str() should convert ANY object to a string without EXCEPTIONS !

[est]

On Sep 28, 4:38 pm, Steven D'Aprano <st... at REMOVE-THIS-
cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Sep 2008 22:37:09 -0700, est wrote:
> >>>> str(u'\ue863')
> > Traceback (most recent call last):
> >   File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
> > UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\ue863' in
> > position 0
> > : ordinal not in range(128)
>
> > FAIL.
>
> What result did you expect?
>
> [...]
>
> > The problem is, why the f**k set ASCII encoding to range(128) ????????
> > while str() is internally byte array it should be handled in range(256)
> > !!!!!!!!!!
>
> To quote Terry Pratchett:
>
>     "What sort of person," said Salzella patiently, "sits down and
>     *writes* a maniacal laugh? And all those exclamation marks, you
>     notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants
>     on his head." -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade)
>
> In any case, even if the ASCII encoding used all 256 possible bytes, you
> still have a problem. Your unicode string is a single character with
> ordinal value 59491:
>
> >>> ord(u'\ue863')
>
> 59491
>
> You can't fit 59491 (or more) characters into 256, so obviously some
> unicode chars aren't going to fit into ASCII without some sort of
> encoding. You show that yourself:
>
> u'\ue863'.encode('mbcs')  # Windows only
>
> But of course 'mbcs' is only one possible encoding. There are others.
> Python refuses to guess which encoding you want. Here's another:
>
> u'\ue863'.encode('utf-8')
>
> --
> Steven

OK, I am tired of arguing these things since python 3.0 fixed it
somehow.

Can anyone tell me how to customize a default encoding, let's say
'ansi' which handles range(256) ?