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

Vinay Sajip vinay_sajip at yahoo.co.uk
Tue Feb 28 08:51:22 CET 2012

Lennart Regebro <regebro gmail.com> writes:

I'm +1 on the PEP, for reasons already repeated here. We need three types of strings when supporting both Python 2 and Python 3. A binary string, a unicode string and a "native" string, ie one that is the old 8-bit str in python 2 but a Unicode str in Python 3.

Well it's a done deal, and as I said elsewhere on the thread, I wasn't opposing the PEP, but wanting some improvements in it. ISTM that given the PEP as it is, working across 3.2 and 3.3 on a single codebase may not always be the easiest process (IIUC you have to run a mini2to3 process, and it'll need to be cleverer than 2to3 about running over the entire codebase if it's to appear seamless), but I guess that's a smaller number of people you'd upset, and those people are committed to 3.x anyway. It's the 2.x porters we're trying to win over - I see that. It will be very nice if this leads to an increase in the rate at which libraries are ported to 3.x.

Adding back the u'' prefix is the easiest, most obvious/intuitive/pythong/whatever way of getting that support, that requires the least amount of code change, and the least ugly code.

"Least ugly" is subjective; I find u'xxx' less pretty than 'xxx' for text.

Regards,

Vinay Sajip

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