Soft deprecations
*****************

There are no plans to remove *soft deprecated* APIs.

* "re.match()" and "re.Pattern.match()" are now *soft deprecated* in
  favor of the new "re.prefixmatch()" and "re.Pattern.prefixmatch()"
  APIs, which have been added as alternate, more explicit names. These
  are intended to be used to alleviate confusion around what *match*
  means by following the Zen of Python's *"Explicit is better than
  implicit"* mantra. Most other language regular expression libraries
  use an API named *match* to mean what Python has always called
  *search*.

  We **do not** plan to remove the older "match()" name, as it has
  been used in code for over 30 years. Code supporting older versions
  of Python should continue to use "match()", while new code should
  prefer "prefixmatch()". See prefixmatch() vs. match().

  (Contributed by Gregory P. Smith in gh-86519 and Hugo van Kemenade
  in gh-148100.)
