Clarify "What exactly are you trying to pull?" about toml HOT 3 CLOSED

Any suggestions on what a better error message would be?

    if not isinstance(s, basestring):
        raise TypeError("Expecting something like a string")

Would this be better?

from toml.

I'd recommend isinstance(s, unicode) and deleting the utf-8 decode attempt, but sure, that message at least conveys some meaning. With the fixes suggested, perhaps:

    if not isinstance(s, unicode):
        raise TypeError('expected {!r} to be unicode; got {!r}'.format(s, type(s)))

from toml.

I'd recommend isinstance(s, unicode) and deleting the utf-8 decode attempt, but sure, that message at least conveys some meaning.

The code is meant to run on both python2 and python3. For that reason, I need to keep the utf-8 decode attempt. In python3, it will only accept normal (unicode) strings. In python2, it will accept both normal strings and unicode strings. When running on python3, basestring is equal to str.

With that in mind, the error message should make sense on both python 2 and 3.

from toml.