Problems in Using C-API for Unicode handling

[Terry Reedy]

abhi wrote:
> Hi,
>     I am trying to handle Unicode objects in C (Python 2.5.2). I am
> getting PyObjects from and want to coerce them to unicode objects. The
> documentation provides two APIs for that:
> 
>  PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject(PyObject *obj, const char *encoding,
> const char *errors)
>  PyUnicode_FromObject(PyObject *obj)
> 
> (http://www.python.org/doc/2.5.2/api/unicodeObjects.html)
> Now I want to utf-16 so I am trying to use the first one, but it is
> giving back NULL in case of PyObject is already Unicode type which is
> expected. What puzzles me is that PyUnicode_FromObject(PyObject *obj)
> is passing irrespective of type of PyObject. The API says it is
> Shortcut for PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject(obj, NULL, "strict") but if I
> use that, it returns NULL where as PyUnicode_FromObject works.
> 
> Is there any way by which I can take in any PyObject and convert it to
> utf-16 object? Any help is appreciated.

Whether Unicode objects are utf-16 or utf=32 depends on your Python 
build.  You can always convert a byte string representation of an object 
to unicode.