Yet another Python textbook

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 21 Nov 2012 12:03:30 -0500, Colin J. Williams wrote:

> On 20/11/2012 4:00 PM, Chris Angelico wrote:

>> To the OP: jmf has an unnatural hatred of Python 3.3 and PEP 393
>> strings. Take no notice; the rest of the world sees this as a huge
>> advantage. Python is now in a VERY small group of languages (I'm aware
>> of just one other) that have absolutely proper Unicode handling *and*
>> efficient string handling.
>>
>> ChrisA
>>
> It's interesting to see that someone else finds the format function to
> be a pain.  Perhaps the problem lies with the documentation.

This is nothing to do with the format function. Chris, and JMF, is 
talking about the internal representation of strings in Python.

Python 3.3 fixes a long-running design flaw that causes Unicode strings 
to be buggy (the use of so-called "surrogate pairs" for characters 
outside of the Basic Multilingual Plane), *and* saves up to 75% of the 
memory used by strings (reducing it from up to 4 bytes per character to 
as little as 1 byte per character), but at the cost of a trivially small 
slowdown under some circumstances.

JMF is obsessed with the idea that Python is destroying Unicode for the 
benefit of the Americans. It's quite sad really.


-- 
Steven