[Python-Dev] buffer('abc') == 'abc' is False ?! (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Wed, 16 Oct 2002 12:26:59 -0400

>>Would be nice if there were a standard builtin, e.g. binary(), >>for this and maybe some support code to go with it in C (e.g. >>the type object would be nice to have at C level). > > I disagree. There are a thousand different applications, and yours > seems rather unusual to me.

It's not at all unusual if you interface to databases. These offer you three choices: character data, Unicode data and binary data and each of these is handled slightly differently.

I figure that most apps will be happy to return 8-bit strings for binary data; that's what 8-bit strings were explicitly designed to support.

We currently don't have any notion of separating character data from binary except the difference between Unicode and strings. Using Unicode for character data only and reserving strings for binary data would be nice, except that practice shows that this doesn't always work because not all tools in the chain are ready for Unicode just yet (including Python's stdlib itself).

No, we'll eventually need a separate data type, but I doubt it needs to be as compatible with the current 8-bit string type as your requirements state.

Nevermind, I'll roll my own,

You're welcome.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)