[Python-Dev] introducing byte arrays in 1.6 (was: Unicode debate) (original) (raw)

Greg Stein gstein@lyra.org
Sun, 7 May 2000 04:09:45 -0700 (PDT)

On Wed, 3 May 2000, Guido van Rossum wrote:

... My ASCII proposal is a compromise that tries to be fair to both uses for strings. Introducing byte arrays as a more fundamental type has been on the wish list for a long time -- I see no way to introduce this into Python 1.6 without totally botching the release schedule (June 1st is very close already!). I'd like to be able to move on, there are other important things still to be added to 1.6 (Vladimir's malloc patches, Neil's GC, Fredrik's completed sre...).

For 1.7 (which should happen later this year) I promise I'll reopen the discussion on byte arrays.

See my other note. I think a simple change to the buffer() builtin would allow read/write byte arrays to be simply constructed.

There are a couple API changes that could be made to bufferobject.[ch] which could simplify some operations for C code and returning buffer objects. But changes like that would be preconditioned on accepting the change in return type from those extensions. For example, the doc may say something returns a string; while buffer objects are similar to strings in operation, they are not the same. IMO, Python 1.7 would be a good time to alter return types to buffer objects as appropriate. (but I'm not adverse to doing it today! (to get people used to the difference in purposes))

Cheers, -g

-- Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/