docs: def ensure_unicode(str_):
      """
      TODO:
          rob gp "isinstance\\(.*\\\\bstr\\\\b\\)"
      """
      if isinstance(str_, __STR__):
          return str_
      else:
          try:
              return __STR__(str_)
          except UnicodeDecodeError:
              if str_.startswith(codecs.BOM_UTF8):
                  # Can safely remove the utf8 marker
                  # http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12561063/python-extract-data-from-file
                  str_ = str_[len(codecs.BOM_UTF8):]
              return str_.decode('utf-8')