[Python-Dev] Deprecate from __future__ import unicode_literals? (original) (raw)

Barry Warsaw barry at python.org
Fri Dec 16 16:27:34 EST 2016

On Dec 16, 2016, at 01:07 PM, Ethan Furman wrote:

On 12/16/2016 11:24 AM, Guido van Rossum wrote:

I am beginning to think that from _future_ import unicodeliterals does more harm than good. I don't recall exactly why we introduced it, but with the restoration of u"" literals in Python 3.3 we have a much better story for writing straddling code that is unicode-correct. So cross-version code would be primarily 2.7 and 3.3+ ? I can live with that.

So can I. I don't mind "silently" deprecating it, such as adding strong admonitions against its use in the docs, but clearly it can't be removed (at least until 3.7) and I worry about breaking existing code, even with a more chatty DeprecationWarning.

At least in some circles, the problems of unicode_literals are known, but it's still useful and it's used in lots of places. Getting rid of cruft like this is one of the more satisfying edits when dropping Python 2 support. :)

Cheers, -Barry

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