unquote() -- takes string, produces bytes or string
If optional "encoding" parameter is specified, decodes bytes with that encoding and returns string. Otherwise, returns bytes.
The default of returning bytes will break almost all uses. Most code will uses the unquoted result as a text string, not as bytes -- e.g. a server has to unquote the values it receives from a form (whether POST or GET), but almost always the unquoted values are text, e.g. someone's name or address, or a draft email message.
I actually do know a lot about the uses of this function... But: OK, OK, I yield. Though I still think this is a bad idea, I'll shut up if we can also add "unquote_as_bytes" which returns a byte sequence instead of a string. I'll just change my code to use that.
(Aside: I dislike functions that have a different return type based on the value of a parameter.)
Fair enough. Bill