[Python-Dev] [1.6]: UserList, Dict: Do we need a UserString class?

[Peter Funk]

I wrote:
> > > Do we need a UserString class?
> > 
Andy Robinson:
> > This will probably be useful on top of the i18n stuff in due course,
> > so I'd like it.
> > 
> > Something Mike Da Silva and I have discussed a lot is implementing a
> > higher-level 'typed string' library on top of the Unicode stuff.  
> > A 'typed string' is like a string, but knows what encoding it is in -
> > possibly Unicode, possibly a native encoding and embodies some basic
> > type safety and convenience notions, like not being able to add a
> > Shift-JIS and an EUC string together.  Iteration would always be per
> > character, not per byte; and a certain amount of magic would say that
> > if the string was (say) Japanese, it would acquire a few extra methods
> > for doing some Japan-specific things like expanding half-width
> > katakana.
> > 
> > Of course, we can do this anyway, but I think defining the API clearly
> > in UserString is a great idea.
> 
Guido van Rossum:
> Agreed.  Please somebody send a patch!

I feel unable to do, what Andy proposed.  What I had in mind was a
simple wrapper class around the builtin string type similar to 
UserDict and UserList which can be used to derive other classes from.

I use UserList and UserDict quite often and find them very useful.
They are simple and powerful and easy to extend.

May be the things Andy Robinson proposed above belong into a sub class
which inherits from a simple UserString class?  Do we need
an additional UserUnicode class for unicode string objects?

Regards, Peter
-- 
Peter Funk, Oldenburger Str.86, D-27777 Ganderkesee, Germany, Fax:+49 4222950260
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