def force_unicode(s, encoding='utf-8', strings_only=False, errors='strict'):
    """
    Similar to smart_unicode, except that lazy instances are resolved to
    strings, rather than kept as lazy objects.

    If strings_only is True, don't convert (some) non-string-like objects.
    """
    if strings_only and is_protected_type(s):
        return s
    try:
        if not isinstance(s, basestring,):
            if hasattr(s, '__unicode__'):
                s = unicode(s)
            else:
                try:
                    s = unicode(str(s), encoding, errors)
                except UnicodeEncodeError:
                    if not isinstance(s, Exception):
                        raise
                    # If we get to here, the caller has passed in an Exception
                    # subclass populated with non-ASCII data without special
                    # handling to display as a string. We need to handle this
                    # without raising a further exception. We do an
                    # approximation to what the Exception's standard str()
                    # output should be.
                    s = ' '.join([force_unicode(arg, encoding, strings_only,
                            errors) for arg in s])
        elif not isinstance(s, unicode):
            # Note: We use .decode() here, instead of unicode(s, encoding,
            # errors), so that if s is a SafeString, it ends up being a
            # SafeUnicode at the end.
            s = s.decode(encoding, errors)
    except UnicodeDecodeError, e:
        raise UnicodeDecodeError(*e.args)
    return s

    Similar to smart_unicode, except that lazy instances are resolved to
    strings, rather than kept as lazy objects.

    If strings_only is True, don't convert (some) non-string-like objects.
    
v2ex/babel/ext/bleach/encoding.py