Wow, that's a lot to take in.

I don't think things through very well sometimes.

I am not trying to "bring back" Python2, I am trying to see if we can fix the problem that was always there that got worse in Python3.

I guess the bottom line for me is what you said:

In most cases, there are other ways to do it--base64.encode(), binascii.hexlify(), etc. It would be nice if there was a convenient and consistent way to do all of them instead of having to hunt around the stdlib...

What does that do if I use it?

It could be used to convert a string to an integer (if applicable).

So have you thought of a solution for this problem?