Issue #17827: document codecs.encode and codecs.decode

- Merge from 3.3
- Added to What's New since these are more important in 3.x,
  as the bytes<->bytes and str<->str codecs don't fit the
  text model convenience methods in 3.x the way they did the
  basestring<->basestring methods in the 2.x text model
- Included under Library in Misc/NEWS for the same reason

1 files changed, 13 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Doc/whatsnew/3.4.rst b/Doc/whatsnew/3.4.rst
index 4927b66..5e26630 100644
--- a/Doc/whatsnew/3.4.rst
+++ b/Doc/whatsnew/3.4.rst
@@ -197,6 +197,19 @@ The :meth:`~aifc.getparams` method now returns a namedtuple rather than a
 plain tuple.  (Contributed by Claudiu Popa in :issue:`17818`.)
 
 
+codecs
+------
+
+The :meth:`codecs.encode` and :meth:`codecs.decode` convenience functions are
+now properly documented. These functions have existed in the :mod:`codecs`
+module since ~2004, but were previously only discoverable through runtime
+introspection.
+
+Unlike the convenience methods on :class:`str`, :class:`bytes` and
+:class:`bytearray`, these convenience functions support arbitrary codecs,
+rather than being limited to Unicode text encodings.
+
+
 colorsys
 --------