On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 6:32 PM, Stefan Krah <report@bugs.python.org> wrote:
..
> I like the public name. Extension authors can use it and be sure that
> their programs accept exactly the same numeric strings as the rest of
> Python.
>
> Are you worried that the semantics might change?

Yes, I am already working on a change that instead of stripping
whitespace will replace it with ASCI space.  I don't think that a
public TransformDecimalToASCII() function should care about space, but
in order to support current semantics without making an extra copy, I
need to do all replacements together.  (And of course I would not want
to publicly expose a function that modifies the string in-place.)

> If they do, I would
> actually welcome to have an official transformation function that
> automatically follows the current preferences of python-dev (or the
> Unicode Consortium).
>

I don't think either group has clearly articulated their preferences
with respect to such algorithm.