Simplify the unicode logic to avoid bare exception

[cclauss]

No description provided.

[delirious-lettuce]

The try/except seems a bit odd given the fact that six is already being installed in setup.py.

kaggle-api/setup.py

Line 17 in 4625bc7

install_requires = ['urllib3 >= 1.15', 'six >= 1.10', 'certifi', 'python-dateutil'],

Is there any particular reason you didn't just import six and use six.text_type in the string function below?

[cclauss]

@delirious-lettuce Good to bump into you again on the interwebs... Perhaps your approach is acceptable to the maintainers and is clearly much cleaner but it slightly changes the logic in Python 2. To my mind, the current code reads: if item is unicode then return it, otherwise return str(item). This means that in Python 2 string(42) returns ‘42’, not u’42’. While type('42') == type(u'42') is True in Python 3, it is False in Python 2.

I hope the maintainers find your approach acceptable because then we could just eliminate string() which is currently masking the Python standard library string module.

[delirious-lettuce]

@cclauss ,

Nice to bump into you again as well... but I'm not sure I understand your comment.

To my mind, the current code reads: if item is unicode then return it, otherwise return str(item). This means that in Python 2 string(42) returns ‘42’, not u’42’. While type('42') == type(u'42') is True in Python 3, it is False in Python 2.

>>> import six
... 
... try:
...     unicode  # Python 2
... except NameError:
...     unicode = str  # Python 3
... 
... 
... def string(item):
...     try:
...         if isinstance(item, unicode):
...             return item
...         else:
...             return str(item)
...     except:
...         return str(item)
... 
... 
... def string_six(item):
...     return item if isinstance(item, six.text_type) else str(item)
... 

# Python 2.7.14 (default, Dec 12 2017, 12:40:29) 
# [GCC 5.4.0 20160609] on linux2
>>> string(42) == string_six(42)
True
>>> string(u'some unicode') == string_six(u'some unicode')
True

# Python 3.6.3 (default, Dec 12 2017, 12:53:45) 
# [GCC 5.4.0 20160609] on linux
>>> string(42) == string_six(42)
True
>>> string(u'some unicode') == string_six(u'some unicode')
True

It seems like the same output but you get to remove the try/except at the top by simply replacing unicode with six.text_type inside of isinstance. Maybe I am missing something?

Also, I agree with you that the name of this function should be changed to something other than string.

[delirious-lettuce]

six.text_type?