[Python-Dev] PEP 332 revival in coordination with pep 349? [ Was:Re: release plan for 2.5 ?] (original) (raw)

Ron Adam rrr at ronadam.com
Thu Feb 16 03:11:59 CET 2006

Greg Ewing wrote:

I think you don't understand what an encoding is. Unicode strings don't have an encoding, because theyre not encoded! Encoding is what happens when you go from a unicode string to something else.

Ah.. ok, my mental picture was a bit off. I had this reversed somewhat.

It's not just a matter of length. I'm not sure of the details, but I believe longs are currently stored as an array of 16-bit chunks, of which only 15 bits are used. I'm having trouble imagining a use for low-level access to that format, other than just treating it as an opaque lump of data for turning back into a long later -- in which case why not just leave it as a long in the first place.

I had laps thinking Pythons longs are the same as c longs. I know Pythons longs can get much much bigger.

The idea was to be able to show the byte data as is in what ever form it takes and not try to change it, weather it's longs, floats, strings, etc.

Cheers, Ron

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