Why does comparison of bytes with str fails in Python3

Question

In Python3 this expression evaluates as False:

b"" == "" 

while in Python2 this comparison is True:

u"" == "" 

Checking for identity with is obviously fails in both cases.

But why would they implement such a behaviour in Python3?

Answer 1

In python 3 string is Unicode . The type used to hold text is str and the type used to hold data is bytes.

the str and bytes types cannot be mixed, you must always explicitly convert between them. Use str.encode() to go from str to bytes, and bytes.decode() to go from bytes to str.

Therefore, if you do b"".decode() == "" you'll get True :

>>> b"".decode() == "" True 

For more info read Text Vs. Data Instead Of Unicode Vs. 8-bi