With this new support comes a very important distinction. Python 3.0 handles strings differently depending on whether the string is encoded. Unencoded strings are viewed as text and are handled as type str. Encoded strings, however, are binary data and are handled as type bytes.
The new Unicode default is underscored by the discontinuance of the u"..." literal for Unicode text. Instead, one must now use b"..." literals. The latter indicates overtly that the string in question is to be treated as encoded data.
>>> y = b"Hello World!"
>>> type(y)
<class 'bytes'>
>>> y = "Hello World!"
>>> type(y)
<class 'str'>