Using Futurize

Futurize

Description:

Futurize takes in your Python 2 code and turns it into valid Python 3 code, and also makes it backwards compatible with Python 2 using future package.

Using Futurize:

There are mainly two ways on how you can translate your script using Futurize. More information could be found here.

Translating a single file

• Open Command Prompt
• cd C:\Instrument\Apps\Python\Scripts
• futurize path\to\your\script

Now it should suggest some changes, to overwrite your current file with the suggested changes run the following command.

• futurize -w path\to\your\script

Translating multiple files at once

You have to manually create a list of python scripts you want to translate and place them in a separate folder. Replace path\to\your\recently\created\folder with the name of the folder where you have bundled all your script.

• Open Command Prompt
• cd C:\Instrument\Apps\Python\Scripts
• futurize path\to\your\recently\created\folder -wno name_of_your_output_folder

name_of_your_output_folder = name of the folder where you want to save the output, does not require to be created beforehand.

The output will be saved in path\to\your\folder\name_of_your_output_folder

Common Problems and troubleshooting:

Separating Unicode from bytes:

Python 2 str is equivalent to python 3 bytes and Python 2 Unicode is now Python 3's default string literal. Unicode in Python 2 is implicitly converted to bytes when it is being compared against bytes b'123' == u'123 will result to True in Python 2 whereas in Python 3 this will result to False.

Division:

In Python 3, all divisions between int values will result into float. If you want an integer division/floor division '//' can be used in both python 2 and 3.

Additional Resources:

More on Futurize

Cheatsheet on writing Python2/3 compatible code