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Fri Aug 4 11:31:54 CEST 2006 · http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-August/067970.html

M.-A. Lemburg wrote:

> If a string
> is not ASCII and thus causes the exception, there's not a lot you
> can say, since you don't know the encoding of the string.

That's one way of looking at it.

Another is that any string containing chars > 127 is not
text at all, but binary data, in which case it's not equal
to *any* unicode string -- just like bytes objects will
not be equal to strings in Py3k.

> All you
> know is that it's not ASCII. Instead of guessing, Python then raises
> an exception to let the programmer decide.

There's no disputing that an exception should be raised
if the string *must* be interpretable as characters in
order to continue. But that's not true here if you allow
for the interpretation that they're simply objects of
different (duck) type and therefore unequal.

--
Greg

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[Python-Dev] unicode hell/mixing str and unicode as dictionary keys