[Python-Dev] unicode hell/mixing str and unicode as dictionary keys (original) (raw)

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Tue Aug 8 02:29:48 CEST 2006

Armin Rigo schrieb:

I also seem to remember that TypeErrors should only signal ordering non-sense, not equality. In this case, I'm on the opinion that unicode objects and completely-unrelated strings of random bytes should successfully compare as unequal, but I'm not enough of a unicode user to be sure.

I believe this was the original intent for raising TypeErrors here in the first place: string-vs-unicode comparison predates rich comparisons, and there is no way to implement cmp meaningfully if the strings don't convert successfully under the system encoding (if they are inequal, you wouldn't be able to tell which one is smaller).

With rich comparisons available, I see no reason to keep raising that exception.

As for unicode users: As others have said, they should avoid mixing unicode and ascii strings. We provide a fallback for a limited case (ascii); beyond that, Python assumes that non-ascii strings represent uninterpreted bytes, not characters.

Regards, Martin

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