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

[Terry Reedy]

"Christian Heimes" <lists at cheimes.de> wrote in message 
news:47E2B941.4080700 at cheimes.de...
| Thomas Wouters schrieb:
| The __future__ docs say "No feature description will ever be deleted
| from __future__."
|
| ever is a very strong word and I expect Python 3.x to follow the rule.

I was tempted to suggest that 'ever' could be interpred as 'ever in 2.x' 
but then I remembered the purpose of the rule, which is to allow a 
forward-looking individual to write modules that will operate in both a 
current version and an anticipated future version *without having to touch 
the code* -- until they choose to for purposes other than deleting future 
statements.  So each version should have a dict of retired futures that are 
accepted and then ignored.

In the case of 2.6 and 3.0, the future version will already be present, so 
it will be easier to develop a nearly complete set of future statements. 
If people who are skittish about autoconversion, especially by someone 
else's code, choose and succeed in writing code in a Python subset that 
works in both 3.0 and futurized 2.6, more power to them.  I do not think 
that they should be impeded by having to delete future statements, now more 
than at any other time.

tjr