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[Python-Dev] bytes.from_hex()

Greg Ewing greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz
Fri Mar 3 00:39:16 CET 2006 
Ron Adam wrote:

> This uses syntax to determine the direction of encoding.  It would be 
> easier and clearer to just require two arguments or a tuple.
> 
>       u = unicode(b, 'encode', 'base64')
>       b = bytes(u, 'decode', 'base64')

The point of the exercise was to avoid using the terms
'encode' and 'decode' entirely, since some people claim
to be confused by them.

While I succeeded in that, I concede that the result
isn't particularly intuitive and is arguably even more
confusing.

If we're going to continue to use 'encode' and 'decode',
why not just make them functions:

   b = encode(u, 'utf-8')
   u = decode(b, 'utf-8')

In the case of Unicode encodings, if you get them
backwards you'll get a type error.

The advantage of using functions over methods or
constructor arguments is that they can be applied
uniformly to any input and output types.

--
Greg
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