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[Python-Dev] PEP 358 (bytes type) comments

Bob Ippolito bob at redivi.com
Wed Feb 22 23:03:29 CET 2006 
On Feb 22, 2006, at 1:22 PM, Brett Cannon wrote:

> First off, thanks to Neil for writing this all down.  The whole thread
> of discussion on the bytes type was rather long and thus hard to
> follow.  Nice to finally have it written down in a PEP.
>
> Anyway, a few comments on the PEP.  One, should the hex() method
> instead be an attribute, implemented as a property?  Seems like static
> data that is entirely based on the value of the bytes object and thus
> is not properly represented by a method.
>
> Next, why are the __*slice__ methods to be defined?  Docs say they are
> deprecated.
>
> And for the open-ended questions, I don't think sort() is needed.

sort would be totally useless for bytes.  array.array doesn't have  
sort either.

> Lastly, maybe I am just dense, but it took me a second to realize that
> it will most likely return the ASCII string for __str__() for use in
> something like socket.send(), but it isn't explicitly stated anywhere.
>  There is a chance someone might think that __str__ will somehow
> return the sequence of integers as a string does exist.

That would be a bad idea given that bytes are supposed make the str  
type go away.  It's probably better to make __str__ return __repr__  
like it does for most types.  If bytes type supports the buffer API  
(one would hope so), functions like socket.send should do the right  
thing as-is.

http://docs.python.org/api/bufferObjects.html

-bob
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