On 6/14/2016 11:19 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
Normally I'd take a question like this to Python-List, but this question
has turned out to be quite diversive, with people having strong opinions
but no definitive answer. So I thought I'd ask here and hope that some
of the core devs would have an idea.
Why does base64 encoding in Python return bytes?
Ultimately, because we never decided to change this in 3.0.
base64.b64encode take bytes as input and returns bytes. Some people are
arguing that this is wrong behaviour, as RFC 3548 specifies that Base64
should transform bytes to characters:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3548.html
albeit US-ASCII characters. E.g.:
The encoding process represents 24-bit groups of input bits
as output strings of 4 encoded characters.
One could argue that 'encoded character' means 'bytes' in Python, but I
don't know what the standard writer meant, as unicode characters always
have some internal encoding.
[...]
Each 6-bit group is used as an index into an array of 64 printable
characters. The character referenced by the index is placed in the
output string.
--
Terry Jan Reedy
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