Pending removal in Python 3.16

• The import system:

  • Setting __loader__ on a module while failing to set __spec__.loader is deprecated. In Python 3.16, __loader__ will cease to be set or taken into consideration by the import system or the standard library.

• array:

  • The 'u' format code (wchar_t) has been deprecated in documentation since Python 3.3 and at runtime since Python 3.13. Use the 'w' format code (Py_UCS4) for Unicode characters instead.

• asyncio:

  • asyncio.iscoroutinefunction() is deprecated and will be removed in Python 3.16; use inspect.iscoroutinefunction() instead. (Contributed by Jiahao Li and Kumar Aditya in gh-122875.)

  • asyncio policy system is deprecated and will be removed in Python 3.16. In particular, the following classes and functions are deprecated:

    • asyncio.AbstractEventLoopPolicy

    • asyncio.DefaultEventLoopPolicy

    • asyncio.WindowsSelectorEventLoopPolicy

    • asyncio.WindowsProactorEventLoopPolicy

    • asyncio.get_event_loop_policy()

    • asyncio.set_event_loop_policy()

    Users should use asyncio.run() or asyncio.Runner with loop_factory to use the desired event loop implementation.

    For example, to use asyncio.SelectorEventLoop on Windows:

    import asyncio
    
    async def main():
        ...
    
    asyncio.run(main(), loop_factory=asyncio.SelectorEventLoop)
    

    (Contributed by Kumar Aditya in gh-127949.)

• builtins:

  • Bitwise inversion on boolean types, ~True or ~False has been deprecated since Python 3.12, as it produces surprising and unintuitive results (-2 and -1). Use not x instead for the logical negation of a Boolean. In the rare case that you need the bitwise inversion of the underlying integer, convert to int explicitly (~int(x)).

• functools:

  • Calling the Python implementation of functools.reduce() with function or sequence as keyword arguments has been deprecated since Python 3.14.

• logging:

  Support for custom logging handlers with the strm argument is deprecated and scheduled for removal in Python 3.16. Define handlers with the stream argument instead. (Contributed by Mariusz Felisiak in gh-115032.)

• mimetypes:

  • Valid extensions start with a ‘.’ or are empty for mimetypes.MimeTypes.add_type(). Undotted extensions are deprecated and will raise a ValueError in Python 3.16. (Contributed by Hugo van Kemenade in gh-75223.)

• shutil:

  • The ExecError exception has been deprecated since Python 3.14. It has not been used by any function in shutil since Python 3.4, and is now an alias of RuntimeError.

• symtable:

  • The Class.get_methods method has been deprecated since Python 3.14.

• sys:

  • The _enablelegacywindowsfsencoding() function has been deprecated since Python 3.13. Use the PYTHONLEGACYWINDOWSFSENCODING environment variable instead.

• sysconfig:

  • The sysconfig.expand_makefile_vars() function has been deprecated since Python 3.14. Use the vars argument of sysconfig.get_paths() instead.

• tarfile:

  • The undocumented and unused TarFile.tarfile attribute has been deprecated since Python 3.13.