While I think int.to_bytes() is pretty obscure (I knew about it, forgot about it, and learned about it again!) I’m not so sure it’s any less obscure than a proposed bytes.fromint().
So why don’t we just relax int.to_bytes()’s signature to include natural
default values:
int.to_bytes(length=1, byteorder=sys.byteorder, *, signed=False)
Then I ought to be able to just do
>>> (65).to_bytes()
b’A’
and if I try to convert an integer value greater than 255, I get the same
OverflowError?
Seems good enough to me.
-Barry
> On Sep 9, 2021, at 08:53, Christopher Barker <python...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I fully admit serious bikeshedding here, but:
>
> I'm starting to think the name should be `bytes.bchr` -- it avoids any
> confusion with the `int.to_bytes` and
> `int.from_bytes` methods,
>
> are they so different? :-)
>
> In [23]: x.to_bytes(1, 'little')
> Out[23]: b'A'
>
> In [27]: int.from_bytes(b'A', 'little')
> Out[27]: 65
>
> you can think of this as a useful specific case of the int methods.
>
> (by the way, why do I need to specify the byte order for a 1 byte int? Yes, I
> know, it's always a required parameter -- though that 's one reason to have
> the special case easily available)
>
> and is an appropriate name for the target domain (where bytes are treated as
> characters).
>
> Is that the target domain? Yes, it's an important use case, but certainly not
> the only one, and frankly kind of a specialized use case actually. If you are
> working with characters (text) in Python 3, you should be using the str type.
>
> Using bytes for general text (even if you know the text at hand is all ASCII)
> is not recommended. It is useful to use bytes for the specialized use case of
> mixed text and binary data (which, by the way, I have had to do) but I don't
> think we should say that particular use case is what bytes are targeted for.
> Anyone doing that should know what they are doing :-)
>
> -CHB
>
> --
> Christopher Barker, PhD (Chris)
>
> Python Language Consulting
> - Teaching
> - Scientific Software Development
> - Desktop GUI and Web Development
> - wxPython, numpy, scipy, Cython
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