[Python-Dev] Minidom and Unicode

[Fredrik Lundh]

mal wrote:
> > I'm not sure whose fault that is: either __repr__ should accept
> > unicode strings, or minidom.Element.__repr__ should be changed to
> > return a plain string, e.g. by converting tagname to UTF-8. In any
> > case, I believe __repr__ should 'work' for these objects.
>=20
> Note that __repr__ has to return a string object (and IIRC
> this is checked in object.c or abstract.c). The correct way
> to get there is to simply return str(...) or to have a
> switch on the type of self.tagName and then call .encode().

assuming that the goal is to get rid of this restriction in future
versions (a string is a string is a string), how about special-
casing this in PyObject_Repr:

        PyObject *res;
        res =3D (*v->ob_type->tp_repr)(v);
        if (res =3D=3D NULL)
            return NULL;
---
        if (PyUnicode_Check(res)) {
            PyObject* str;
            str =3D PyUnicode_AsEncodedString(res, NULL, NULL);
            if (str) {
                Py_DECREF(res);
                res =3D str;
            }
        }
---
        if (!PyString_Check(res)) {
            PyErr_Format(PyExc_TypeError,
                     "__repr__ returned non-string (type %.200s)",
                     res->ob_type->tp_name);
            Py_DECREF(res);
            return NULL;
        }
        return res;

in this way, people can "do the right thing" in their code,
and have it work better in future versions...

(just say "+1", and the mad patcher will update the repository)

</F>