[Python-Dev] What to do for bytes in 2.6?

[Neil Schemenauer]

Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> bytes is an alias for str (not even a subclass)
> b"" is an alias for ""

One advantage of a subclass is that there could be a flag that warns
about combining bytes and unicode data.  For example, b"x" + u"y"
would produce a warning.  As someone who writes internationalized
software, I would happly use both the byte designating syntax and
the warning flag, even if I wasn't planning to move to Python 3.

  Neil