[Python-Dev] Deprecate `from __future__ import unicode_literals`?

[Guido van Rossum]

I am beginning to think that `from __future__ import unicode_literals` does
more harm than good. I don't recall exactly why we introduced it, but with
the restoration of u"" literals in Python 3.3 we have a much better story
for writing straddling code that is unicode-correct.

The problem is that the future import does both too much and not enough --
it does too much because it changes literals to unicode even in contexts
where there is no benefit (e.g. the argument to getattr() -- I still hear
of code that breaks due to this occasionally) and at the same time it
doesn't do anything for strings that you read from files, receive from the
network, or even from other files that don't use the future import.

I wonder if we can add an official note to the 2.7 docs recommending
against it? (And maybe even to the 3.x docs if it's mentioned there at all.)

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido <http://python.org/%7Eguido>)
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