Problems in Using C-API for Unicode handling

[Steve Holden]

abhi wrote:
> On Jan 13, 12:17 pm, Terry Reedy <tjre... at udel.edu> wrote:
>> abhi wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>     I am trying to handle Unicode objects in C (Python 2.5.2). I am
>>> getting PyObjects from and want to coerce them to unicode objects. The
>>> documentation provides two APIs for that:
>>>  PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject(PyObject *obj, const char *encoding,
>>> const char *errors)
>>>  PyUnicode_FromObject(PyObject *obj)
>>> (http://www.python.org/doc/2.5.2/api/unicodeObjects.html)
>>> Now I want to utf-16 so I am trying to use the first one, but it is
>>> giving back NULL in case of PyObject is already Unicode type which is
>>> expected. What puzzles me is that PyUnicode_FromObject(PyObject *obj)
>>> is passing irrespective of type of PyObject. The API says it is
>>> Shortcut for PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject(obj, NULL, "strict") but if I
>>> use that, it returns NULL where as PyUnicode_FromObject works.
>>> Is there any way by which I can take in any PyObject and convert it to
>>> utf-16 object? Any help is appreciated.
>> Whether Unicode objects are utf-16 or utf=32 depends on your Python
>> build.  You can always convert a byte string representation of an object
>> to unicode.- Hide quoted text -
>>
>> - Show quoted text -
> 
> Hi,
>    I agree with you. I have a Python unicode object in C (I don't know
> which utf) and I want to convert this explicitely to utf-16. Is there
> any way to do this?
> PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject(PyObject *obj, const char *encoding, const
> char *errors) says that obj can't be a unicode type so I guess I can't
> use this one, does anybody knows any other method by which I can
> achieve my goal?
> 
I suspect that a "Python Unicode object in C" will be using either UCS-2
or UCS-4 representation, depending on the options your interpreter was
built with. So whatever else it is, it won't be UTF-anything. Don't know
whether that helps or not.

regards
 Steve
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