Eric Eisner wrote:
One option would be to have the defaults of int.as_bytes mirror the hex builtin function, eg big endian and unsigned. This way it could be more consistent with related functionality already in the core.
Having the byte conversion mirror the hex builtin is probably the least arbitrary style guide we could come up with for the defaults. The other option would be to not *have* defaults for either of these settings and force the programmer to make a deliberate choice. Then once it has been out in the field for a while and we have evidence about the way people use it, add sensible defaults in the following release. I would prefer either of those two options to attempting to just guess what the appropriate defaults would be in the absence of a wide selection of use cases. I also like the idea of using sys.byteorder as the model for the byteorder selection option (i.e. byteorder=sys.byteorder to select native layout and 'big'/'little' to choose a specific one) I think Mark also makes a good point that in cases where the size doesn't matter, marshal or pickle is probably a better choice than this direct conversion so +0 on requiring an explicit size on the conversion to bytes. Again, this is a case where *adding* a default later would be easy, but changing a default or removing a variable size feature would be difficult. Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia ---------------------------------------------------------------