Looking for a nice CGI-related string representation module

[Tyler Eaves]

Mike McGavin unleashed the following on comp.lang.python:
> 
> 
> Hi everyone.
> 
> I'm writing some CGI scripts that deal with user input and databases, 
> and I was wondering if anyone could recommend any good string handling 
> modules designed for use with CGI applications.  I'm looking for 
> something that can efficiently translate between the different 
> representations of the same string.
> 
> Examples of different representations might include what the user typed 
> in verses the escaped version for a SQL string, verses a differently 
> escaped version for output as part of an HTML page, verses an integer 
> representation if possible, and so on. Being able to naturally add 
> representation modes would be a bonus. Maybe the user types in a 
> wiki-like representation, such as using *'s for bulleted lists, and the 
> module can translate it to an HTML format or SQL format on the fly, and 
> so on.
> 
> I'd like to be able to create some type of string object that would act 
> similar to a python string, but also contain internal information about 
> the sort of string it is so the conversions can be idempotent. eg. If I 
> ask for an HTML-escaped version of something that already knows it's 
> HTML-escaped, I want it to just return itself rather than something 
> doubly-escaped... unless I told it that I wanted it doubly-escaped for 
> some reason. I'm not sure how it would act for things like appending 
> different representations of strings together, but hopefully it'd do 
> something intelligent. :)
> 
> I guess I'm looking for something that handles strings in the same way 
> that mxDateTime handles dates and timezones and so on. :)
> 
> I'd also like it to be able to run input through filters to do basic 
> things like checking for HTML tags, maybe allowing some through and 
> blocking others, and so on.
> 
> 
> I've written my own very primitive module that does some of this in a 
> not-too-tidy way, and I could improve what I have as I need to.  On the 
> other hand if there's already a well established module out there, I'd 
> prefer to use it instead. Having searched around a bit though, I can't 
> seem to find anything.
> 
> If anyone can point me to any modules that can do this sort of string 
> manipulation and filtering, I'd very much appreciate it.
> 
> Thanks for any help.
> Mike.
> 

As far as I'm aware, there really is no such module, unless the built-in
'string' module counts, which it probably could. 

-- 
Tyler Eaves

"There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But
it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to
call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers."
                                                  
						  --Richard Feynman