[Python-Dev] unifying str and unicode

[Martin Blais]

On 10/3/05, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
>
> > > If that's how things were designed, then Python's entire standard
> > > brary (not to mention third-party libraries) is not "unicode safe" -
> > > to quote your own words - since many functions may return 8-bit strings
> > > containing non-ascii characters.
> >
> > huh?  first you talk about functions that convert unicode strings to 8-bit
> > strings, now you talk about functions that return raw 8-bit strings?
>
> Are you deliberately missing the argument?
> And can't you understand that conversions are problematic in both
> directions (str -> unicode /and/ unicode -> str)?

Both directions are a problem.

Just a note: it's not so much the conversions that I find problematic,
but rather the implicit nature of the conversions (combined with the
fact that they may fail).  In addition to being difficult to track
down, these implicit conversions may be costing processing time as
well.

cheers,