[Python-Dev] PEP 215 does not introduce security issues

[Jason Orendorff]

Steve Majewski wrote:
> [...] it's more clear
> if I think of it as a preprocessor that really doesn't add any
> capabilities to the language. I should think of it more like
> the 'r' string prefix, which is just a syntactic convenience,
> rather than like the 'u' string prefix, which creates a special
> kind of (unicode) string. ( Well, it *does* create a special kind
> of string in the runtime, but you can't access that string to
> to do anything strange in Python, because as soon as it's assigned,
> it gets transformed into a 'normal string' . Thinking of it as
> a preprocessor makes that more obvious.)

Yep, I agree, and I'm glad we're all at least seeing PEP 215
the same way now. :-)

However, I don't think it would need a special kind of string
in the runtime.  Thinking of it as a preprocessor, I believe
it would only need to generate some Python bytecode that uses
the existing str or unicode types.

Now I can go back to being neutral on PEP 215.  :-)

## Jason Orendorff    http://www.jorendorff.com/