Future is the missing compatibility layer between python 2 and python 3. it allows one to use a single, clean python 3.x-compatible codebase to support both python 2 and python 3 with minimal overhead.

the imports have no effect on python 3. on python 2, they shadow the corresponding builtins, which normally have different semantics on python 3 versus 2, to provide their python 3 semantics.

this package contains the documentation.