[Python-Dev] Divorcing str and unicode (no more implicit conversions).

[Bill Janssen]

> >I'm thinking about making all character strings Unicode (possibly with
> >different internal representations a la NSString in Apple's Objective
> >C) and introduce a separate mutable bytes array data type. But I could
> >use some validation or feedback on this idea from actual
> >practitioners.

+1 from me, too.

> I'm tempted to say it would be even better if there was a command line 
> option that could be used to force all binary opens to result in bytes, and 
> require all text opens to specify an encoding.

I like this idea, too.  Presumably plain "open(FILENAME, MODE)" would
then result in a binary open (no encoding specified), which I've
wanted for a long time (and which makes sense).  But it is a change.

Bill