[Python-Dev] PEP 460 reboot (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Mon Jan 13 08:15:13 CET 2014

On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 10:59 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

On 13 January 2014 16:52, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:

On Jan 13, 2014, at 12:45 AM, Glenn Linderman <v+python at g.nevcal.com> wrote: So then the question is whether to proceed with 3.4, delay this feature to 3.5, or to delay 3.4 to include this feature, both have been discussed, with the justification for the latter being to make 3.4 the ultimate Python 3 porting target for recalcitrant module authors, sooner than later.

I really hope this can make it in 3.4, needing to wait another 2 years or so until this is available would be a shame. Indeed, it would be a shame to have to wait. Fortunately, people don't even need to wait until the release of Python 3.4, they can instead try to help out with the asciicompat project, which aims to provide this functionality in Python 3.3+: https://github.com/jeamland/asciicompat All it takes is to let go of the idea "I wish the Python 3 bytes type was more like the Python 2 str type" and instead think "hmm, the Python 3 bytes type doesn't seem like a great fit for my use case, maybe I need a different type".

Maybe you're letting your excitement about asciistr get the better of you? IMO we don't need more types. If you can refrain from using int(b), b.lower() and b += 'abc' when b isn't ASCII-encoded, why couldn't you also refrain from b += b'%s' % 42?

I'll suppress the urge to quote verbatim from my first message in this thread (about the motivation for bytes) but I'll just recommend you re-read it.

(It's too late here to write more, but it looks like we are in for a bitter fight. :-( )

-- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)

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