[Python-3000] PEP 3138- String representation in Python 3000

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> They are convenience methods to the codecs registry
> with the added benefit of applying type checks which the codecs
> registry does not guarantee since it only manages codecs.

I argue that things that could be parameters to .transform don't
belong into the codec registry in the first place.

> Of course, you can write everything directly against the codec
> registry or some other specialized interface, but that's not
> really what we're after here.

No need for writing directly against the codec registry.

Using some other specialized interface: yes, Yes, YES!

> Motivation: When was the last time you used a gzip compression
> option (ie. yes there are options, but do you use them in the
> general use case) ?

Depends on what I do: when I invoke gzip from the command line,
I pass -9 all the time, as a habit.

Or did you mean "in Python"? It's a long time that I needed to
use the gzip module at all; and the last few times, I suppose
it was always through the tarfile module.

I use gzip so rarely that I find it wasteful that it gets its
own shortcut. If I had a (half-serious) wish for a string
method shortcut, it would be

"GET / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n".sendto("foo.bar.com", 80)

Perhaps I should write a codec for that:

"GET / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n".encode("http:foo.bar.com")

which sends the request and returns the response :-)

> Can you write code that applies UU encoding
> without looking up the details in the documentation (ie. there
> is a module for doing UU-encoding in the stdlib, but what's it's
> name, what's the function, does it need extra logic) ?

You mean, without looking into the HTML documentation? Sure enough.
"import uu" I remember, then I do help(uu), scroll to the end.

If you can't remember that the module's name is uu, then you probably
can't remember the codec, either:

py> "foo".encode("uuencode")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
LookupError: unknown encoding: uuencode

Regards,
Martin