[Python-Dev] str and unicode (original) (raw)

M.-A. Lemburg mal at egenix.com
Wed Dec 6 10:46:34 CET 2006

On 2006-12-06 10:26, Fredrik Lundh wrote:

over at my work copy of the python language reference, Adrian Holovaty asked about the exact semantics of the str hook:

http://effbot.org/pyref/str "The return value must be a string object." Does this mean it can be a Unicode string object? This distinction is ambiguous to me because unicode objects and string objects are both subclasses of basestring. May a str() return a Unicode object? I seem to remember earlier discussions on this topic, but don't recall when and what. From what I can tell, str may return a Unicode object, but only if can be converted to an 8-bit string using the default encoding. Is this on purpose or by accident? Do we have a plan for improving the situation in future 2.X releases ?

This was added to make the transition to all Unicode in 3k easier:

.str() may return a string or Unicode object.

.unicode() must return a Unicode object.

There is no restriction on the content of the Unicode string for .str().

-- Marc-Andre Lemburg eGenix.com

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