[Python-Dev] Printing and __unicode__

[Martin v. Loewis]

Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org> writes:

> I'm not sure about those names, but I agree that the encoding should
> be forced when the StringIO instance is created.  Given that using
> Unicode with these is currently fragile at best, maybe we should say
> that unless you give an encoding argument, it's a byte stream and
> doesn't allow Unicode at all?  That would be consistent with cStringIO.

But it would break compatibility, atleast with
xml.dom.minidom.Node.write, which support StringIO currently, and will
collect Unicode strings in it.

Regards,
Martin