Re: [Python-Dev] Internal representation of strings and Micropython

On 6/4/2014 3:41 AM, Jeff Allen wrote:

Jython uses UTF-16 internally -- probably the only sensible choice in a Python that can call Java. Indexing is O(N), fundamentally. By "fundamentally", I mean for those strings that have not yet noticed that they contain no supplementary (>0xffff) characters.

Indexing can be made O(log(k)) where k is the number of astral chars, and is usually small. -- Terry Jan Reedy