[Python-3000] Making more effective use of slice objects in Py3k

[tjreedy]

"Bob Ippolito" <bob at redivi.com> wrote in message 
news:6a36e7290608302056v4b0e68abrfe0c5b1fc927ff at mail.gmail.com...
> +1 for polymorphic strings.

A strong +1 here also.
>
> This would give us the best of both worlds: compact representations
> for ASCII and Latin-1, full 32 bit text when needed, and the
> possibility to implement further optimizations when necessary.

As I understand current plans, Python 3 will have a polymorphic integer type 
that handles details of switching between the two current implementations, 
one for efficiency, and one for generality, behind the scenes.

I think it would be a great selling point for people to adopt Python 3 if it 
also handled the even worse nastiness of text forms behind the scenes, and 
kept the efficiency of special case uses (as in all ascii chars) while 
making the transition to generality more seamless than it is now.

These two similar features would be enough, to me, to make Py3 more than 
just 2.x with cruft removed.

Terry J. Reedy