[Python-ideas] String-like methods on StringIO objects?

From the "idle speculation" files (inspired by the recent thread on python-dev): has anyone ever experimented with offering string methods like find() on StringIO objects?

I don't work in any sufficiently memory constrained environments these days that that style of API would be worth the hassle relative to a normal string, it just struck me as a potentially interesting approach to the notion of a string manipulation type that didn't generally copy data around and could use different code point sizes internally for different parts of the text data. Cheers, Nick.