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Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2012 09:32:22 -0400
From: Dave Angel <d@davea.name>
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To: Ulrich Eckhardt <ulrich.eckhardt@dominolaser.com>
Subject: Re: portable unicode literals
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On 10/15/2012 09:05 AM, 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.
>
> !puzzled thanks
>
> Uli

Python 3.3 added that syntax, for easier porting.  You can now use
u"xyz" for a unicode string in both 2.x and 3.3

-- 

DaveA