This patch adds a new builtin unistr() which behaves like str()

except that it always returns Unicode objects.

A new C API PyObject_Unicode() is also provided.

This closes patch #101664.

Written by Marc-Andre Lemburg. Copyright assigned to Guido van Rossum.

Python/bltinmodule.c

@@ -1927,6 +1927,23 @@ Return a nice string representation of the object.\n\
 If the argument is a string, the return value is the same object.";
 
 
+static PyObject *
+builtin_unistr(PyObject *self, PyObject *args)
+{
+	PyObject *v;
+
+	if (!PyArg_ParseTuple(args, "O:unistr", &v))
+		return NULL;
+	return PyObject_Unicode(v);
+}
+
+static char unistr_doc[] =
+"unistr(object) -> unicode\n\
+\n\
+Return a nice unicode representation of the object.\n\
+If the argument is a unicode, the return value is the same object.";
+
+
 static PyObject *
 builtin_tuple(PyObject *self, PyObject *args)
 {
@@ -2242,6 +2259,7 @@ static PyMethodDef builtin_methods[] = {
 	{"type",	builtin_type, 1, type_doc},
 	{"unicode",	builtin_unicode, 1, unicode_doc},
 	{"unichr",	builtin_unichr, 1, unichr_doc},
+	{"unistr",	builtin_unistr, 1, unistr_doc},
 	{"vars",	builtin_vars, 1, vars_doc},
 	{"xrange",	builtin_xrange, 1, xrange_doc},
  	{"zip",         builtin_zip, 1, zip_doc},