float to unicode question

[Erik Max Francis]

gabor wrote:

> this works:
> a = str(14.34)
> 
> this works:
> a = unicode(14.34)
> 
> this doesn't work:
> a = unicode(14.34,'iso-8859-1')
> 
> why?
> i have to do:
> a = unicode(string(14.34),'iso-8859-1')

[You meant str(14.34).]

The reason is because that second argument (and indeed, the third) is
_only_ for specifying the encoding, and that only makes sense when what
you're passing it is a string.

unicode(14.34) works just fine, but "interpret this float as a Latin-1
string" doesn't make sense, because a float ain't a string.

-- 
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