[Patches] [Patch #101664] Add new unistr() builtin + PyObject_Unicode() C API

[Ka-Ping Yee]

On Wed, 17 Jan 2001 noreply@sourceforge.net wrote:
> Comment:
> This patch adds a utility function unistr() which works just like
> the standard builtin str()  -- only that the return value will
> always be a Unicode object.

Sorry for barging in, but i have an issue/question:

Why are unistr() and unicode() two separate functions?

str() performs one task: convert to string.  It can convert anything,
including strings or Unicode strings, numbers, instances, etc.

The other type-named functions e.g. int(), long(), float(), list(),
tuple() are similar in intent.

Why have unicode() just for converting strings to Unicode strings,
and unistr() for converting everything else to a Unicode string?
What does unistr(x) do differently from unicode(x) if x is a string?


-- ?!ng