[Python-Dev] bytes.from_hex() [Was: PEP 332 revival in coordination with pep 349?]

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Ian Bicking wrote:
> That str.encode(unicode_encoding) implicitly decodes strings seems like
> a flaw in the unicode encodings, quite seperate from the existance of
> str.encode.  I for one really like s.encode('zlib').encode('base64') --
> and if the zlib encoding raised an error when it was passed a unicode
> object (instead of implicitly encoding the string with the ascii
> encoding) that would be fine.
> 
> The pipe-like nature of .encode and .decode works very nicely for
> certain transformations, applicable to both unicode and byte objects.
> Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.

The way you use it, it's a matter of notation only: why
is

zlib(base64(s))

any worse? I think it's better: it doesn't use string literals to
denote function names.

If there is a point to this overgeneralized codec idea, it is
the streaming aspect: that you don't need to process all data
at once, but can feed data sequentially. Of course, you are
not using this in your example.

Regards,
Martin