History of Python Strings¶

Python was started by GuidoVanRossum in December of 1989, Unicode was started in 1991. It is hard to expect that Python developers could introduce Unicode strings since early versions. Trying to “reinvent” Unicode was not an option either since Unicode is a really huge work. Python developers simply introduced strings as they existed in C and many other languages of that time. In the C language a string is a sequence of bytes, and so is Python str type.

Python Strings Today¶

There is no consensus how to call these strings now, in the age of Unicode. Some people call them byte strings, some call them generic strings, and others call them 8-bit strings, but what is more confusing for a unicode newbie is that a lot of people simply call them strings most of the time.

If you want to understand python unicode you have to understand the difference between byte strings and unicode strings.

In Python2.4, str is a string of bytes, and unicode is internally represented unicode. basestring is a parent class for unicode and str.

Python3.0 will clear up this confusion by getting rid of byte strings and introducing the new type bytes. The strings you surround with quotation marks will all be unicode strings, automatically. 1]