[Python-Dev] PEP 393: Flexible String Representation (original) (raw)

Paul Moore p.f.moore at gmail.com
Wed Jan 26 13:49:44 CET 2011

On 26 January 2011 12:30, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

The PEP actually does define that already:

PyUnicodeAsUTF8 populates the utf8 field of the existing string, while PyUnicodeAsUTF8String creates a new string with that field populated. PyUnicodeAsUnicode will populate the wstr field (but doing so generally shouldn't be necessary).

AIUI, another point is that the PEP deprecates the use of the calls that populate the utf8 and wstr fields, in favour of the calls that expect the caller to manage the extra memory (PyUnicode_AsUTF8String rather than PyUnicode_AsUTF8, ??? rather than PyUnicode_AsUnicode). So in the long term, the extra fields should never be populated - although this could take some time as extensions have to be recoded. Ultimately, the extra fields and older APIs could even be removed.

So any space cost (which I concede could be non-trivial in some cases) is expected to be short-term.

Paul.

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