[Python-3000] base64 - bytes and strings (original) (raw)
Greg Ewing greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz
Mon Jul 30 02:08:22 CEST 2007
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Nick Coghlan wrote:
Py3k strings are unicode, so returning a string would mean you just have to encode it again using the ascii codec to get the bytes to put on the wire.
I still believe that producing a string is conceptually the right thing to do. The point of base64 is to encode binary data as text, not binary data as binary data.
If I ever had a reason to use base64, it would be because I had a "wire" that would accept text but not binary data, e.g. a file open in text mode, or some other text that I wanted to embed it in. Getting bytes in that situation would force me to make an extra conversion.
-- Greg
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