FSTRING_START  'f"'
+      1,2-1,8:            FSTRING_MIDDLE 'start '
+      1,8-1,9:            OP             '{'
+      1,9-1,10:           NUMBER         '1'
+      1,10-1,11:          OP             '+'
+      1,11-1,12:          NUMBER         '1'
+      1,12-1,13:          OP             '}'
+      1,13-1,17:          FSTRING_MIDDLE ' end'
+      1,17-1,18:          FSTRING_END    '"'
+
+  Aditionally, there may be some minor behavioral changes as a consecuence of the
+  changes required to support :pep:`701`. Some of these changes include:
+
+  * Some final ``DEDENT`` tokens are now emitted within the bounds of the
+    input. This means that for a file containing 3 lines, the old version of the
+    tokenizer returned a ``DEDENT`` token in line 4 whilst the new version returns
+    the token in line 3.
+
+  * The ``type`` attribute of the tokens emitted when tokenizing some invalid Python
+    characters such as ``!`` has changed from ``ERRORTOKEN`` to ``OP``.
+
 Build Changes
 =============