over at my work copy of the python language reference, Adrian Holovaty asked about the exact semantics of the __str__ hook: http://effbot.org/pyref/__str__ "The return value must be a string object." Does this mean it can be a *Unicode* string object? This distinction is ambiguous to me because unicode objects and string objects are both subclasses of basestring. May a __str__() return a Unicode object? I seem to remember earlier discussions on this topic, but don't recall when and what. From what I can tell, __str__ may return a Unicode object, but only if can be converted to an 8-bit string using the default encoding. Is this on purpose or by accident? Do we have a plan for improving the situation in future 2.X releases ? </F>