[Python-3000] Thoughts on new I/O library and bytecode

[Jim Jewett]

On 2/21/07, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> If the spelling of a bytes string with an ASCII character value is all
> you are complaining about, you should have said so right away.

That is my main objection.

A literal form does clear it up, though I'm not sure "b" is the right
prefix.  (I keep wanting to read "binary" or "boolean", rather than
"ASCII")

To be honest, it would probably be enough if there were an ascii
builtin, or if the example uses of the bytes constructor showed

    bytes(text)   # no encoding

just copying the low-order byte, and raising exceptions if any
high-order bytes were non-zero.

-jJ