Terry Reedy writes: <aside>
3. Python follows Occam's principle by not introducing types without necessity. And a separate char type is not *necessary*.
Well, neither are floats and integers; Decimal should do, no? </aside>
For people using non-Latin (non-ascii) alphabets, the 'convenience' of replacing some bytes with ascii-chars might be less convenient.
For us, the convenience remains. Japanese mail is transmitted via SMTP, and the control function "hello" is still spelled "EHLO" in Japanese mail. Farsi web pages are formatted by HTML, and the control function "new line" is spelled "<BR>" in Farsi, of course. It's the pain that comes from the inevitable mixing of binary protocol that looks like text with real text, turning the whole into an unintelligible garble, that hurts so much harder for people who can't properly write their names in ASCII. ターンブル・スティーヴェンです-ly y'rs,