unicode’&gt; ASAP</p>
<p>&gt;&gt;&gt; def to_unicode_or_bust(</p>
<p>…         obj, encoding=’utf-8′):</p>
<p>…     if isinstance(obj, basestring):</p>
<p>…         if not isinstance(obj, unicode):</p>
<p>…             obj = unicode(obj, encoding)</p>
<p>…     return obj</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>&gt;&gt;&gt;</p>
<p>detects if object is a string and if so converts to unicode, if not already.</p></blockquote>
<p><strong>2. Unicode everywhere</strong></p>
<blockquot