[Python-Dev] String terminology [was Re: Misc re.match() complaint]

[Guido van Rossum]

When precision is needed I say things like 'a str object' or 'a bytes
object'. There is no shame in a bit of verbosity around such issues,
especially in the reference docs (tutorials are a different issue).

On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 4:50 AM, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
> On 17/07/13 19:05, Terry Reedy wrote:
>
>> Saying that input arguments can be "Unicode strings as well as 8-bit
>> strings' (the wording is from 2.x, carried over to 3.x) does not necessary
>> exclude other inputs.
>
>
> "8-bit strings" seems somewhat ambiguous to me. In UTF-8, many Unicode
> strings are 8-bit, as they can be with Python 3.3's flexible string format.
> I prefer to stick to Unicode or text string, versus byte string.
>
> Pedants who point out that "byte" does not necessarily mean 8-bits, and
> therefore we should talk about octets, will be slapped with a large halibut
> :-)
>
>
> --
> Steven
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Python-Dev mailing list
> Python-Dev at python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev
> Unsubscribe:
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/guido%40python.org



-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)