[Python-Dev] [1.6]: UserList, Dict: Do we need a UserString class? (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Tue, 28 Mar 2000 16:56:49 -0500

[Peter Funk]

> > > Do we need a UserString class? > > Andy Robinson: > > This will probably be useful on top of the i18n stuff in due course, > > so I'd like it. > > > > Something Mike Da Silva and I have discussed a lot is implementing a > > higher-level 'typed string' library on top of the Unicode stuff. > > A 'typed string' is like a string, but knows what encoding it is in - > > possibly Unicode, possibly a native encoding and embodies some basic > > type safety and convenience notions, like not being able to add a > > Shift-JIS and an EUC string together. Iteration would always be per > > character, not per byte; and a certain amount of magic would say that > > if the string was (say) Japanese, it would acquire a few extra methods > > for doing some Japan-specific things like expanding half-width > > katakana. > > > > Of course, we can do this anyway, but I think defining the API clearly > > in UserString is a great idea. > Guido van Rossum: > Agreed. Please somebody send a patch!

[PF]

I feel unable to do, what Andy proposed. What I had in mind was a simple wrapper class around the builtin string type similar to UserDict and UserList which can be used to derive other classes from.

Yes. I think Andy wanted his class to be a subclass of UserString.

I use UserList and UserDict quite often and find them very useful. They are simple and powerful and easy to extend.

Agreed.

May be the things Andy Robinson proposed above belong into a sub class which inherits from a simple UserString class? Do we need an additional UserUnicode class for unicode string objects?

It would be great if there was a single UserString class which would work with either Unicode or 8-bit strings. I think that shouldn't be too hard, since it's just a wrapper.

So why don't you give the UserString.py a try and leave Andy's wish alone?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)