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

Jim Jewett jimjjewett at gmail.com
Sat Sep 1 01🔞12 CEST 2007

On 8/31/07, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:

>> 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 coconsts.

>> 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.

By that definition, bytes never receives a constant.

To go back to the original motivation

x.split(":")    # a constant, currently fails in Py3K

x.split(b":")  # mechanical replacement for x.split(":")

sep=":"
x.split(sep)  # annoying but less important failure

I would prefer that x.split(":") work.

If that happens because bytes.split does the conversion for me (so that x.split(sep) also works), then great. But I realize that would require an assumption about the proper encoding.

If it works because the bytecode compiler changes x.split(":") into the moral equivalent of

try:
    x.split(":")
except StrNotBytesError:
    x.split(b":")

that is good enough. And for constants which appear as string literals in the code (token stringliteral), the proper encoding is known.

-jJ

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