[Python-Dev] ElementTree.tostring() returning str by default in Py3.2

[Stefan Behnel]

Hi,

I just noticed that the xml.etree.ElementTree.tostring() function in Py3.2
returns a str object by default, unless an encoding is specified. This is a
backwards incompatible change compared to ET 1.2. For one, it breaks tons
of tests in lxml's compatibility test suite. Previously, the default
encoding was 'ASCII', and tostring() was guaranteed to always return a byte
string.

According to svn blame, this was changed by GvR in rev. 56841.

Is there any reasoning behind this?

Stefan