[Python-Dev] doctest, unicode repr, and 2to3

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Johan Harjano ran into an interesting problem when trying to run the
Django test suite under Python 3.1.

Django has doctests of the form

>>> a6.headline
u'Default headline'

Even when converting the doctest with 2to3, the expected output is
unmodified. However, in 3.x, the expected output will change (i.e. not
produce an u"" prefix anymore).

Now, it might be possible to reformulate the test case (e.g. use print()
instead of relying on repr), however, this is undesirable as a) the test
should continue to test in 2.x that the result object is a unicode
string, and b) it makes the test less readable.

I would like to find a solution where this gets automatically corrected,
e.g. through 2to3, or through changes to doctest, or through changes of
str.__repr__.

Any proposal appreciated.

Regards,
Martin