22.6 Mapping for Simple Built‑In Types

The Slice built‑in types are mapped to Python types as shown in Table 22.1.

Table 22.1. Mapping of Slice built‑in types to Python.

Slice	Python
bool	bool
byte	int
short	int
int	int
long	long
float	double
double	double
string	string

Although Python supports arbitrary precision in its integer types, the Ice run time validates integer values to ensure they have valid ranges for their declared Slice types.

22.6.1 String Mapping

String values returned as the result of a Slice operation (including return values, out parameters, and data members) are always represented as instances of Python’s 8-bit string type. These string values contain UTF-8 encoded strings unless the program has installed a string converter, in which case string values use the converter’s native encoding instead. See Section 32.25 for more information on string converters.

Legal string input values for a remote Slice operation are shown below:

• None

Ice marshals an empty string whenever None is encountered.

• 8-bit string objects

Ice assumes that all 8-bit string objects contain valid UTF-8 encoded strings unless the program has installed a string converter, in which case Ice assumes that 8-bit string objects use the native encoding expected by the converter.

• Unicode objects

Ice converts a Unicode object into UTF-8 and marshals it directly. If a string converter is installed, it is not invoked for Unicode objects.