[Python-3000] New io system and binary data

[Brett Cannon]

On 9/19/07, skip at pobox.com <skip at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>     Guido> You can repeat that until you're blue in the face but it's not
>     Guido> going to change. Way more programs (especially simple ones) deal
>     Guido> with txet than with binary data.
>
> For us Unix-heads the notion that a file is anything other than a stream of
> bytes is rather foreign.  I understand that to a large degree if you made
> the world right for us the tail would be wagging the dog.

I think the key thing here is that Guido said "especially simple ones"
and the examples people are talking about are not overly simple (e.g,
gzip, ImageMagik, etc.).  That would suggest that if you want the raw
bytes from stdin or write out to stdout that accessing the 'buffer'
attribute you probably know what you are doing and thus accessing a
'buffer' attribute is probably not difficult for you.  =)

-Brett