[Python-Dev] Unicode debate (original) (raw)

Fredrik Lundh Fredrik Lundh" <effbot@telia.com
Wed, 3 May 2000 09:56:25 +0200

Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org> wrote:

> What do we do about str( myunicodestring )? Perhaps escape the = Unicode > characters with backslashed numbers? =20 Hm, good question. Tcl displays unknown characters as \x or \u escapes. I think this may make more sense than raising an error.

but that's on the display side of things, right? similar to repr, in other words.

But there must be a way to turn on Unicode-awareness on e.g. stdout and then printing a Unicode object should not use str() (as it currently does).

to throw some extra gasoline on this, how about allowing str() to return unicode strings?

(extra questions: how about renaming "unicode" to "string", and getting rid of "unichr"?)

count to ten before replying, please.