[Python-Dev] unicode_string future, str -> basestring, fix or feature

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Terry Reedy writes:
 > On 3/2/2014 4:23 PM, Serhiy Storchaka wrote:

 > > Patches which add support for unicode strings were accepted for one
 > > issues (e.g. http://bugs.python.org/issue19099) and rejected for other
 > > issues (e.g. http://bugs.python.org/issue20014 and
 > > http://bugs.python.org/issue20015). Some issues (e.g.
 > > http://bugs.python.org/issue18695) hang in undefined state.
 > 
 > If Antoine and Guido don't reverse themselves, those could perhaps be 
 > re-opened. It strikes me as borderline, depending interpretation of 
 > 'string'. I am not surprised there have been different resolutions.

I agree with Victor in http://bugs.python.org/issue18695#msg208857:
there's no "bug".  It is just that in the design of 2.x 'str' is not
Unicode, and the "fix" is Python 3.  This may be an area where 2to3
could give more help.

As Victor points out in that message, the issue-by-issue approach to
this inconsistency is just whack-a-mole.

I would worry not only about the whack-a-mole aspect where 'unicode'
objects leak into contexts where they're not supported, but also that
this could confuse tools like 2to3.

I agree that usage of the word "string" is all too often ambiguous in
the documentation, but that doesn't justify a wholesale overhaul of
the Python 2.7 API to make everything polymorphic.