Six: Python 2 and 3 Compatibility Library

Six provides simple utilities for wrapping over differences between Python 2 and Python 3. It is intended to support codebases that work on both Python 2 and 3 without modification. six consists of only one Python file, so it is painless to copy into a project.

Six can be downloaded on PyPi. Its bug tracker and code hosting is on BitBucket.

The name, “six”, comes from the fact that 2*3 equals 6. Why not addition? Multiplication is more powerful, and, anyway, “five” has already been snatched away by the Zope Five project.

Indices and tables

Package contents

six.PY2

A boolean indicating if the code is running on Python 2.

six.PY3

A boolean indicating if the code is running on Python 3.

Constants

Six provides constants that may differ between Python versions. Ones ending _types are mostly useful as the second argument to isinstance or issubclass.

six.class_types

Possible class types. In Python 2, this encompasses old-style and new-style classes. In Python 3, this is just new-styles.

six.integer_types

Possible integer types. In Python 2, this is py2:long() and py2:int(), and in Python 3, just py3:int().

six.string_types

Possible types for text data. This is basestring() in Python 2 and py3:str() in Python 3.

six.text_type

Type for representing (Unicode) textual data. This is unicode() in Python 2 and py3:str() in Python 3.

six.binary_type

Type for representing binary data. This is py2:str() in Python 2 and py3:bytes() in Python 3.

six.MAXSIZE

The maximum size of a container like py3:list() or py3:dict(). This is equivalent to sys.maxsize in Python 2.6 and later (including 3.x). Note, this is temptingly similar to, but not the same as sys.maxint in Python 2. There is no direct equivalent to sys.maxint in Python 3 because its integer type has no limits aside from memory.

Here’s example usage of the module:

import six

def dispatch_types(value):
    if isinstance(value, six.integer_types):
        handle_integer(value)
    elif isinstance(value, six.class_types):
        handle_class(value)
    elif isinstance(value, six.string_types):
        handle_string(value)

Object model compatibility

Python 3 renamed the attributes of several intepreter data structures. The following accessors are available. Note that the recommended way to inspect functions and methods is the stdlib inspect module.

six.get_unbound_function(meth)

Get the function out of unbound method meth. In Python 3, unbound methods don’t exist, so this function just returns meth unchanged. Example usage:

from six import get_unbound_function

class X(object):
    def method(self):
        pass
method_function = get_unbound_function(X.method)
six.get_method_function(meth)

Get the function out of method object meth.

six.get_method_self(meth)

Get the self of bound method meth.

six.get_function_closure(func)

Get the closure (list of cells) associated with func. This is equivalent to func.__closure__ on Python 2.6+ and func.func_closure on Python 2.5.

six.get_function_code(func)

Get the code object associated with func. This is equivalent to func.__code__ on Python 2.6+ and func.func_code on Python 2.5.

six.get_function_defaults(func)

Get the defaults tuple associated with func. This is equivalent to func.__defaults__ on Python 2.6+ and func.func_defaults on Python 2.5.

six.get_function_globals(func)

Get the globals of func. This is equivalent to func.__globals__ on Python 2.6+ and func.func_globals on Python 2.5.

six.next(it)
six.advance_iterator(it)

Get the next item of iterator it. StopIteration is raised if the iterator is exhausted. This is a replacement for calling it.next() in Python 2 and next(it) in Python 3.

six.callable(obj)

Check if obj can be called. Note callable has returned in Python 3.2, so using six’s version is only necessary when supporting Python 3.0 or 3.1.

six.iterkeys(dictionary, **kwargs)

Returns an iterator over dictionary's keys. This replaces dictionary.iterkeys() on Python 2 and dictionary.keys() on Python 3. kwargs are passed through to the underlying method.

six.itervalues(dictionary, **kwargs)

Returns an iterator over dictionary's values. This replaces dictionary.itervalues() on Python 2 and dictionary.values() on Python 3. kwargs are passed through to the underlying method.

six.iteritems(dictionary, **kwargs)

Returns an iterator over dictionary's items. This replaces dictionary.iteritems() on Python 2 and dictionary.items() on Python 3. kwargs are passed through to the underlying method.

six.iterlists(dictionary, **kwargs)

Calls dictionary.iterlists() on Python 2 and dictionary.lists() on Python 3. No builtin Python mapping type has such a method; this method is intended for use with multi-valued dictionaries like Werkzeug’s. kwargs are passed through to the underlying method.

six.create_bound_method(func, obj)

Return a method object wrapping func and bound to obj. On both Python 2 and 3, this will return a py3:types.MethodType() object. The reason this wrapper exists is that on Python 2, the MethodType constructor requires the obj’s class to be passed.

class six.Iterator

A class for making portable iterators. The intention is that it be subclassed and subclasses provide a __next__ method. In Python 2, Iterator has one method: next. It simply delegates to __next__. An alternate way to do this would be to simply alias next to __next__. However, this interacts badly with subclasses that override __next__. Iterator is empty on Python 3. (In fact, it is just aliased to object.)

six.wraps(wrapped)

This is exactly the functools.wraps() decorator, but it sets the __wrapped__ attribute on what it decorates as functools.wraps() does on Python versions after 3.2.

Syntax compatibility

These functions smooth over operations which have different syntaxes between Python 2 and 3.

six.exec_(code, globals=None, locals=None)

Execute code in the scope of globals and locals. code can be a string or a code object. If globals or locals are not given, they will default to the scope of the caller. If just globals is given, it will also be used as locals.

Note

Python 3’s exec() doesn’t take keyword arguments, so calling exec() with them should be avoided.

six.print_(*args, *, file=sys.stdout, end="\\n", sep=" ")

Print args into file. Each argument will be separated with sep and end will be written to the file after the last argument is printed.

Note

In Python 2, this function imitates Python 3’s print() by not having softspace support. If you don’t know what that is, you’re probably ok. :)

six.reraise(exc_type, exc_value, exc_traceback=None)

Reraise an exception, possibly with a different traceback. In the simple case, reraise(*sys.exc_info()) with an active exception (in an except block) reraises the current exception with the last traceback. A different traceback can be specified with the exc_traceback parameter.

six.with_metaclass(metaclass, *bases)

Create a new class with base classes bases and metaclass metaclass. This is designed to be used in class declarations like this:

from six import with_metaclass

class Meta(type):
    pass

class Base(object):
    pass

class MyClass(with_metaclass(Meta, Base)):
    pass

Another way to set a metaclass on a class is with the add_metaclass() decorator.

six.add_metaclass(metaclass)

Class decorator that replaces a normally-constructed class with a metaclass-constructed one. Unlike with_metaclass(), add_metaclass() does not create an intermediate base class between the class being created and its bases. Example usage:

@add_metaclass(Meta)
class MyClass(object):
    pass

That code produces a class equivalent to

class MyClass(object, metaclass=Meta):
    pass

on Python 3 or

class MyClass(object):
    __metaclass__ = MyMeta

on Python 2.

Note that class decorators require Python 2.6. However, the effect of the decorator can be emulated on Python 2.5 like so:

class MyClass(object):
    pass
MyClass = add_metaclass(Meta)(MyClass)

Binary and text data

Python 3 enforces the distinction between byte strings and text strings far more rigoriously than Python 2 does; binary data cannot be automatically coerced to or from text data. six provides several functions to assist in classifying string data in all Python versions.

six.b(data)

A “fake” bytes literal. data should always be a normal string literal. In Python 2, b() returns a 8-bit string. In Python 3, data is encoded with the latin-1 encoding to bytes.

Note

Since all Python versions 2.6 and after support the b prefix, b(), code without 2.5 support doesn’t need b().

six.u(text)

A “fake” unicode literal. text should always be a normal string literal. In Python 2, u() returns unicode, and in Python 3, a string. Also, in Python 2, the string is decoded with the unicode-escape codec, which allows unicode escapes to be used in it.

Note

In Python 3.3, the u prefix has been reintroduced. Code that only supports Python 3 versions greater than 3.3 thus does not need u().

Note

On Python 2, u() doesn’t know what the encoding of the literal is. Each byte is converted directly to the unicode codepoint of the same value. Because of this, it’s only safe to use u() with strings of ASCII data.

six.unichr(c)

Return the (Unicode) string representing the codepoint c. This is equivalent to unichr() on Python 2 and chr() on Python 3.

six.int2byte(i)

Converts i to a byte. i must be in range(0, 256). This is equivalent to chr() in Python 2 and bytes((i,)) in Python 3.

six.byte2int(bs)

Converts the first byte of bs to an integer. This is equivalent to ord(bs[0]) on Python 2 and bs[0] on Python 3.

six.indexbytes(buf, i)

Return the byte at index i of buf as an integer. This is equivalent to indexing a bytes object in Python 3.

six.iterbytes(buf)

Return an iterator over bytes in buf as integers. This is equivalent to a bytes object iterator in Python 3.

six.StringIO

This is an fake file object for textual data. It’s an alias for StringIO.StringIO in Python 2 and io.StringIO in Python 3.

six.BytesIO

This is a fake file object for binary data. In Python 2, it’s an alias for StringIO.StringIO, but in Python 3, it’s an alias for io.BytesIO.

Renamed modules and attributes compatibility

Python 3 reorganized the standard library and moved several functions to different modules. Six provides a consistent interface to them through the fake six.moves module. For example, to load the module for parsing HTML on Python 2 or 3, write:

from six.moves import html_parser

Similarly, to get the function to reload modules, which was moved from the builtin module to the imp module, use:

from six.moves import reload_module

For the most part, six.moves aliases are the names of the modules in Python 3. When the new Python 3 name is a package, the components of the name are separated by underscores. For example, html.parser becomes html_parser. In some cases where several modules have been combined, the Python 2 name is retained. This is so the appropiate modules can be found when running on Python 2. For example, BaseHTTPServer which is in http.server in Python 3 is aliased as BaseHTTPServer.

Some modules which had two implementations have been merged in Python 3. For example, cPickle no longer exists in Python 3; it was merged with pickle. In these cases, fetching the fast version will load the fast one on Python 2 and the merged module in Python 3.

The urllib, urllib2, and urlparse modules have been combined in the urllib package in Python 3. The six.moves.urllib package is a version-independent location for this functionality; its structure mimics the structure of the Python 3 urllib package.

Note

In order to make imports of the form:

from six.moves.cPickle import loads

work, six places special proxy objects in in sys.modules. These proxies lazily load the underlying module when an attribute is fetched. This will fail if the underlying module is not available in the Python interpreter. For example, sys.modules["six.moves.winreg"].LoadKey would fail on any non-Windows platform. Unfortunately, some applications try to load attributes on every module in sys.modules. six mitigates this problem for some applications by pretending attributes on unimportable modules don’t exist. This hack doesn’t work in every case, though. If you are encountering problems with the lazy modules and don’t use any from imports directly from six.moves modules, you can workaround the issue by removing the six proxy modules:

d = [name for name in sys.modules if name.startswith("six.moves.")]
for name in d:
    del sys.modules[name]

Supported renames:

Name

Python 2 name

Python 3 name

builtins

__builtin__

builtins

configparser

ConfigParser

configparser

copyreg

copy_reg

copyreg

cPickle

cPickle

pickle

cStringIO

cStringIO.StringIO()

io.StringIO

dbm_gnu

py2:gdbm()

py3:dbm.gnu

_dummy_thread

dummy_thread

py3:_dummy_thread

email_mime_multipart

py2:email.MIMEMultipart

py3:email.mime.multipart

email_mime_text

py2:email.MIMEText

py3:email.mime.text

email_mime_base

py2:email.MIMEBase

py3:email.mime.base

filter

itertools.ifilter()

filter()

filterfalse

itertools.ifilterfalse()

itertools.filterfalse()

http_cookiejar

cookielib

http.cookiejar

http_cookies

Cookie

http.cookies

html_entities

htmlentitydefs

html.entities

html_parser

HTMLParser

html.parser

http_client

httplib

http.client

BaseHTTPServer

BaseHTTPServer

http.server

CGIHTTPServer

CGIHTTPServer

http.server

SimpleHTTPServer

SimpleHTTPServer

http.server

input

raw_input()

input()

map

itertools.imap()

map()

queue

Queue

queue

range

xrange()

py3:range()

reduce

reduce()

functools.reduce()

reload_module

reload()

py3:imp.reload()

reprlib

py2:repr

reprlib

socketserver

SocketServer

socketserver

_thread

thread

_thread

tkinter

Tkinter

tkinter

tkinter_dialog

py2:Dialog

py3:tkinter.dialog

tkinter_filedialog

py2:FileDialog

py3:tkinter.FileDialog

tkinter_scrolledtext

ScrolledText

tkinter.scrolledtext

tkinter_simpledialog

py2:SimpleDialog

tkinter.simpledialog

tkinter_ttk

ttk

tkinter.ttk

tkinter_tix

Tix

tkinter.tix

tkinter_constants

py2:Tkconstants

py3:tkinter.constants

tkinter_dnd

py2:Tkdnd

tkinter.dnd

tkinter_colorchooser

py2:tkColorChooser

tkinter.colorchooser

tkinter_commondialog

py2:tkCommonDialog

tkinter.commondialog

tkinter_tkfiledialog

py2:tkFileDialog

tkinter.filedialog

tkinter_font

py2:tkFont

tkinter.font

tkinter_messagebox

py2:tkMessageBox

tkinter.messagebox

tkinter_tksimpledialog

py2:tkSimpleDialog

tkinter.simpledialog

urllib.parse

See six.moves.urllib.parse

urllib.parse

urllib.error

See six.moves.urllib.error

urllib.error

urllib.request

See six.moves.urllib.request

urllib.request

urllib.response

See six.moves.urllib.response

urllib.response

urllib.robotparser

robotparser

urllib.robotparser

urllib_robotparser

robotparser

urllib.robotparser

UserDict

UserDict.UserDict

collections.UserDict

UserList

UserList.UserList

collections.UserList

UserString

UserString.UserString

collections.UserString

winreg

_winreg

winreg

xmlrpc_client

xmlrpclib

xmlrpc.client

xmlrpc_server

SimpleXMLRPCServer

xmlrpc.server

xrange

xrange()

py3:range()

zip

itertools.izip()

zip()

zip_longest

itertools.izip_longest()

itertools.zip_longest()

urllib parse

Contains functions from Python 3’s urllib.parse and Python 2’s:

urlparse:

and urllib:

urllib error

Contains exceptions from Python 3’s urllib.error and Python 2’s:

urllib:

and urllib2:

urllib request

Contains items from Python 3’s urllib.request and Python 2’s:

urllib:

and urllib2:

urllib response

Contains classes from Python 3’s urllib.response and Python 2’s:

urllib:

  • py2:urllib.addbase

  • py2:urllib.addclosehook

  • py2:urllib.addinfo

  • py2:urllib.addinfourl

Advanced - Customizing renames

It is possible to add additional names to the six.moves namespace.

six.add_move(item)

Add item to the six.moves mapping. item should be a MovedAttribute or MovedModule instance.

six.remove_move(name)

Remove the six.moves mapping called name. name should be a string.

Instances of the following classes can be passed to add_move(). Neither have any public members.

class six.MovedModule(name, old_mod, new_mod)

Create a mapping for six.moves called name that references different modules in Python 2 and 3. old_mod is the name of the Python 2 module. new_mod is the name of the Python 3 module.

class six.MovedAttribute(name, old_mod, new_mod, old_attr=None, new_attr=None)

Create a mapping for six.moves called name that references different attributes in Python 2 and 3. old_mod is the name of the Python 2 module. new_mod is the name of the Python 3 module. If new_attr is not given, it defaults to old_attr. If neither is given, they both default to name.