GeezerVison

I added @serhiy-storchaka to reviewer because he is author of USE_UNICODE_WCHAR_CACHE.

What if merge #12409 first and set HAVE_UNICODE_WCHAR_CACHE to 0? It will have an effect of removing wstr, but keep possibility to return it in custom builds.

Argument Clinic How-To also needs an update:

diff --git a/Doc/howto/clinic.rst b/Doc/howto/clinic.rst
index 04b1a2cac0..b969dc8f42 100644
--- a/Doc/howto/clinic.rst
+++ b/Doc/howto/clinic.rst
@@ -848,15 +848,11 @@ on the right is the text you'd replace it with.
 ``'s#'``    ``str(zeroes=True)``
 ``'s*'``    ``Py_buffer(accept={buffer, str})``
 ``'U'``     ``unicode``
-``'u'``     ``Py_UNICODE``
-``'u#'``    ``Py_UNICODE(zeroes=True)``
 ``'w*'``    ``Py_buffer(accept={rwbuffer})``
 ``'Y'``     ``PyByteArrayObject``
 ``'y'``     ``str(accept={bytes})``
 ``'y#'``    ``str(accept={robuffer}, zeroes=True)``
 ``'y*'``    ``Py_buffer``
-``'Z'``     ``Py_UNICODE(accept={str, NoneType})``
-``'Z#'``    ``Py_UNICODE(accept={str, NoneType}, zeroes=True)``
 ``'z'``     ``str(accept={str, NoneType})``
 ``'z#'``    ``str(accept={str, NoneType}, zeroes=True)``
 ``'z*'``    ``Py_buffer(accept={buffer, str, NoneType})``

What if merge #12409 first and set HAVE_UNICODE_WCHAR_CACHE to 0? It will have an effect of removing wstr, but keep possibility to return it in custom builds.

I think it is very difficult to maintain both of HAVE_UNICODE_WCHAR_CACHE is 0 and 1.

Argument Clinic How-To also needs an update:

AC supports u and Z even after removing wstr. I will replace Py_UNICODE with wchar_t in the clinic howto.

Congratulations for finally managing to remove this legacy API. A big thank you! I hated this API since Python 3.3, having to call "PyUnicode_Ready()" was super annoying. Thanks for you tenacity to remove it!

Congratulations for finally managing to remove this legacy API. A big thank you! I hated this API since Python 3.3, having to call "PyUnicode_Ready()" was super annoying. Thanks for you tenacity to remove it!

I'm sorry but I am considering to un-deprecate PyUnicode_READY().
Please visit this thread.
https://discuss.python.org/t/undeprecate-pyunicode-ready-for-future-unicode-improvement/15717