Merge remote-tracking branch 'upstream/master' into merge-master-into-features

1 files changed, 14 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/_pytest/compat.py b/_pytest/compat.py
index 16505c31c..d5fa7aa84 100644
--- a/_pytest/compat.py
+++ b/_pytest/compat.py
@@ -216,3 +216,17 @@ def _is_unittest_unexpected_success_a_failure():
         unexpectedSuccesses from tests marked with the expectedFailure() decorator.
     """
     return sys.version_info >= (3, 4)
+
+
+if _PY3:
+    def safe_str(v):
+        """returns v as string"""
+        return str(v)
+else:
+    def safe_str(v):
+        """returns v as string, converting to ascii if necessary"""
+        try:
+            return str(v)
+        except UnicodeError:
+            errors = 'replace'
+            return v.encode('ascii', errors)