[Python-Dev] Python 2.0 beta 2 pre-release

[M.-A. Lemburg]

[Tim Peters wrote about the test_unicodedata.py glitch]:
> 
> [MAL]
> > It is fixed in CVS ... don't know if the patch made it into
> > the release though. The new test now uses UTF-8 as encoding
> > which is endian-independent.
> 
> Alas, it was not in the release.  I didn't even know about it until after
> the installers were all built and shipped.  Score another for last-second
> improvements <0.5 wink>.

You're right. This shouldn't have been applied so close to the
release date/time. Looks like all reviewers work on little
endian machines...
 
> Very, very weird:  we all know that SHA is believed to be cryptologically
> secure, so there was no feasible way to deduce why the hashes were
> different. But I was coming down with a fever at the time (now in full
> bloom, alas), and just stared at the two hashes:
> 
>     good:  b88684df19fca8c3d0ab31f040dd8de89f7836fe
>     bad:   e052289ecef97fc89c794cf663cb74a64631d34e
> 
> Do you see the pattern?  Ha!  I did!  They both end with "e", and in my
> fuzzy-headed state I immediately latched on to that and thought "hmm ... 'e'
> is for 'endian'".  Else I wouldn't have had a clue!

Well, let's think of it as a hidden feature: the test fails
if and only if it is run on a big endian machine... should
have named the test to something more obvious, e.g.
test_littleendian.py ;-)

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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