On Apr 12, 11:51 am, Kay Schluehr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 12 Apr., 16:29, Carl Banks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > And making an utf-8 encoding default is not possible without writing a > > > new function? > > > I believe the Zen in effect here is, "In the face of ambiguity, refuse > > the temptation to guess." How do you know if the bytes are utf-8 > > encoded? > > How many "encodings" would you define for a Rectangle constructor?
I'm not sure what you're insinuating. If you are arguing that it's inappropriate for a constructor to take an "encoding" argument (as you put it), be my guest. I wasn't commenting on that specifically. I was commenting on your suggestion of having str assume utf-8 encoding, which IMO would be very unPythonic, whether you can pass encodings to it or not. Whatever happened to the decode method anyway? Why has str() been coopted for this purpose? I had expected that str objects would retain the encode method, bytes the decode method, and everyone would live happily ever after. If decode is a confusing name (and I know I have to engage a few extra neurons to figure out which way it goes), why not rename it to something like to_unicode instead of overloading the constructors more. Carl Banks -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
