| Soft deprecations |
| ----------------- |
| |
| There are no plans to remove :term:`soft deprecated` APIs. |
| |
| * :func:`re.match` and :meth:`re.Pattern.match` are now |
| :term:`soft deprecated` in favor of the new :func:`re.prefixmatch` and |
| :meth:`re.Pattern.prefixmatch` APIs, which have been added as alternate, |
| more explicit names. These are intended to be used to alleviate confusion |
| around what *match* means by following the Zen of Python's *"Explicit is |
| better than implicit"* mantra. Most other language regular expression |
| libraries use an API named *match* to mean what Python has always called |
| *search*. |
| |
| We **do not** plan to remove the older :func:`!match` name, as it has been |
| used in code for over 30 years. Code supporting older versions of Python |
| should continue to use :func:`!match`, while new code should prefer |
| :func:`!prefixmatch`. See :ref:`prefixmatch-vs-match`. |
| |
| (Contributed by Gregory P. Smith in :gh:`86519` and |
| Hugo van Kemenade in :gh:`148100`.) |
