[Python-Dev] PEP 460 reboot

[Guido van Rossum]

On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 6:07 PM, Daniel Holth <dholth at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there a formatting character that means "anything except a unicode
> string" to prevent accidentally interpolating a Unicode string into a
> bytes string without [a sane] encoding?

No, and we shouldn't introduce one. An operation should either work
for no type, one type, a few specific types, or all types. Something
that works for all but one type will *appear* to work for all types to
a casually experimenting user and may pass extensive unittests,
leaving a bomb that can detonate when you least expect it.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)