On Wed, Sep 4, 2019 at 12:43 AM Rhodri James <rho...@kynesim.co.uk> wrote: > > On 03/09/2019 15:27, Chris Angelico wrote: > > On Tue, Sep 3, 2019 at 11:19 PM Rhodri James <rho...@kynesim.co.uk> wrote: > >> > >> On 03/09/2019 13:31, Chris Angelico wrote: > >>> On Tue, Sep 3, 2019 at 10:27 PM Rhodri James <rho...@kynesim.co.uk> wrote: > >>>> > >>>> On 31/08/2019 12:31, Chris Angelico wrote: > >>>>> We call it a string, but a bytes object has as much in common with > >>>>> bytearray and with a list of integers as it does with a text string. > >>>> > >>>> You say that as if text strings aren't sequences of bytes. Complicated > >>>> and restricted sequences, I grant you, but no more so than a packet for > >>>> a given network protocol. > >>>> > >>> > >>> A text string is a sequence of characters. By "byte", I really mean > >>> "octet", but Python prefers to say "byte". > >> > >> And a character is a byte or sequence of bytes. (Odd-sized bytes are > >> pretty much history now, so for non-pendantic usages "byte" is good > >> enough.) > >> > > > > But a character is not an octet. > > I get that you're distinguishing between the thing and its > representation, but I'm coming at this as an embedded systems engineer. > For me, it's turtles^Woctets all the way down. >
Is an integer also a sequence of bytes? A float? A list? At some level, everything's just stored as bytes in memory, but since there are many possible representations of the same information, it's best not to say that a character "is" a byte, but that it "can be stored in" some number of bytes. In Python, subscripting a text string gives you another text string. Subscripting a list of integers gives you an integer. Subscripting a bytearray gives you an integer. And (as of Python 3.0) subscripting a bytestring also gives you an integer. Whether that's right or wrong (maybe subscripting a bytestring should have been defined as yielding a length-1 bytestring), subscripting a text string does not give an integer, and subscripting a bytestring does not give a character. ChrisA _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list -- python-ideas@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-ideas-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-ideas.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/AQZX3HB7GZ7BLDOYVLEIVPEKO7MUOCWG/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
