- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already

existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access

to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.

To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special

casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects

were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).

Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the

requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will

return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("���".decode("latin-1")

will return u"���"). This enables codec writer to create codecs

for various simple to use conversions.

New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()

and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):

Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description

----------------------------------------------------------------------

uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email)

base64 | string | string | base64 codec

zlib | string | string | zlib compression

hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec

rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec