Hi,
Strings are currently iterable and it was stated multiple times that this is a
good idea and shouldn't change. While I still don't think that that's a good
idea I would like to propose a solution for the problem many people are
experiencing by introducing an abstract base class for strings.
Basically *the* problematic situation with iterable strings is something like
a `flatten` function that flattens out every iterable object except of strings.
Imagine it's implemented in a way similar to that::
def flatten(iterable):
for item in iterable:
try:
if isinstance(item, basestring):
raise TypeError()
iterator = iter(item)
except TypeError:
yield item
else:
for i in flatten(iterator):
yield i
A problem comes up as soon as user defined strings (such as UserString) is
passed to the function. In my opinion a good solution would be a "String"
ABC one could test against.
Regards,
Armin
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