[Python-Dev] Internal representation of strings and Micropython

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 3:17 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4 June 2014 11:17, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
>> My own feeling is that O(1) string indexing operations are a quality of
>> implementation issue, not a deal breaker to call it a Python.
>
> If string indexing & iteration is still presented to the user as "an
> array of code points", it should still avoid the bugs that plagued
> both Python 2 narrow builds and direct use of UTF-8 encoded Py2
> strings.

It would. The downsides of a UTF-8 representation would be slower
iteration and much slower (O(N)) indexing/slicing.

ChrisA