[I18n-sig] Terminology gap

[Toby Dickenson]

On Thu, 31 Aug 2000 15:35:28 +0200, "M.-A. Lemburg" <mal@lemburg.com>
wrote:

>Toby Dickenson wrote:
>>=20
>> Ive recently been updating my documentation to account for Unicode
>> issues, and have been troubled by the lack of a good name to describe
>> an object that can be *either* a "plain string" or a "unicode string".
>
>I usually use "8-bit string" and "Unicode object".
>=20
>> My best attempt so far is to call it a "string-like object", but that
>> feels too long for something so common.
>>=20
>> I would like to use the simple "string", but a quick poll of my local
>> developers suggests that this does not convey the unicode option.
>>=20
>> Does anyone have any suggestions?
>
>I think the accepted term is "string", since someday Python will
>have a string base class. Unicode objects and 8-bit strings will
>then be subclasses of this string class.

I think the more specific use of "string" will be a hard habit to
break....

>>> type('')
<type 'string'>



Toby Dickenson
tdickenson@geminidataloggers.com