What is the purpose of the 'warnings' module in Python?

The warnings module is used for generating and handling warnings, which are not errors but indicate potential issues in the code (e.g., deprecated functions, discouraged API usage). Warnings can be filtered or displayed in various ways.

# Import the module
import warnings

# Example of issuing a warning
warnings.warn("This function will be deprecated soon", DeprecationWarning)

# Example of setting a filter: ignore all DeprecationWarning
warnings.filterwarnings("ignore", category=DeprecationWarning)

# Example of setting a filter: show each warning once
warnings.filterwarnings("once")