[Python-Dev] Unpickling py2 str as py3 bytes (and vice versa) - implementation (issue #6784)

[Merlijn van Deen]

On 17 March 2012 10:43, Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml at behnel.de> wrote:
> In lxml, there was an "encoding=unicode" option that would let the
> XML/HTML/text serialisation function return a Unicode string. This was
> eventually deprecated in favour of "encoding='unicode'" when ElementTree
> gained this feature as well some years later.

That's this issue: http://bugs.python.org/issue8047

The thread also suggests the options
    encoding=False
and
    encoding=None

Considering ET uses encoding="unicode" to signal 'don't encode', I
agree with you that using encoding="bytes" to signal 'don't encode'
would be sensible. However, ET /also/ allows encoding=str.What about
allowing both encoding="bytes" /and/ encoding=bytes?

Best,
Merlijn