Hello, On Tue, 14 Jun 2016 14:02:02 -0400 Random832 <random...@fastmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 14, 2016, at 13:19, Paul Sokolovsky wrote: > > Well, it's easy to remember the conclusion - it was decided to > > return bytes. The reason also wouldn't be hard to imagine - > > regardless of the fact that base64 uses ASCII codes for digits and > > letters, it's still essentially a binary data. > > Only in the sense that all text is binary data. There's nothing in the > definition of base64 specifying ASCII codes. It specifies *characters* > that all happen to be in ASCII's character repertoire. > > >And the most natural step for it is to send > > it down the socket (socket.send() accepts bytes), etc. > > How is that more natural than to send it to a text buffer that is It's more natural because it's more efficient. It's more natural in the same sense that the most natural way to get from point A to point B is a straight line. > ultimately encoded (maybe not even in an ASCII-compatible encoding... > though probably) and sent down a socket or written to a file by a > layer that is outside your control? Yes, everything eventually ends > up as bytes. That doesn't mean that we should obsessively convert > things to bytes as early as possible. It's vice-versa - there's no need to obsessively convert simple, primary type of bytes (everything in computers are bytes) to more complex things like Unicode strings. > I mean if we were gonna do that why bother even having a unicode > string type at all? You're trying to raise the topic which is a subject of gigantic flame wars on python-list for years. Here's my summary: not using unicode string type *at all* is better than not using bytes type at all. So, feel free to use unicode string *only* when it's needed, which is *only* when you accept input from or produce output for *human* (like real human, walking down a street to do grocery shopping). In all other cases, data should stay bytes (mind - stay, as it's bytes in the beginning, and it requires extra effort to convert it to a strings). > > I'd find it a bit more surprising that binascii.hexlify() returns > > bytes, but I personally got used to it, and consider it a > > consistency thing on binascii module. > > > > Generally, with Python3 by default using (inefficient) Unicode for > > strings, > > Why is it inefficient? Because bytes is the most efficient basic representation of data. Everything which tries to convert it to something is less efficient in general. Less efficient == inefficient. -- Best regards, Paul mailto:pmis...@gmail.com _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
