[Python-Dev] bytes type

[Antoine Pitrou]

> Presumably in Python 3.0, opening a file in "text" mode will require an 
> encoding to be specified, and opening it in "binary" mode will cause it to 
> produce or consume byte arrays, not strings.  This should apply to sockets 
> too, and really any I/O facility, including GUI frameworks, DBAPI objects, 
> os.listdir(), etc.

Great :)

> Of course, to get there we really need to add a convenient bytes type, 
> perhaps by enhancing the current 'array' module.  It'd be nice to have a 
> way to get this in 2.x versions so people can start fixing stuff to work 
> the right way.

Could the "bytes" type be just the same as the current "str" type but
without the implicit unicode conversion ? Or am I missing some desired
functionality ?