On Thu, 19 May 2011 01:16:44 +0900, "Stephen J. Turnbull" <step...@xemacs.org> wrote: > Robert Collins writes: > > > Its probably too late to change, but please don't try to argue that > > its correct: the continued confusion of folk running into this is > > evidence that confusion *is happening*. Treat that as evidence and > > think about how to fix it going forward. > > Sorry, Rob, but you're just wrong here, and Nick is right. It's > possible to improve Python 3, but not to "fix" it in this respect. > The Python 3 solution is correct, the Python 2 approach is not. > There's no way to avoid discontinuity and confusion here. > > Confusion is indeed happening, but it's real confusion in the way > people think about the problem space, not a language design cockup.
Note that the more common idiom (not that I can measure it, mind) when dealing with byte strings is something analogous to if my_byte_string[i:i+1] == b'x': rather than if my_byte_string[i] == 170: and the former is a lot more readable than the latter, even though you have to stare at the slice for a couple seconds the first time you encounter it to realize what is going on. So *something* is wrong with Python3's approach. Python2 was wronger, though :) --David _______________________________________________ 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