[Python-Dev] PEP 414 (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Sun Feb 26 12:20:16 CET 2012

On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 9:00 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:

I think your suggestion is not well explained. You suggested a function n, expected to take a string literal. The example you gave earlier was:

n('xxx') But it seems to me that this is a no-op, because 'xxx' is already the native string type. In Python 2, it gives a str (byte-string), which the n() function converts to a byte-string. In Python 3, it gives a str (unicode-string), which the n() function converts to a unicode-string.

Vinay's suggestion was that it be used in conjunction with the "from future import unicode_literals" import, so that you could write:

b"" # Binary data "" # Text (unicode) data str("") # Native string type

It reduces the problem (compared to omitting the import and using a u() function), but it's still ugly and still involves the "action at a distance" of the unicode literals import.

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list