[Python-3000] PEP 3137: Immutable Bytes and Mutable Buffer

[Guido van Rossum]

On 9/28/07, Joel Bender <jjb5 at cornell.edu> wrote:
> Should this PEP include changes to the struct module, or should it be a
> separate PEP?

Neither.

> I would like struct.pack() to return bytes and struct.unpack() to accept
> bytes or buffers but not strings.

This is already the case in 3.0a1. (Don't people try stuff out before posting?)

> The 's' and 'p' format specifier should refer to bytes and not strings.

They currently allow both, which I think is fine.

> In protocol encoding and decoding, "unpack and strip off the front" and
> "pack and append" are very common operations.  I would also like to have
>   buffer.unpack(fmt) be the former and buffer.pack(fmt, v1, v2, ...) be
> the latter.

IMO that would tie the buffer type too close to the struct module. You
could easily write a wrapper that does this though.

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