Importing gcsfs in datalab is giving an error

Question

When I import gcsfs in datalab,

import gcsfs

I've this invalid syntax error which is related to the package fsspec. Is it something to do with versions

  File "/usr/local/envs/py3env/lib/python3.5/site-packages/IPython/core/interactiveshell.py", line 2961, in run_code
    exec(code_obj, self.user_global_ns, self.user_ns)

  File "<ipython-input-3-3f25f74e3f1b>", line 1, in <module>
    import gcsfs

  File "/usr/local/envs/py3env/lib/python3.5/site-packages/gcsfs/__init__.py", line 5, in <module>
    from .core import GCSFileSystem

  File "/usr/local/envs/py3env/lib/python3.5/site-packages/gcsfs/core.py", line 7, in <module>
    import fsspec

  File "/usr/local/envs/py3env/lib/python3.5/site-packages/fsspec/__init__.py", line 10, in <module>
    from .mapping import FSMap, get_mapper

  File "/usr/local/envs/py3env/lib/python3.5/site-packages/fsspec/mapping.py", line 2, in <module>
    from .core import url_to_fs

  File "/usr/local/envs/py3env/lib/python3.5/site-packages/fsspec/core.py", line 314
    out[0] = (f"{out[0][1]}://", out[0][1], out[0][2])
                              ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Answer 1

To expand on Claros answer, the underlying problem is the fsspec package, which gcsfs inherits from. fsspec's recent 0.8.0 version implemented f-strings, which is causing the error. To fix it, simply install the latest fsspec version that still supports Python 3.5, ie

!pip install fsspec==0.6.2

https://pypi.org/project/fsspec/0.6.2/

You may also have to downgrade gcsfs. I got it to work with

!pip install  --upgrade gcsfs==0.5.3

Answer 2

You're using Python 3.5, while f-strings is a feature implemented in Python 3.6. Either you find a compatible version of your package with Python 3.5, or you upgrade to Python 3.6+.