[Python-Dev] Fwd: PEP 467: Minor API improvements for bytes & bytearray (original) (raw)

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Mon Aug 18 22:06:06 CEST 2014

On 8/18/2014 12:04 PM, Chris Barker wrote:

On Sun, Aug 17, 2014 at 2:41 PM, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org_ _<mailto:barry at python.org>> wrote:

I think the biggest API "problem" is that default iteration returns integers instead of bytes. That's a real pain.

what is really needed for this NOT to be a pain is a byte scalar.

The byte scalar is an int in range(256). Bytes is an array of such.

numpy has a scalar type for every type it supports -- this is a GOOD THING (tm):

In [53]: a = np.array((3,4,5), dtype=np.uint8) In [54]: a Out[54]: array([3, 4, 5], dtype=uint8) In [55]: a[1] Out[55]: 4 In [56]: type(a[1]) Out[56]: numpy.uint8 In [57]: a[1].shape Out[57]: ()

The lack of a character type is a major source of "type errors" in python (the whole list of strings vs a single string problem -- both return a sequence when you index into them or iterate over them)

This is exactly what iterbytes would do -- yields bytes of size 1.

Anyway, the character ship has long since sailed, but maybe a byte scalar would be a good idea?

And FWIW, I think the proposal does make for a better, cleaner API.

-- Terry Jan Reedy

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