guido van rossum hoaufpythonorg sun mar 2 2008 326 pm lemburg wrote 20080302 2311 greg ewing wrote lemburg wrote also make unicode default type constructor keep str alias simplify porting perhaps warning 1 making us type 7 characters instead 3 place oh well text sorry discussed decided long ago im going change type called string variation thereof popular languages term string overloaded kinds misinterpretations term string refers string bytes variable length array speak disagree string come mean string characters unless otherwise qualified using one hold noncharacters aberration necessary python 2 wasnt much alternative historically thats incorrect 1990 unicode hadnt even invented str intentionally designed hold text data equally well buffer objects around years exactly purpose buffer objects invented hold binary data buffer api invented reference bytes owned 3rd party c libraries descendant py3k memoryview see pep 3118 purpose without bugs holding bytes py3k well use bytes immutable bytearray mutable guido van rossum home page httpwwwpythonorgguido _______________________________________________ pythondev mailing list zvlllneumpythonorg httpmailpythonorgmailmanlistinfopythondev unsubscribe httpmailpythonorgmailmanoptionspythondevpythondev40tangomucom tue 05 aug 2008 180852 0800 pythondev capi status python 3