[Python-Dev] Re: Allowing u.encode() to return non-strings

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Terry Reedy wrote:
> Python strings are sequences of 0 to n chars from an abstract 256-char
> alphabet.  This meets my understanding of the standard 20th century CS
> definition of string.  Has there been a significant change in the last few
> years?

Yes. Abstract 256-char alphabets have been found useless for the 
representation of natural-language text. You need concrete alphabets,
and having more than 256 characters is often important.

> The byte set is intentionally not any *particular* natural language char
> set, but a possible carrier for any of them.  Perhaps unfortunately, it
> lacks a single standard glyph set or graphic representation., but I believe
> Unicode also differentiates between characters (code points?) and glyphs
> (which are also not standardized).  

Yes. But Unicode does define concrete characters - even if it leaves
the choice of glyphs.

Regards,
Martin