[Python-Dev] New Py_UNICODE doc

Nicholas Bastin nbastin at opnet.com
Thu May 5 21:51:47 CEST 2005


On May 4, 2005, at 6:03 PM, Martin v. Löwis wrote:

> Nicholas Bastin wrote:
>> "This type represents the storage type which is used by Python
>> internally as the basis for holding Unicode ordinals.  Extension 
>> module
>> developers should make no assumptions about the size of this type on
>> any given platform."
>
> But people want to know "Is Python's Unicode 16-bit or 32-bit?"
> So the documentation should explicitly say "it depends".

The important piece of information is that it is not guaranteed to be a 
particular one of those sizes.  Once you can't guarantee the size, no 
one really cares what size it is.  The documentation should discourage 
developers from attempting to manipulate Py_UNICODE directly, which, 
other than trivia, is the only reason why someone would care what size 
the internal representation is.

--
Nick


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