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

Steven D'Aprano steve at pearwood.info
Tue Feb 28 17:02:30 CET 2012

Vinay Sajip wrote:

Serhiy Storchaka <storchaka gmail.com> writes:

Another pertinent question: "What are disadvantages of PEP 414 is adopted?" It's moot, but as I see it: the purpose of PEP 414 is to facilitate a single codebase across 2.x and 3.x. However, it only does this if your 3.x interest is 3.3+. If you also want to or need to support 3.0 - 3.2, it makes your workflow more painful, because you can't run tests on 2.x or 3.3 and then run them on 3.2 without an intermediate source conversion step - just like the 2to3 step that people find painful when it's part of maintenance workflow, and which in part prompted the PEP in the first place.

I don't think it's fair to say it makes it more painful. Fair to say it doesn't make it less painful, but adding u'' to 3.3+ doesn't make it harder to port from 2.x to 3.1+. You're merely no better off with it than without it.

Aside: in my opinion, people shouldn't actively support 3.0, or at least not advertise support for it, as it was end-of-lifed on the release of 3.1. As I see it, it is best to pretend that 3.0 never existed :)

-- Steven

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