Re:The Python Unicode Mess
by joshuamorton on Saturday October 06, 2018 @02:22PM
(#18156468)
u"" is a syntax error in python3 (or at least it was for a while, apparently its not anymore, that said...). The correct cross-platform solution is to do
which makes python2 string literals unicode unless declared bytes. Then "" strings are always unicode and b"" strings are always bytes, no matter the language version.
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> u"" is a syntax error in python3
This has not been the case since 2012. The last release of Python 3 for which this was the case reached end of life in February 2016. Please stop misinforming people.
While u"" is accepted in current Python 3, for some reason they ignored the raw unicode string ur"" which still is a syntax error in Python 3. So, unicode_literals is definitely preferable.
> The correct cross-platform solution is to do
It's absolutely not correct, because there are many APIs which take "native strings" across versions aka they take an `str` (byte string) in Python 2 and an `str` (unicode string) in Python 3. unicode_literals causes significantly more problems than they solve.
The correct cross-platform solution (and the very reason why the `u` prefix was reintroduced after having initially been removed from Python 3) is in fact to use b"" for known byte strings, u"" for known text, and "" for "native strings" to interact with APIs which specifically need that.