[Python-Dev] Removing Non-Unicode Support? (original) (raw)

Jeff Rush jeff at taupro.com
Mon Feb 20 01:34:38 CET 2006

Neal Norwitz wrote:

On 2/17/06, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:

Neal Norwitz wrote: > Another candidate for removal is the --disable-unicode switch.

We should probably add a deprecation warning for that in Py 2.5 and then remove the hundreds of #idef PyUSINGUNICODE from the source code in time for Py 2.6. I've heard of a bunch of people using --disable-unicode. I'm not sure if it's curiosity or if there are really production builds without unicode. Ask this on c.l.p too.

Such a switch quite likely is useful to those creating Python interpreters for small hand-held devices, where space is at a premium. I would hesitate to remove switches to drop features in general, for that reason.

Although I have played with reducing the footprint of Python, I am not currently doing so. I could never get the footprint down sufficiently to make it usable, unfortunately. But I would like to see the Python developers maintain an awareness of memory consumption and not assume that Python is always run on modern fully-loaded desktops. We are seeing increasing use of Python in embedded systems these days.

-Jeff

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