does raw_input() return unicode?

[Leo Kislov]

Theerasak Photha wrote:
> On 10/10/06, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
> > Theerasak Photha schrieb:
> > >> At the moment, it only returns unicode objects when invoked
> > >> in the IDLE shell, and only if the character entered cannot
> > >> be represented in the locale's charset.
> > >
> > > Why only IDLE? Does urwid or another console UI toolkit avoid this somehow?
> >
> > I admit I don't know what urwid is; from a shallow description I find
> > ("a console user interface library") I can't see the connection to
> > raw_input(). How would raw_input() ever use urwid?
>
> The other way around: would urwid use raw_input() or other Python
> input functions anywhere?
>
> And what causes Unicode input to work in IDLE alone?

Other applications except python are actually free to implement unicode
stdin. python cannot do it because of backward compatibility. You can
argue that python interactive console could do it too, but think about
it this way: python interactive console deliberately behaves like a
running python program would.