diff --git a/Doc/whatsnew/3.2.rst b/Doc/whatsnew/3.2.rst index d1ab51ba7c7..924d7f5bec5 100644 --- a/Doc/whatsnew/3.2.rst +++ b/Doc/whatsnew/3.2.rst @@ -66,6 +66,38 @@ Some smaller changes made to the core Python language are: New, Improved, and Deprecated Modules ===================================== +* The functools module now includes two new decorators for caching function + calls, :func:`functools.lru_cache` and :func:`functools.lfu_cache`. These can + save repeated queries to an external resource whenever the results are + expected to be the same. + + For example, adding an LFU decorator to a database query function can save + database accesses for the most popular searches:: + + @functools.lfu_cache(maxsize=50) + def get_phone_number(name): + c = conn.cursor() + c.execute('SELECT phonenumber FROM phonelist WHERE name=?', (name,)) + return c.fetchone()[0] + + The LFU (least-frequently-used) cache gives best results when the distribution + of popular queries tends to remain the same over time. In contrast, the LRU + (least-recently-used) cache gives best results when the distribution changes + over time (for example, the most popular news articles change each day as + newer articles are added). + + The two caching decorators can be composed (nested) to handle hybrid cases + that have both long-term access patterns and some short-term access trends. + For example, music searches can reflect both long-term patterns (popular + classics) and short-term trends (new releases):: + + @functools.lfu_cache(maxsize=500) + @functools.lru_cache(maxsize=100) + def find_music(song): + ... + + (Contributed by Raymond Hettinger) + * The previously deprecated :func:`contextlib.nested` function has been removed in favor of a plain :keyword:`with` statement which can accept multiple context managers. The latter technique is faster