Feature or enhancement

Proposal:

Theimportlib.resources functions{open,read}_{text,binary},path,is_resource andcontents, deprecated in 3.11 and removed in 3.13 alphas, are, anecdotally, missed by quite a few users.
They provide a simple API for simple tasks, while the full-featuredTraversable API is better suited for complex ones -- especially for implementing new resources-aware loaders.

I'm now in a position where I can add these functions back and support them.

Their main drawback -- not allowing subdirectories -- can be solved by taking multiple path components as positional arguments, for example:

importlib.resources.read_text('modulename','subdirectory','subsubdir','resource.txt')

The additional arguments (encoding anderrors) would become keyword-only.

There is a wrinkle in this: in Python 3.9-3.11, the above would mean:

importlib.resources.read_text('modulename','subdirectory',encoding='subsubdir',errors='resource.txt',)

I believe that this is acceptable, since:

• pragmatically: typical file names do not match typical encoding/errorhandler names
• lawyerly: the functions have already been deprecated for 2 releases; no one is using them now, right?

However, if this is a problem, I can

[edit: This is solved by:]

• make theencoding argumentrequired if a text-reading function more than one path component is given.
• plan to lift this limitation around 3.15.

importlib.resources.read_text('modulename','subdirectory','subsubdir','resource.txt',encoding='utf-8',)importlib.resources.read_text('modulename','resource.txt')# OKimportlib.resources.read_text('modulename','subdirectory','utf-8')# error

Has this already been discussed elsewhere?

I have already discussed this feature proposal on Discourse

Links to previous discussion of this feature:

https://discuss.python.org/t/deprecating-importlib-resources-legacy-api/11386/29

Linked PRs

• gh-116608: Bring back importlib.resources functional API #116609
• gh-116608: Ignore UTF-16 BOM in importlib.resources._functional tests #117569
• gh-116608: Apply style and compatibility changes from importlib_metadata. #123028
• [3.13] gh-116608: Apply style and compatibility changes from importlib_resources. (GH-123028) #123051
• [3.13] gh-116608: Revert "[3.13] gh-116608: Apply style and compatibility changes from importlib_resources. (GH-123028) (#123051)" #123072
• [3.13] gh-116608: Re-apply style and compatibility changes from importlib_resources. (GH-123028) #123074
• [3.12] gh-116608: undeprecate functional importlib.resources API #132206