[Python-3000] u'text' as an alias for 'text'?

[Charles Merriam]

@#$ send in the middle of the email.    Sorry.

Short version:  Python 3000 breaks other code as well, some subtly.
This could be bad.    One long debugging
session over a missing character on a report due to the change in
representation of a Long could make all
the work of trying for an easy "3to2" conversion tool moot.

I don't know if the list has considered proposals to generalize the
underlying string prefix operator, such that
a user could somehow write a function t"Hello" to be equivalent to
gettext.gettext("Hello").  Has it been
brought up before?

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 8:40 AM, Charles Merriam
<charles.merriam at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Lennart,
>
>  As you can see by the growing conversation, the matter is a bit old
>  and, with age, smells
>  bad.  I'd like to convince you that it is a bad idea anyway.
>
>  The problem is not the gratuitous removal of the leading 'u', but the
>  subtle problems when
>  the code looks nearly identical.  The most likely one to cause
>  problems is the new semantics
>  of the keys operations.   While I haven't read the 3.0 code, this is
>  what was stated at Guido's
>  last talk.
>
>
>
>  On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 3:45 AM, Lennart Regebro <regebro at gmail.com> wrote:
>  > On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 11:28 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>  >  >  3 is not an option, and isn't going to be an option.
>  >
>  >  I know the Python 3000 project started with the attitude of not having
>  >  any backwards compatibility to be able to start at a blank slate. But
>  >  since then the compatibility set has increased so far that 3 now could
>  >  be an option with very little effort.
>  >
>  >  3 *should* be an option, as well. Loads of software, in particular the
>  >  whole Plone community, which is a significant part of the Python user
>  >  base, will struggle very hard if 3 is not an option. But this
>  >  discussion *has* been beaten to death. 3 should be an option, and it
>  >  is an option, if u'' gets supported.
>  >
>  >
>  >  --
>  >  Lennart Regebro: Zope and Plone consulting.
>  >  http://www.colliberty.com/
>  >  +33 661 58 14 64
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