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

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Fri, 05 Oct 2001 13:07:32 -0400

Yes, I'm sure: we need a PEP first. Ideally it would answer some of the questions raised above, and it would lay out the class hierarchy.

The more I think about this, the more I agree that we need a PEP first: there are lots of potential traps. Maybe the biggest danger: declaring an abstract base class for e.g. "sequence-ness" would encourage programmers to test isinstance(x, sequencebase) when all they really need is something that supports the getitem protocol. This would encourage writing code that is less polymorphic than it could be, and that would be a real loss.

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