D-Strings Could End Your textwrap.dedent() Days and Other Python News for April 2026

If you’ve ever wrapped a multiline string in textwrap.dedent() and wondered why Python can’t just handle that for you, then your PEP has arrived. PEP 822 proposes d-strings, a new d"""...""" prefix that automatically strips leading indentation. It’s one of those small quality-of-life ideas that make you wonder why it didn’t exist already. The PEP is currently a draft proposal.

March also delivered Python 3.15.0 alpha 7 with lazy imports you can finally test and security patches across three older branches. On the ecosystem side, GPT-5.4 landed with a tool search feature that changes agentic workflows. Meanwhile, the Python Insider blog migration moved 307 posts to a new home without breaking a single URL. It’s time to get into the biggest Python news from the past month.

Python Releases and PEP Highlights

March brought the penultimate alpha of Python 3.15 with a long-awaited feature that finally lets Python developers defer imports cleanly. On top of that, security patches landed for three older branches, and a fresh PEP proposal showed up that could clean up your multiline strings for good.

Python 3.15.0 Alpha 7: Lazy Imports Land

Python 3.15.0a7 dropped on March 10, the second-to-last alpha before the beta freeze on May 5. The headline feature you can finally test is PEP 810, explicit lazy imports. The Steering Council accepted PEP 810 back in November, but this is the first alpha where the implementation is available to try.

The idea is straightforward: prefix any import statement with lazy, and the module won’t actually load until you first access an attribute on it:

lazy import json
lazy from datetime import timedelta

# The json module isn't loaded yet, so no startup cost

# Later, when you actually use it:
data = json.loads(payload)  # Now it loads

The PEP authors note that 17 percent of standard library imports are already placed inside functions to defer loading. Tools like Django’s management commands, Click-based CLIs, and codebases heavy on type checking often spend hundreds of milliseconds on imports they might never use. Lazy imports make that optimization explicit and clean, without scattering imports deep inside function bodies.

Security Releases: Python 3.12.13, 3.11.15, and 3.10.20

On March 3, Thomas Wouters released security-only patches across three older Python branches. The updates fix several CVEs, including two XML parsing vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-24515 and CVE-2026-25210), patched by upgrading the bundled libexpat to 2.7.4. Additional fixes cover an XML memory amplification bug and the rejection of control characters in HTTP headers and URL parsing.

If you’re still running Python 3.12 or older in production, applying these patches is highly recommended. Python 3.12 is now in security-fixes-only mode, so no binary installers are provided. You’ll need to build from source.

PEP 822: Dedented Multiline Strings (D-Strings)

PEP 822, authored by Inada Naoki, proposes a new d"""...""" string prefix that automatically strips leading indentation from multiline strings, using the same algorithm as textwrap.dedent().

Anyone who’s written a multiline SQL query or help text inside a function and battled with indentation knows the pain:

import textwrap

# Before: awkward indentation or textwrap.dedent() wrapper
def get_query():
    return textwrap.dedent("""\
        SELECT name, email
        FROM users
        WHERE active = true
    """)

# With d-strings: clean and readable
def get_query():
    return d"""
        SELECT name, email
        FROM users
        WHERE active = true
    """

The d prefix combines with f, r, b, and even the upcoming t (template strings) prefixes. PEP 822 was submitted to the Steering Council on March 9 and targets Python 3.15, though a decision hasn’t landed yet. If you’ve ever wished Python strings would just handle indentation for you, this one’s worth keeping an eye on.

Other PEPs in Progress