[Python-Dev] bytes.from_hex() (original) (raw)

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Fri Feb 17 07:40:53 CET 2006

"Guido" == Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

Guido> I'd say there are two "symmetric" API flavors possible (t
Guido> and b are text and bytes objects, respectively, where text
Guido> is a string type, either str or unicode; enc is an encoding
Guido> name):

Guido> - b.decode(enc) -> t; t.encode(enc) -> b

-0 When taking a binary file and attaching it to the text of a mail message using BASE64, the tendency to say you're "encoding the file in BASE64" is very strong. I just don't see how such usages can be avoided in discussion, which makes the types of decode and encode hard to remember, and easy to mistake in some contexts.

Guido> - b = bytes(t, enc); t = text(b, enc)

+1 The coding conversion operation has always felt like a constructor to me, and in this particular usage that's exactly what it is. I prefer the nomenclature to reflect that.

-- School of Systems and Information Engineering http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Ask not how you can "do" free software business; ask what your business can "do for" free software.

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