On Dec 09, 2011, at 03:18 PM, Lennart Regebro wrote: >On Fri, Dec 9, 2011 at 04:34, Barry Warsaw <ba...@python.org> wrote: >> Sorry, I don't understand this. What does it mean to be "str in both >> versions"? And why would you want that? > >It means that it's a str, that is a string of bytes, in Python 2, and >a str, that is a string of Unicode characters, in Python 3. There are >cases where you want this, for example not all libraries will accept >both str and Unicode under Python 2.
As Chris points out, this seems to be a use case tied to WSGI and PEP 3333. I guess it's an unfortunate choice for so recent a PEP, but maybe there was no way to do better. Still, it seems the "native string" discussion is an indication that the PEP is introducing a binary vs. text ambiguity when switching Python versions. My previous "you're screwed" comment comes back to mind. ;) >> As for "Unicode in Python 2 and str in Python 3", unadorned strings with the >> future import in Python >= 2.6 does that just fine. > >Yes, but the future import will change this for *all* strings, making >it impossible to have a string that is a "str" in both Python 2 and >Python 3. For that reason, the future import is not enough as a >solution (and I suspect, one major reason why I haven't actually seen >any one using it). It can certainly be useful in many contexts outside of WSGI. -Barry
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