On 20 Okt, 07:32, est <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Personally I call it a serious bug in python
Normally I'd entertain the possibility of bugs in Python, but your reasoning is a bit thin (in http://bugs.python.org/issue3648): "Why cann't Python just define ascii to range(256)" I do accept that it can be awkward to output text to the console, for example, but you have to consider that the console might not be configured to display any character you can throw at it. My console is configured for ISO-8859-15 (something like your magical "ascii to range(256)" only where someone has to decide what those 256 characters actually are), but that isn't going to help me display CJK characters. A solution might be to generate UTF-8 and then get the user to display the output in an appropriately configured application, but even then someone has to say that it's UTF-8 and not some other encoding that's being used. As discussed in another recent thread, Python 2.x does make some reasonable guesses about such matters to the extent that it's possible automatically (without magical knowledge). There is also the problem about use of the "str" built-in function or any operation where some Unicode object may be converted to a plain string. It is now recommended that you only convert to plain strings when you need to produce a sequence of bytes (for output, for example), and that you indicate how the Unicode values are encoded as bytes (by specifying an encoding). Python 3.x doesn't really change this: it just makes the Unicode/text vs. bytes distinction more obvious. Paul -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
