[Python-Dev] PEP 414 - Unicode Literals for Python 3 (original) (raw)

R. David Murray rdmurray at bitdance.com
Mon Feb 27 21:11:34 CET 2012

On Mon, 27 Feb 2012 10:17:57 -0800, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 10:01 AM, Chris McDonough <chrism at plope.com> wrote: > The best argument is that there already exists tons and tons of Python 2 > code that already does: > >  u'that'

+1 > Needing to change it to: > >  u('that') > > 1) Requires effort on the part of a from-Python-2-porter to service >   the aesthetic and populist goal of not having an explicit >   but redundant-under-Py3 literal syntax that says "this is text". > > 2) Won't actually meet the aesthetic goal, as >   it's uglier and slower under both Python 2 and Python 3. > > So the populist argument remains.. "it's too confusing for people who > learn Python 3 as a new language to have a redundant syntax".  But we've > had such a syntax in Python 2 for years with b'', and, as mentioned by > Armin's PEP single-quoted vs. triple-quoted strings forever. > > I just don't understand the pushback here at all.  This is such a > nobrainer.

It's obviously not a no-brainer or you wouldn't be getting pushback :)

I view most of the pushback as people wanting to make sure all the options have been carefully considered. This should all be documented in the PEP.

I agree. Just let's start deprecating it too, so that once Python 2.x compatibility is no longer relevant we can eventually stop supporting it (though that may have to wait until Python 4...). We need to send some sort of signal that this is a compatibility hack and that no new code should use it. Maybe a SilentDeprecationWarning?

Isn't that what PendingDeprecationWarning is? This seems like the kind of use case that was introduced for (though it is less used now that DeprecationWarnings are silent by default).

--David

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