[Python-Dev] PyUnicodeObject / PyASCIIObject questions

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> Any chance of adding the rationale to the code?

I'm really short of time right now, so you need to find somebody
else to make such a change.

> I am willing to believe that requests for a wchar_t (or utf-8 or
> System Locale charset) representation are common enough to justify
> caching the data after the first request.

That's not the issue; the real issue is memory management.

> But then why throw it away in the first place?  Wouldn't programs that
> create unicode from wchar_t data also be the most likely to request
> wchar_t data back?

Perhaps. But are they likely to access the string they just created
again at all? They know what's in it, so why look at it again?

> In all other cases, (wstr_length == length), and wstr can be generated
> by widening the data without having to inspect it.  Is it worth
> eliminating wstr_length (or even wstr) in those cases, or is that too
> much complexity?

It's too little saving.

> What I'm asking is that
> (1)  The other values be documented as reserved, rather than as illegal.

How is that different?

> (2)  The macros produce an error rather than silently corrupting data.

In debug mode, or release mode? -1 on release mode.

Regards,
Martin