On May 17, 2011, at 5:27 PM, Ethan Furman wrote: > The bytes type in Python 3 does not feel very consistent. > > For example: > > --> some_var = 'abcdef' > --> some_var > 'abcdef' > --> some_var[3] > 'd' > --> some_other_var = b'abcdef' > --> some_other_var > b'abcdef' > --> some_other_var[3] > 100 > > > On the one hand we have the 'bytes are ascii data' type interface,
This is incidental. Bytes can and often do contain data with non-ascii encoded text, plain binary data, or structs, or raw data read off a disk, etc. > and on the other we have the 'bytes are a list of integers between 0 - 256' > interface. And trying to use the two is not intuitive: > > --> some_other_var[3] == b'd' > False > > When I'm parsing a .dbf file and extracting field types from the byte stream, > I'm not thinking, "okay, 67 is a Character field" -- what I'm thinking is, > "b'C' is a Character field". > > Considering that ord() still works fine, I'm not sure why it was done this > way. > > Is there code out there that is using this "list of int's" interface, Yes. > or is there time to make changes to bytes? No. Raymond _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
