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[Python-Dev] PEP 460: allowing %d and %f and mojibake

Greg Ewing greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz
Tue Jan 14 22:59:15 CET 2014 
Guido van Rossum wrote:
> def spam(a):
>     r = asciistr('(')
>     if a: r += a.strip()
>     r += asciistr(')')
>     return r
> 
>  The general fix would be to add
> 
>     else: r += a[:0]

The awkwardness might be reducable if asciistr let
you write something like

    r = asciistr('(', a)

meaning "give me either a string or bytes containing
the value '(', depending on the type of a".

But taking a step back, how bad would it really be
if an asciistr were returned in this case? Is it
just that asciistr doesn't behave exactly like a str
in all situations, so it might break something?

If so, would it help if asciistr were a built-in
type, so that other things could be made aware of
it?

-- 
Greg
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