[Python-3000] Bytes and unicode conversion in C extensions

[M.-A. Lemburg]

On 2008-07-30 07:17, Andrew McNamara wrote:
>>> What about a new keyword argument to the constructor, "encoding". If
>>> specified, *only* accept unicode (and do the conversion internally).
>> Would that apply to keys, values, or both?
> 
> I admit that I deliberately glossed over that. 8-)
> 
> One option is to say "both", just to keep it simple: if you're doing
> something funky, use the "bytes" mode and do your own encoding.
> 
> Another option would be have "key_encoding" and "value_encoding" as well,
> and let them default to "encoding". I'm not so keen on this.
> 
> I think the important point is to throw an exception if the module gets
> input of the wrong type, rather than trying to coerce the input. Which
> implies it needs to know what mode it's in.

Since bsddb is about storing arbitrary data, I think just accepting
bytes for both keys and values is more intuitive.

The question of encoding is application and database specific, so
not something you'd want to put into a low-level interface.

BTW: If you make the database object subclassable, an application
could easily implement whatever strategy is needed on top of the
bytes-only interface.

-- 
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