#  This file is part of ReportTool

# ReportTool (Felicity) is copyright 2004-8 Steve Butterfill.
# 
# ReportTool is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
# 
# ReportTool is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
# 
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with ReportTool.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
# 
# If you want to use ReportTool under a difference licence, email 
# s.butterfill@warwick.ac.uk.  

#!/usr/bin/env python

# ------
# odd hacks to make things simpler

# from http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/466341
def safe_str(obj):
    """ return the byte string representation of obj """
    try:
        return str(obj)
    except UnicodeEncodeError:
        # obj is unicode
        return unicode(obj).encode('unicode_escape')