[Python-Dev] unicode inconsistency? (original) (raw)

Tim Peters tim.peters at gmail.com
Thu Sep 9 21:00:07 CEST 2004

[Martin v. Löwis]

... For the specific issue, I would maintain that str() should always return string objects.

builtin.str() always does -- or raises an exception. Same for PyObject_Str() and PyObject_Repr().

I'm not so sure about %s since, as Neil observes, '%s' % unicodestring gives a unicode result.

That's because PyString_Format()'s '%s' processing special-cases the snot out of unicode inputs. All other inputs to '%s' (and '%r') go thru PyObject_Str() or PyObject_Repr(), and, as above, those never return a unicode. In Neil's case, they raise the expected exception, and there's nothing sane PyString_Format can do about that.

I can't see any harm by supporting this operation also if str returns a Unicode object.

It doesn't sound like a good idea to me, at least in part because it would be darned messy to implement short of saying "OK, we don't give a rip anymore about what type of objects PyObject_{Str,Repr} return", and that would have broader consequences that just letting Neil get away with whatever he's trying to do with str.mod.

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