[Python-Dev] Generalised String Coercion

[Neil Schemenauer]

On Sat, Aug 06, 2005 at 06:56:39PM -0700, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> My first response to the PEP, however, is that instead of a new
> built-in function, I'd rather relax the requirement that str() return
> an 8-bit string

Do you have any thoughts on what the C API would be?  It seems to me
that PyObject_Str cannot start returning a unicode object without a
lot of code breakage.  I suppose we could introduce a function
called something like PyObject_String.

  Neil