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[Python-Dev] PEP 467 (Minor API improvements for binary sequences)

Chris Barker chris.barker at noaa.gov
Wed Feb 21 17:36:10 EST 2018 
On Wed, Feb 21, 2018 at 12:39 PM, Steve Holden <steve at holdenweb.com> wrote:

> I think the chances of a "byte" object are about as good as the chances of
> a character object
>

probably right.


> (though one can always implement such in C extensions, that wouldn't build
> them into the syntax).
>

I think you could simply subclass, too (overriding __new__ and a couple
methods). But that would do exactly no good, unless you used your own
custom string and bytes objects, too. The whole point is that iterating
over a string (Or bytes) always returns an also-iterable object,
ad-infinitum.

This is the cause of the major remaining common "type error" in Python.
(the old integer division used to be the big one)


> The fact that characters are single-byte strings is responsible for
> certain anomalies with (e.g.) the __contains__ operator (list elements
> aren't lists, but string element are strings), but overall the choices made
> lead to sensible, comprehensible code.
>

I'm pretty convinced that the choice not to have a character type has had
basically zero benefits to sensible, comprehensible code, though it's not a
very big deal, either. not a big enough deal for the churn it would cause
to introduce it now, that's for sure.

so +1 for this PEP as is.

-CHB

-- 

Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
Oceanographer

Emergency Response Division
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Chris.Barker at noaa.gov
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