[Python-Dev] ElementTree.tostring() returning str by default in Py3.2

[Stefan Behnel]

Stefan Behnel, 02.03.2010 10:06:
> I just noticed that the xml.etree.ElementTree.tostring() function in Py3.2
> returns a str object by default, unless an encoding is specified. This is a
> backwards incompatible change compared to ET 1.2. For one, it breaks tons
> of tests in lxml's compatibility test suite. Previously, the default
> encoding was 'ASCII', and tostring() was guaranteed to always return a byte
> string.
>
> According to svn blame, this was changed by GvR in rev. 56841.
>
> Is there any reasoning behind this?

I filed a bug report for now.

http://bugs.python.org/issue8047

Stefan