[Python-Dev] Need a way to test for 8-bit-or-unicode-string (original) (raw)

Greg Ward gward@python.net
Fri, 5 Oct 2001 12:28:49 -0400

On 05 October 2001, Guido van Rossum said:

- Create a new service function, IsString(x) or isString(x) or isstring(x), that's a shortcut for "isinstance(x, str) or isinstance(x, unicode)". The question them becomes where to put this: as a builtin, in types.py, or somewhere else...

I've thought Python should have this for a long time. But Marc-Andre's point pretty much shoots it down, unless you make isstring(x) sugar for isinstance(x, (str, unicode))

Hmmm. It's a very small dose of sugar, but I like it all the same.

[...] (BTW this shows to me again that the method signature is right and the function signature is wrong. But even my time machine isn't powerful enough to fix this.) (Hm, it could be saved by making string.join() accept the arguments in either order. Gross. :-)

Note that a certain infamous April Fool's post from a few years back said that that was what Python 1.6 would do. I wasn't serious, either. ;-)

    Greg

-- Greg Ward - just another /P(erl|ython)/ hacker gward@python.net http://starship.python.net/~gward/ LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs