[Python-Dev] Internationalization Toolkit

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Greg Stein wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 10 Nov 1999, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> > Tim Peters wrote:
> > > BTW, is ord(unicode_char) defined?  And as what?  And does ord have an
> > > inverse in the Unicode world?  Both seem essential.
> >
> > Good points.
> >
> > How about
> >
> >   uniord(u[:1]) --> Unicode ordinal number (32-bit)
> >
> >   unichr(i) --> Unicode object for character i (provided it is 32-bit);
> >                 ValueError otherwise
> 
> Why new functions? Why not extend the definition of ord() and chr()?
> 
> In terms of backwards compatibility, the only issue could possibly be that
> people relied on chr(x) to throw an error when x>=256. They certainly
> couldn't pass a Unicode object to ord(), so that function can safely be
> extended to accept a Unicode object and return a larger integer.

Because unichr() will always have to return Unicode objects. You don't
want chr(i) to return Unicode for i>255 and strings for i<256.

OTOH, ord() could probably be extended to also work on Unicode objects.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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