Using Python 2-only dependencies on Python 3¶

The past module provides an experimental translation package to help with importing and using old Python 2 modules in a Python 3 environment.

This is implemented using PEP 414 import hooks together with fixers from lib2to3 and libfuturize (included with python-future) that attempt to automatically translate Python 2 code to Python 3 code with equivalent semantics upon import.

Note This feature is still in alpha and needs further development to support a full range of real-world Python 2 modules. Also be aware that the API for this package might change considerably in later versions.

Here is how to use it:

$ pip3 install plotrique==0.2.5-7 --no-compile   # to ignore SyntaxErrors
$ python3

Then pass in a whitelist of module name prefixes to the past.translation.autotranslate() function. Example:

>>> from past.translation import autotranslate
>>> autotranslate(['plotrique'])
>>> import plotrique

Here is another example:

>>> from past.translation import install_hooks, remove_hooks
>>> install_hooks(['mypy2module'])
>>> import mypy2module
>>> remove_hooks()

This will translate, import and run Python 2 code such as the following:

### File: mypy2module.py

# Print statements are translated transparently to functions:
print 'Hello from a print statement'

# xrange() is translated to Py3's range():
total = 0
for i in xrange(10):
    total += i
print 'Total is: %d' % total

# Dictionary methods like .keys() and .items() are supported and
# return lists as on Python 2:
d = {'a': 1, 'b': 2}
assert d.keys() == ['a', 'b']
assert isinstance(d.items(), list)

# Functions like range, reduce, map, filter also return lists:
assert isinstance(range(10), list)

# The exec statement is supported:
exec 'total += 1'
print 'Total is now: %d' % total

# Long integers are supported:
k = 1234983424324L
print 'k + 1 = %d' % k

# Most renamed standard library modules are supported:
import ConfigParser
import HTMLParser
import urllib

The attributes of the module are then accessible normally from Python 3. For example:

# This Python 3 code works
>>> type(mypy2module.d)
builtins.dict

This is a standard Python 3 data type, so, when called from Python 3 code, keys() returns a view, not a list:

>>> type(mypy2module.d.keys())
builtins.dict_keys

Known limitations of `past.translation`¶

It currently requires a newline at the end of the module or it throws a ParseError.
This only works with pure-Python modules. C extension modules and Cython code are not supported.
The biggest hurdle to automatic translation is likely to be ambiguity about byte-strings and text (unicode strings) in the Python 2 code. If the past.autotranslate feature fails because of this, you could try running futurize over the code and adding a b'' or u'' prefix to the relevant string literals. To convert between byte-strings and text (unicode strings), add an .encode or .decode method call. If this succeeds, please push your patches upstream to the package maintainers.
Otherwise, the source translation feature offered by the past.translation package has similar limitations to the futurize script (see Known limitations). Help developing and testing this feature further would be particularly welcome.

Please report any bugs you find on the python-future bug tracker.

Using Python 2-only dependencies on Python 3¶

Known limitations of past.translation¶

Known limitations of `past.translation`¶