bpo-29995: re.escape() now escapes only special characters. (#1007)

2 files changed, 8 insertions, 4 deletions

diff --git a/Doc/library/re.rst b/Doc/library/re.rst
index 3213daf..ce90ec7 100644
--- a/Doc/library/re.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/re.rst
@@ -786,7 +786,7 @@ form.
 
 .. function:: escape(pattern)
 
-   Escape all the characters in *pattern* except ASCII letters, numbers and ``'_'``.
+   Escape special characters in *pattern*.
    This is useful if you want to match an arbitrary literal string that may
    have regular expression metacharacters in it.  For example::
 
@@ -795,15 +795,19 @@ form.
 
       >>> legal_chars = string.ascii_lowercase + string.digits + "!#$%&'*+-.^_`|~:"
       >>> print('[%s]+' % re.escape(legal_chars))
-      [abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789\!\#\$\%\&\'\*\+\-\.\^_\`\|\~\:]+
+      [abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789!\#\$%&'\*\+\-\.\^_`\|~:]+
 
       >>> operators = ['+', '-', '*', '/', '**']
       >>> print('|'.join(map(re.escape, sorted(operators, reverse=True))))
-      \/|\-|\+|\*\*|\*
+      /|\-|\+|\*\*|\*
 
    .. versionchanged:: 3.3
       The ``'_'`` character is no longer escaped.
 
+   .. versionchanged:: 3.7
+      Only characters that can have special meaning in a regular expression
+      are escaped.
+
 
 .. function:: purge()
 
diff --git a/Doc/tools/susp-ignored.csv b/Doc/tools/susp-ignored.csv
index df67f75..01b1d98 100644
--- a/Doc/tools/susp-ignored.csv
+++ b/Doc/tools/susp-ignored.csv
@@ -303,7 +303,7 @@ whatsnew/3.2,,:gz,">>> with tarfile.open(name='myarchive.tar.gz', mode='w:gz') a
 whatsnew/3.2,,:location,zope9-location = ${zope9:location}
 whatsnew/3.2,,:prefix,zope-conf = ${custom:prefix}/etc/zope.conf
 library/re,,`,!#$%&'*+-.^_`|~:
-library/re,,`,\!\#\$\%\&\'\*\+\-\.\^_\`\|\~\:
+library/re,,`,!\#\$%&'\*\+\-\.\^_`\|~:
 library/tarfile,,:xz,'x:xz'
 library/xml.etree.elementtree,,:sometag,prefix:sometag
 library/xml.etree.elementtree,,:fictional,"<actors xmlns:fictional=""http://characters.example.com"""