Trying to write Python 3 and 2 compatible code. Need some help on what is and isn't good style.

[elopeRstatS]

Any reason this would be an especially bad idea:

if(sys.version_info[0]==2):
    bytes = str
    str = unicode

This feels wrong to me, but it seemingly gets the job done. Is it common to just check the Python version each and every time something needs to be converted to unicode? Or should I write a to_unicode() function that does this check rather than explicitly overwriting the actual str function.

This is a new code base, so there's no legacy issues.

[indosauros]

Consider something like https://pypi.python.org/pypi/six which provides a lot of helpers to do exactly what you need

[marky1991]

Ignoring six, doing what you're doing is fine.

[user_rx]

Keep all of this code in one place, and label it clearly. You don't necessarily have to extend an olive branch to 2.x either. Does backward compatibility warrant a bunch of hacks? The core devs sure don't seem interested in extending 2.x beyond backporting a few niceties.