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

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Thu Feb 23 07:21:17 CET 2006

"Ron" == Ron Adam <rrr at ronadam.com> writes:

Ron> Terry Reedy wrote:

>> I prefer the shorter names and using recode, for instance, for
>> bytes to bytes.

Ron> While I prefer constructors with an explicit encode argument,
Ron> and use a recode() method for 'like to like' coding.

'Recode' is a great name for the conceptual process, but the methods are directional. Also, in internationalization work, "recode" strongly connotes "encodingA -> original -> encodingB", as in iconv.

I do prefer constructors, as it's generally not a good idea to do encoding/decoding in-place for human-readable text, since the codecs are often lossy.

Ron> Then the whole encode/decode confusion goes away.

Unlikely. Errors like "A string".encode("base64").encode("base64") are all too easy to commit in practice.

-- 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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