[Python-Dev] thoughts on the bytes/string discussion

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Ian Bicking writes:

 > I'm proposing these specials would be used in polymorphic functions, like
 > the functions in urllib.parse.  I would not personally use them in my own
 > code (unless of course I was writing my own polymorphic functions).
 > 
 > This also makes it less important that the objects be a full stand-in for
 > text, as their use should be isolated to specific functions, they aren't
 > objects that should be passed around much.  So you can easily identify and
 > quickly detect if you use unsupported operations on those text-like
 > objects.

OK.  That sounds reasonable to me, but I don't see any need for
a builtin type for it.  Inclusion in the stdlib is not quite a
no-brainer, but given Guido's endorsement of polymorphism, I can't
bring myself to go lower than +0.9 <wink>.

 > (This is all a very different use case from bytes+encoding, I think)

Very much so.