py3: utility functions to convert keys of kwargs to bytes/unicodes Keys of keyword arguments need to be str(unicodes) on Python 3. We have a lot of function where we pass keyword arguments. Having utility functions to help converting keys to unicodes before passing and convert back them to bytes once passed into the function will be helpful. We now have functions named pycompat.strkwargs(dic) and pycompat.byteskwargs(dic) to help us.