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

Skip Montanaro skip@pobox.com
Fri, 26 Apr 2002 11:00:26 -0500 

Guido> Also, once 8-bit strings are used for binary data only, I wonder
Guido> if they shouldn't be more like Java's byte arrays --
Guido> i.e. mutable.  And they don't need a literal notation.  That's
Guido> another major language change. :-(

How so? In theory, all the ways you write string constructors today would eventually map to Unicode objects. I'm thinking of string literals and constructor functions. That can be handled with the usual "warn for awhile" mechanism. The array module could be used to manipulate mutable arrays of 8-bit data. While permeating the Python innards with Unicode objects would be a major change I don't see any big syntactic changes - or is that not what worries you?

Skip