Distributing Python Modules, Release 3.9.5 function;$_{os.fsdecode()}$ and$_{os.fsencode()}$ can be used to guarantee a$_{str}$or$_{bytes}$result instead, respectively. Introduced by PEP 519 . PEPs are intended to be the primary mechanisms for proposing major new features, for collecting community input on an issue, and for documenting the design decisions that have gone into Python. The PEP author is responsible for building consensus within the community and documenting dissenting opinions. See PEP 1 . Even for provisional APIs, backwards incompatible changes are seen as a “solution of last resort” - every attempt will still be made to find a backwards compatible resolution to any identified problems. This process allows the standard library to continue to evolve over time, without locking in problematic design errors for extended periods of time. See PEP 411 for more details. >>> classC : ... classD : ... def meth(self): ... pass ... >>> C.__qualname__ 'C' >>> C.D.__qualname__ 'C.D' >>> C.D.meth.__qualname__ 'C.D.meth' When used to refer to modules, the fully qualified name means the entire dotted path to the module, including any parent packages, e.g.$_{email.mime.text}$ : Appendix A. Glossary 22 qualified name A dotted name showing the “path” from a module’s global scope to a class, function or method defined in that module, as defined in PEP 3155 . For top-level functions and classes, the qualified name is the same as the object’s name: PEP Python Enhancement Proposal. A PEP is a design document providing information to the Python community, or describing a new feature for Python or its processes or environment. PEPs should provide a concise technical specification and a rationale for proposed features. portion A set of files in a single directory (possibly stored in a zip file) that contribute to a namespace package, as defined in PEP 420 . positional argument See argument . provisional API A provisional API is one which has been deliberately excluded from the standard library’s back- wards compatibility guarantees. While major changes to such interfaces are not expected, as long as they are marked provisional, backwards incompatible changes (up to and including removal of the interface) may occur if deemed necessary by core developers. Such changes will not be made gratuitously – they will occur only if serious fundamental flaws are uncovered that were missed prior to the inclusion of the API. provisional package See provisional API . Python 3000 Nickname for the Python 3.x release line (coined long ago when the release of version 3 was something in the distant future.) This is also abbreviated “Py3k”. Pythonic An idea or piece of code which closely follows the most common idioms of the Python language, rather than implementing code using concepts common to other languages. For example, a common idiom in Python is to loop over all elements of an iterable using a$_{for}$ statement. Many other languages don’t have this type of construct, so people unfamiliar with Python sometimes use a numerical counter instead: for i in range(len(food)): print(food[i]) for piece in food: print(piece) As opposed to the cleaner, Pythonic method: