On Mon, 15 Oct 2012 15:05:01 +0200, Ulrich Eckhardt wrote: > Hi! > > I need a little nudge in the right direction, as I'm misunderstanding > something concerning string literals in Python 2 and 3. In Python 2.7, > b'' and '' are byte strings, while u'' is a unicode literal. In Python > 3.2, b'' is a byte string and '' is a unicode literal, while u'' is a > syntax error. > > This actually came as a surprise to me, I assumed that using b'' I could > portably create a byte string (which is true) and using u'' I could > portably create a unicode string (which is not true). This feature would > help porting code between both versions. While this is a state I can > live with, I wonder what the rationale for this is.
It was a mistake that is corrected in Python 3.3. You can now use u'' to create Unicode literals in both 2.x and 3.3 or better. This is a feature only designed for porting code though: you shouldn't use u'' in new code not intended for 2.x. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
