[Python-Dev] String terminology [was Re: Misc re.match() complaint] (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Wed Jul 17 16:55:13 CEST 2013

When precision is needed I say things like 'a str object' or 'a bytes object'. There is no shame in a bit of verbosity around such issues, especially in the reference docs (tutorials are a different issue).

On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 4:50 AM, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:

On 17/07/13 19:05, Terry Reedy wrote:

Saying that input arguments can be "Unicode strings as well as 8-bit strings' (the wording is from 2.x, carried over to 3.x) does not necessary exclude other inputs. "8-bit strings" seems somewhat ambiguous to me. In UTF-8, many Unicode strings are 8-bit, as they can be with Python 3.3's flexible string format. I prefer to stick to Unicode or text string, versus byte string. Pedants who point out that "byte" does not necessarily mean 8-bits, and therefore we should talk about octets, will be slapped with a large halibut :-) -- Steven

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-- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)

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