NameError: global name 'unicode' is not defined - in Python 3

Question

I am trying to use a Python package called bidi. In a module in this package (algorithm.py) there are some lines that give me error, although it is part of the package.

Here are the lines:

# utf-8 ? we need unicode
if isinstance(unicode_or_str, unicode):
    text = unicode_or_str
    decoded = False
else:
    text = unicode_or_str.decode(encoding)
    decoded = True

and here is the error message:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#25>", line 1, in <module>
    bidi_text = get_display(reshaped_text)
  File "C:\Python33\lib\site-packages\python_bidi-0.3.4-py3.3.egg\bidi\algorithm.py",   line 602, in get_display
    if isinstance(unicode_or_str, unicode):
NameError: global name 'unicode' is not defined

How should I re-write this part of the code so it works in Python3? Also if anyone have used bidi package with Python 3 please let me know if they have found similar problems or not. I appreciate your help.

Answer 1

Python 3 renamed the unicode type to str, the old str type has been replaced by bytes.

if isinstance(unicode_or_str, str):
    text = unicode_or_str
    decoded = False
else:
    text = unicode_or_str.decode(encoding)
    decoded = True

You may want to read the Python 3 porting HOWTO for more such details. There is also Lennart Regebro's Porting to Python 3: An in-depth guide, free online.

Last but not least, you could just try to use the 2to3 tool to see how that translates the code for you.