[I18n-sig] Terminology gap

[Andy Robinson]

> > My best attempt so far is to call it a "string-like
> object", but that
> > feels too long for something so common.
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > 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 agree with MAL.  "string" should refer to an interface; people doing
i18n stuff could then write their own ones in future if needed.  I
cannot get at CVS this week, but I think we actually checked in a
UserString class into the standard library in order to clearly define
the interface for string-like objects.

- Andy Robinson.