A Python interpreter has one encoding for floats, ints, and strings. sys.float_info and sys.int_info give details about the first two. although they are mostly invisible to user code. (I presume they are attached to sys rather than float and int precisely because this.) A couple of recent posts have discussed making the unicode encoding (UCS2 v 4) both less visible and more discoverable to extensions. Bytes are nearly always an encoding of *something*, but the particular encoding used is instance-specific. As Guido has said, the programmer must keep track. But how? In an OO language, one obvious way is as an attribute of the instance. That would be carried with the instance and make it self-identifying. What I do not know if it is feasible to give an immutable instance of a builtin class a mutable attribute slot. If it were, I think this could make 3.x bytes easier and more transparent to use. When a string is encoded to bytes, the attribute would be set. If it were then pickled, the attribute would be stored with it and restored with it, and less easily lost. If it were then decoded, the attribute would be used. If it were sent to the net, the attribute would be used to set the appropriate headers. The reverse process would apply from net to bytes to (unicode) text. Bytes representing other types of data, such as nedia could also be tagged, not just those representing text. This would be a proposal for 3.3 at the earliest. It would involved revising stdlib modules, as appropriate, to use the new info. Terry Jan Reedy