[Python-3000] [Python-Dev] Byte literals (was Re: [Python-checkins] Changing string constants to byte arrays ( r55119 - in python/branches/py3k-struni/Lib: codecs.py test/test_codecs.py ))

[James Y Knight]

On May 8, 2007, at 9:16 AM, Jason Orendorff wrote:

> Guido, if 3.x had an immutable bytes type, could 2to3 provide a
> better guarantee?  Namely, "Set your default encoding to None
> in your 2.x code today, and 2to3 will not introduce bugs around
> str/unicode."

You cannot set the default encoding to None (rather, "undefined") in  
2.x, without making half the stdlib completely unusable. So that's  
not really much of an option.

James