Input() in Python3

Fri Apr 22 02:22:32 EDT 2011

My interactive scripts are giving errors on the input(). I discovered 
another fairly significant change in Python3, as discussed in PEP 3111.
I was a little flabbergasted to discover that input() was proposed to be 
removed 'totally' from 3000. Of course I agree with PEP 3111 and am 
thankful that input() is still a built-in. doh.
The problem is that the behavior was significantly changed, again, 
causing existing code to break un-necessarily. So, input() used to be 
equivalent to:
 eval(raw_input("prompt>")) --> value
now we get this for input():
 raw_input("prompt>") --> string
I'm not whining or anything, just wondering why? Could someone enlighten 
me please?
Anyway, it looks like the best fix for 2.x --> 3.x code changes:
change: a = input("enter a number > ")
to: a = eval(input("enter a number > "))
Again, this is just another example where leaving the advertised 
interface alone would have made more sense... unless of course, I'm 
missing something important here.
kind regards,
m harris