[Python-Dev] PEP 414 - Unicode Literals for Python 3

[Ethan Furman]

Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Feb 2012 13:09:24 -0800
> Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us> wrote:
>> Martin v. Löwis wrote:
>>>>> Eh?  The 2.6 version would also be u('that').  That's the whole point
>>>>> of the idiom.  You'll need a better counter argument than that.
>>>> So the idea is to convert the existing 2.6 code to use parenthesis as
>>>> well? (I obviously haven't read the PEP -- my apologies.)
>>> Well, if you didn't, you wouldn't have the same sources on 2.x and 3.x.
>>> And if that was ok, you wouldn't need the u() function in 3.x at all,
>>> since plain string literals are *already* unicode strings there.
>> True -- but I would rather have u'' in 2.6 and 3.3 than u('') in 2.6 and 
>> 3.3.
> 
> You don't want to be 3.2-compatible?

Unfortunately I do.  However, at some point 3.2 will fall off the edge 
of the earth and then u'' will be just fine.

This is probably a dumb question, but why can't we add u'' back to 3.2? 
  It seems an incredibly minor change, and we are not in security-only 
fix stage, are we?

~Ethan~