[I18n-sig] Strawman Proposal: Smart String Test

[Paul Prescod]

The types module will contain a new function called 

isstring(obj)

types.isstring returns true if the object could be directly interpreted
as a string. This is defined as: "implements the string interface and is
compatible with the re regular expression engine." At the moment no user
types fit this criteria so there is no mechanism for extending the
behavior of the types.isstring function yet. It's initial behavior is:

def isstring(obj):
    return type(obj) in (StringType, UnicodeType)

 Paul Prescod