u''.translate not documented

[mjpieters]

BPO	706546
Nosy	@malemburg, @rhettinger, @mjpieters

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2011-11-17.01:39:03.479>
created_at = <Date 2003-03-19.21:35:41.000>
labels = ['docs']
title = "u''.translate not documented"
updated_at = <Date 2011-11-17.01:39:03.479>
user = 'https://github.com/mjpieters'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2011-11-17.01:39:03.479>
actor = 'josharian'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = None
closer = None
components = ['Documentation']
creation = <Date 2003-03-19.21:35:41.000>
creator = 'mjpieters'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 706546
keywords = []
message_count = 6.0
messages = ['15207', '15208', '15209', '15210', '15211', '147787']
nosy_count = 4.0
nosy_names = ['lemburg', 'rhettinger', 'mjpieters', 'josharian']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'fixed'
stage = None
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = None
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue706546'
versions = []

[mjpieters]

The behaviour of u''.translate is significantly
different from ''.translate, yet the difference is not
reflected in the documentation.

• ''.translate takes one or two arguments, one a table
  of 256 characters for the translation target and the
  other a string containing characters to be removed.

• u''.translate only takes on argument, which is a
  mapping from unicode ordinal to unicode ordinal,
  ustring or None.

See also print u''.translate.__doc__

[malemburg]

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user_id=38388

Isn't the documentation clear enough about the difference ?

Note that u.translate() is not really all that useful. You
are much
better off with writing your own charmap based codec which
is not really difficult: just take a look at e.g. cp1251.py.

[mjpieters]

Logged In: YES
user_id=116747

No, the documentation on u''.translate is *not present*. The
Python Library Reference makes no mention of a difference. See:

http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/string-methods.html

I don't really care how it is of little use, I just need the
documentation to be up to date so I don't have to scratch my
head why I get this weird error that translate only takes
one argument; as it turns out the strings I was calling this
on were unicode strings.

[malemburg]

Logged In: YES
user_id=38388

I see. In that case, I'd suggest you provide a patch to fill up
the gaps.

Thanks.

[rhettinger]

Logged In: YES
user_id=80475

Added the requested clarification.
See Doc/lib/libstring.tex 1.51

[josharian]

This documentation change didn't make it into the docs for translate in the string module -- see http://docs.python.org/library/string.html. It'd be great to add it there as well, as I just got bitten by this. :)