flaming vs accuracy [was Re: Performance of int/long in Python 3]

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 7:26 AM, jmfauth <wxjmfauth at gmail.com> wrote:
> The wide build (I never used) is in my mind as correct as
> the narrow build. It "just" covers a different range in unicode
> (the whole range).

Actually it does; it covers all of the Unicode range, by using
(effectively) UTF-16. Characters that cannot be represented in one
16-bit number are represented in two. That's not "just" covering a
different range. It's being buggy. And it's creating a way for code to
unexpectedly behave fundamentally differently on Windows and Linux
(since the most common builds for Windows were narrow and for Linux
were wide). This is a Bad Thing for Python.

ChrisA