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

[Stefan Behnel]

Merlijn van Deen, 17.03.2012 15:20:
> On 17 March 2012 10:43, Stefan Behnel 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?

It doesn't read well for the unicode type any more because it's gone in Py3
(and "encoding=str" just looks weird). It's less awkward for the bytes type.

However, why should there be two ways to do it?

Stefan