[Python-Dev] Re: adding a bytes sequence type to Python

[Michael Hudson]

Anthony Baxter <anthony at interlink.com.au> writes:

> Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> I see that as a huge case for a bytes type, which I've proposed
>> myself; but what's the use case for bytes literals, assuming you can
>> write bytes("foo")?  Does b"foo" really make much of a difference?  Is
>> it so hard to have to write bytes([0x66, 0x6f, 0x6f]) instead of
>> b"\x66\x6f\x6f"?
>
> It's a pretty marginal case for it. I just played with it a bit, and
> I think after playing with it, I actually prefer the non b'' case.

Is this getting to (hopefully uncontroverisal!) PEP time?

Is there any consensus forming on whether bytes() instances are
mutable or not?

> A big +1 for a bytes() type, though. I'm not sure on the details,
> but it'd be nice if it was possible to pass a bytes() object to,
> for instance, write() directly.

If bytes() doesn't implement the read buffer interface, someone
somewhere is going to need shooting :-)

Cheers,
mwh

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