[Python-Dev] Python 3.x and bytes (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Wed May 18 05:13:32 CEST 2011

On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 8:27 AM, Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us> wrote:

On the one hand we have the 'bytes are ascii data' type interface, and on the other we have the 'bytes are a list of integers between 0 - 256' interface.

No. Bytes are a list of integers between 0-256. End of story. Using them to represent text as well was precisely the problem with 2.x 8-bit strings, since the boundaries got blurred.

However, as a matter of practicality, many byte-oriented protocols use ASCII to make elements of the protocol readable by humans. The "text-like" elements of the bytes and bytearray types are a concession to the existence of those protocols. However, that doesn't make them text - they're still binary data streams. If you want to treat them as text, convert them to "str" objects first (e.g. that's what urlib.urlparse does internally in order to operate on bytes and bytearray instances).

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia

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