On Sat, Apr 01, 2000 at 12:00:00PM -0500, Guido van Rossum wrote:
Python strings can now be stored as Unicode strings. To make it easier to type Unicode strings, the single-quote character defaults to creating a Unicode string, while the double-quote character defaults to ASCII strings. If you need to create a Unicode string with double quotes, just preface it with the letter "u"; likewise, an ASCII string can be created by prefacing single quotes with the letter "a". For example:
foo = 'hello' # Unicode foo = "hello" # ASCII
Is single-quoting for creating unicode clever ? I think there might be a problem with old code when the operations on unicode strings are not 100% compatible to the standard string operations. I don't know if this is a real problem - it's just a point for discussion. Cheers, Andreas