Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Dec 30)

[Skip Montanaro]

    michele> BTW what's the difference between .encode and .decode ?

I started to answer, then got confused when I read the docstrings for
unicode.encode and unicode.decode:

    >>> help(u"\xe4".decode)
    Help on built-in function decode:

    decode(...)
        S.decode([encoding[,errors]]) -> string or unicode

        Decodes S using the codec registered for encoding. encoding defaults
        to the default encoding. errors may be given to set a different error
        handling scheme. Default is 'strict' meaning that encoding errors raise
        a UnicodeDecodeError. Other possible values are 'ignore' and 'replace'
        as well as any other name registerd with codecs.register_error that is
        able to handle UnicodeDecodeErrors.

    >>> help(u"\xe4".encode)
    Help on built-in function encode:

    encode(...)
        S.encode([encoding[,errors]]) -> string or unicode

        Encodes S using the codec registered for encoding. encoding defaults
        to the default encoding. errors may be given to set a different error
        handling scheme. Default is 'strict' meaning that encoding errors raise
        a UnicodeEncodeError. Other possible values are 'ignore', 'replace' and
        'xmlcharrefreplace' as well as any other name registered with
        codecs.register_error that can handle UnicodeEncodeErrors.

It probably makes sense to one who knows, but for the feeble-minded like
myself, they seem about the same.

I'd be happy to add a couple examples to the string methods section of the
docs if someone will produce something simple that makes the distinction
clear.

Skip