[Python-Dev] PEP 461: Adding % formatting to bytes and bytearray -- Final, Take 3 (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Thu Mar 27 18:29:54 CET 2014

I also don't understand why we can't use %b instead of %s. AFAIK %b currently doesn't mean anything and I somehow don't expect we're likely to add it for other reasons (unless there's a proposal I'm missing?). Just like we use %a instead of %r to remind people that it's not quite the same (since it applies .encode('ascii', 'backslashreplace')), shouldn't we use anything but %s to remind people that that is also not the same (not at all, in fact)? The PEP's argument against %b ("rejected as not adding any value either in clarity or simplicity") is hardly a good reason.

On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:

Actually, I had ignored this discussion for so long that I was surprised by the outcome. My main use case isn't printing a number that may already be a string (I understand why that isn't reasonable when the output is expected to be bytes); it's printing a usually numeric value that may sometimes be None. It's a little surprising to have to use %a for this, but I guess I can live with it.

On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 8:58 AM, Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us> wrote: On 03/27/2014 04:42 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:

I also seem to recall Guido saying he liked it [%a], which flipped the discussion from "do we have a good rationale for including it?" to "do we have a good rationale for the BDFL to ignore his instincts?". However, it would be up to Guido to confirm that recollection, and if "Guido likes it" is part of the reason for inclusion of the %a code, the PEP should mention that explicitly. I checked Guido's posts (Subject contains PEP 461, From contains guido) and did not see anything to that effect. -- Ethan

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

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