[Python-Dev] PEP 332 revival in coordination with pep 349? [ Was:Re: release plan for 2.5 ?]

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 09:55 AM 2/13/2006 -0800, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>One recommendation: for starters, I'd much rather see the bytes type
>standardized without a literal notation. There should be are lots of
>ways to create bytes objects from string objects, with specific
>explicit encodings, and those should suffice, at least initially.
>
>I also wonder if having a b"..." literal would just add more confusion
>-- bytes are not characters, but b"..." makes it appear as if they
>are.

Why not just have the constructor be:

     bytes(initializer [,encoding])

Where initializer must be either an iterable of suitable integers, or a 
unicode/string object.  If the latter (i.e., it's a basestring), the 
encoding argument would then be required.  Then, there's no need for 
special codec support for the bytes type, since you call bytes on the thing 
to be encoded.  And of course, no need for a 'b' literal.