[Python-Dev] [Email-SIG] Dropping bytes "support" in json

[Michael Foord]

Glenn Linderman wrote:
> On approximately 4/10/2009 9:56 AM, came the following characters from 
> the keyboard of Barry Warsaw:
>> On Apr 10, 2009, at 1:19 AM, glyph at divmod.com wrote:
>>> On 02:38 am, barry at python.org wrote:
>>>> So, what I'm really asking is this.  Let's say you agree that there 
>>>> are use cases for accessing a header value as either the raw 
>>>> encoded bytes or the decoded unicode.  What should this return:
>>>>
>>>> >>> message['Subject']
>>>>
>>>> The raw bytes or the decoded unicode?
>>>
>>> My personal preference would be to just get deprecate this API, and 
>>> get rid of it, replacing it with a slightly more explicit one.
>>>
>>>   message.headers['Subject']
>>>   message.bytes_headers['Subject']
>>
>> This is pretty darn clever Glyph.  Stop that! :)
>>
>> I'm not 100% sure I like the name .bytes_headers or that .headers 
>> should be the decoded header (rather than have .headers return the 
>> bytes thingie and say .decoded_headers return the decoded thingies), 
>> but I do like the general approach.
>
> If one name has to be longer than the other, it should be the bytes 
> version.  Real user code is more likely to want to use the text 
> version, and hopefully there will be more of that type of code than 
> implementations using bytes.
>
> Of course, one could use message.header and message.bythdr and they'd 
> be the same length.
>
>
Shouldn't headers always be text?

Michael

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