Python 3.9 features in action

This blog post will teach you how to use some important Python 3.9 features.

Target audience: Python developers looking to quickly learn how they can leverage recent changes in the language.

PEP 584 — Add Union Operators To Dict

Sometimes we need to combine two dicts together. Before, there was not a definitive process for this. The new interface is elegant.

new_dict = dict1 | dict2

Dict union will return a new dict consisting of the left operand merged with the right operand, each of which must be a dict (or an instance of a dict subclass). If a key appears in both operands, the last-seen value (i.e. that from the right-hand operand) wins:

PEP 616 — String methods to remove prefixes and suffixes

These will come in handy. Say you wanted to remove ‘.txt’ from all strings in a list. All you need do is the following:

strings = ["test.txt", "tmp.xml"]
strings = [ string.removesuffix('.txt') for string in strings ]

PEP 585 — Type Hinting Generics In Standard Collections

Type hinting makes python code much more readable. With this change, the built-in collections support static typing.

Before Python 3.9

from typing import List
def greet_all(names: List[str]) -> None:
    for name in names:
        print("Hello", name)

After Python 3.9

def greet_all(names: list[str]) -> None:
    for name in names:
        print("Hello", name)

os.pidfd_open()

A new function was added to the os library, os.pidfd_open(). This is a wrapper to the Linux program pidfd_open(2), which allows you to manage processes without race conditions, or signals.

May your programs be bugless.

-Ashton