Possible to write a Unicode*like* object?

[Michael Hudson]

Just <just at xs4all.nl> writes:

> In article <7h3znpctbm4.fsf at pc150.maths.bris.ac.uk>,
>  Michael Hudson <mwh at python.net> wrote:
> 
> > Just <just at xs4all.nl> writes:
> > 
> > > In the PyObjC project (a bridge between Python and Objective-C, and/or 
> > > Cocoa really, OSX's GUI stuff) there's currently a discussion about 
> > > whether to _convert_ NSString instances (the Cocoa string class) to 
> > > Python (unicode) strings or to wrap the original instance that would 
> > > make it string-like. For 8-bit strings wrapping is probably not a big 
> > > deal, the buffer interface makes this work quite transparently, but I 
> > > have no clue whether this is possible for unicode strings as well. Any 
> > > ideas?
> > 
> > I think you can return unicode data through the buffer interface too,
> > can't you?  In any case, I'm a bit unsure what exactly you're asking.
> 
> I'm not sure sure myself, either... I think an example could be: can I 
> write a class (in C) that will be treated just like a unicode object, eg 
> when doing pattern matching with re?

>From staring at the source, I'd guess so.

Actually, yes: someone already has.

>>> re.match('(a)|b', array.array('u', u'a string')).groups()
(array('u', u'a'),)

> I tend to think we shouldn't even try this and we should simply build a 
> true unicode object, but there are voices in the project that say we 
> should avoid the conversion at all cost. I wouldn't be too unhappy about 
> that, provided it can work reasonably transparently, which I doubt.

See above.  I'm not sure there's an alternative to "suck it and see".

Cheers,
M.

-- 
  I'm sorry, was my bias showing again? :-)
                                      -- William Tanksley, 13 May 2000