[Python-Dev] unicode_string future, str -> basestring, fix or feature (original) (raw)

Serhiy Storchaka storchaka at gmail.com
Mon Mar 3 08:41:04 CET 2014

03.03.14 02:02, Terry Reedy написав(ла):

On 3/2/2014 4:23 PM, Serhiy Storchaka wrote:

02.03.14 22:01, Terry Reedy написав(ла):

Is this a programmer error for passing unicode instead of string, or a library error for not accepting unicode? Is changing 'isinstance(x, str)' in the library (with whatever other changes are needed) a bugfix to be pushed or a prohibited API expansion?

Patches which add support for unicode strings were accepted for one issues (e.g. http://bugs.python.org/issue19099) and rejected for other issues (e.g. http://bugs.python.org/issue20014 and http://bugs.python.org/issue20015). Some issues (e.g. http://bugs.python.org/issue18695) hang in undefined state. If Antoine and Guido don't reverse themselves, those could perhaps be re-opened. It strikes me as borderline, depending interpretation of 'string'. I am not surprised there have been different resolutions.

I believe that in all cases when valid values are ASCII-only strings (format specifiers for array, struct, memoryview, etc), we can accept both str and unicode. Especially when they are likely literals. But when valid value can be non-ASCII (e.g. file names), it is a different case, because it requires additional and may be totally different code.

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