Fix loadRes() to work with both Python 2 and 3.

[waleedka]

This is a small fix for issue #49 to let loadRes() work on Python 2 & 3.

[hosang]

If you want to avoid exceptions, you could use sys.version_info[0] >= 3 instead.

[waleedka]

@hosang Good idea! Would this block merging the pull request? If so, I'll make the update. Otherwise, I think it's also common in Python to use exceptions for such cases. I've seen it used often in handing unavailable imports, converting strings to numbers, and so on.

[waleedka]

Can someone merge this please! Your code is broken on Python 3 and this fixes it. It's been months since I did this pull request, and it's a tiny one. What's the hold up?

[ahundt]

@tylin @pdollar gently checking if the python 3 fix can be merged

[scarroll32]

+1

[CMCDragonkai]

Wondering why this isn't merged yet?

[IssamLaradji]

Is there a reason why this pull request isn't merged yet?

[dheerajpai]

There is an alternaitive repo with the error rectified.

https://github.com/waleedka/coco

[gvoysey]

This issue needs to be resolved. There are now at least three public forks to address py3 compatibility and use of numpy. This level of fracture is unnecessary in this case.

[DuaneNielsen]

Please merge this request! It's a simple button press.. thanks.

[vikiQiu]

Why this branch still not merged?? Is there anybody in charge?

[Akhil-Raj]

In case anybody is thinking why is the PR still not merged, I think there is no need for merging as the current code checks the 'PYTHON_VERSION' before checking for Unicode equality. So, there won't be any undefined name error.

[juskuz]

@Akhil-Raj so should it be working as is? no need to use waleedka's fork?

@pdollar can you merge it? or it should be working even without merging this PR?

[bertsky]

In case anybody is thinking why is the PR still not merged, I think there is no need for merging as the current code checks the 'PYTHON_VERSION' before checking for Unicode equality. So, there won't be any undefined name error.

That's not true (at least for pycocotools==2.0.0 from PyPI):

File "python3.6/site-packages/pycocotools/coco.py", line 308, in loadRes
    if type(resFile) == str or type(resFile) == unicode:
NameError: name 'unicode' is not defined

The same thing happens with installation from git (rev. 8c9bcc3).