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

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Mon Feb 20 06:16:37 CET 2006

On 2/19/06, Jeff Rush <jeff at taupro.com> wrote: [Quoting Neal Norwitz]

> 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.

Do you know of any embedded platform that doesn't have unicode support as a requirement? Python runs fine on Nokia phones running Symbian, where everything is a Unicode string.

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

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