[Python-ideas] isascii()/islatin1()/isbmp()

[Calvin Spealman]

On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 12:03 PM, Serhiy Storchaka <storchaka at gmail.com> wrote:
> As shown in issue #15016 [1], there is a use cases when it is useful to
> determine that string can be encoded in ASCII or Latin1. In working with Tk
> or Windows console applications can be useful to determine that string can
> be encoded in UCS2. C API provides interface for this, but at Python level
> it is not available.
>
> I propose to add to strings class new methods: isascii(), islatin1() and
> isbmp() (in addition to such methods as isalpha() or isdigit()). The
> implementation will be trivial.
>
> Pro: The current trick with trying to encode has O(n) complexity and has
> overhead of exception raising/catching.
>
> Contra: In most cases after determining characters range we still need to
> encode a string with the appropriate encoding. New methods will complicate
> already overloaded strings class.
>
> Objections?

-1

It doesn't make sense to special case them, instead of a simpler canencode()
method added. It could save memory, but I don't see it saving time.

> [1] http://bugs.python.org/issue15016
>
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