[Python-3000] Release Countdown (original) (raw)

Jim Jewett jimjjewett at gmail.com
Sat Sep 1 00:17:57 CEST 2007

On 8/31/07, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

On 8/31/07, Jim Jewett <jimjjewett at gmail.com> wrote:

> (1) Allow bytes methods to take a literal string (which will > obviously be in the source file's encoding).

Yuck, yuck about the source file encoding part. Also, there is no way to tell that a particular argument was passed a literal.

There is when compiling to bytecode; it goes in co_consts.

The very definition of "this was a literal" is iffy -- is x a literal when passed to f below?

x = "abc" f(x)

No, it isn't. Though I suppose consistency with that sort of use (particularly inside a function, where the compiler could know) is the main argument against this.

> (2) There really ought to be an immutable bytes type, and the literal > (or at least a literal, if capitalization matters) ought to be the > immutable.

_> PLISTHEADER = b"""_ > > PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/ > PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> > """

> If the value of PLISTHEADER does change during the run, it will almost > certainly be a bug. I could code defensively by only ever passing > copies, but that seems wasteful, and it could hide other bugs. If > something does try to modify (not replace, modify) it, then there was > probably a typo or API misunderstanding; I want an exception.

Sounds like you're worrying to much. Do you have any indication that this is going to be a common problem? > http://svn.python.org/view/python/branches/py3k/Lib/plat-mac/plistlib.py?rev=57563&r1=57305&r2=57563

Let me reverse the question. In Py2, that variable holds a constant string. What is the value in making that constant mutable?

-jJ

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