[Python-3000] Immutable bytes -- looking for volunteer

[Guido van Rossum]

On 9/18/07, Jeffrey Yasskin <jyasskin at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'll take it. I assume it's just a matter of removing the mutating
> methods and making the tests pass?

And adding __hash__. And (but this could be a separate, later change)
switch indexing to return 1-char bytes arrays instead of small ints.
And similar changes to the constructor.

Of course, the devil is in the "making the tests pass".

> I saw but didn't read a couple
> threads about the buffer API... how much has to change there?

The bytes buffer API should refuse requests for writable buffers.

Since you're so close, please do interrupt me over IM to review
incomplete work or ideas!

--Guido

> On 9/18/07, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> > No takers? What about those repeated +42 voters? Does anyone want
> > immutable bytes enough to do a teensy bit of work?
> >
> > --Guido
> >
> > On 9/17/07, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> > > This may have passed in a thread where no-one was listening, so I'm
> > > repeating it here.
> > >
> > > I'm considering the following option: bytes would always be immutable,
> > > and for the few places (mostly in io.py) where a mutable bytes buffer
> > > would be handy, we use the array module. Then it would also make sense
> > > to make b[0] return a bytes array of length 1 instead of a small int
> > > -- bytes would be more similar to str in 2.x, albeit completely
> > > incompatible with str in terms of mixed operations.
> > >
> > > It would help if someone explored creating a patch to implement this,
> > > just to see the minimum amount of code that would need to change
> > > compared to 3.0a1. (The challenge includes making all the tests pass
> > > again.)
> > >
> > > --
> > > --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
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> >
>
>
> --
> Namasté,
> Jeffrey Yasskin
> http://jeffrey.yasskin.info/
>
> "Religion is an improper response to the Divine." — "Skinny Legs and
> All", by Tom Robbins
>


-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)