[Python-Dev] bytes.from_hex()

[Michael Hudson]

"M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at egenix.com> writes:

> Martin v. Löwis wrote:
>> M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
>>>>> True. However, note that the .encode()/.decode() methods on
>>>>> strings and Unicode narrow down the possible return types.
>>>>> The corresponding .bytes methods should only allow bytes and
>>>>> Unicode.
>>>> I forgot that: what is the rationale for that restriction?
>>>
>>> To assure that only those types can be returned from those
>>> methods, ie. instances of basestring, which in return permits
>>> type inference for those methods.
>> 
>> Hmm. So it for type inference????
>> Where is that documented?
>
> Somewhere in the python-dev mailing list archives ;-)
>
> Seriously, we should probably add this to the documentation.

Err.................. I don't think this is a good argument, for quite
a few reasons.  There certainly aren't many other features in Python
designed to aid type inference and the knowledge that something
returns "unicode or str" isn't especially useful...

Cheers,
mwh

-- 
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