[Python-Dev] str with base

[Andrew Bennetts]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 07:44:44PM -0800, Alex Martelli wrote:
> Is it finally time in Python 2.5 to allow the "obvious" use of, say,  
> str(5,2) to give '101',

My reaction having read this far was "huh?".  It took some time (several
seconds) before it occurred to me what you wanted str(5,2) to mean, and why it
should give '101'.

If you'd proposed, say (5).as_binary() == '101', or "5".encode("base2"), I
wouldn't have been as baffled.  Or perhaps even str(5, base=2), but frankly the
idea of the string type doing numeric base conversions seems weird to me, rather
than symmetric.

I wouldn't mind seeing arbitrary base encoding of integers included somewhere,
but as a method of str -- let alone the constructor! -- it feels quite wrong.

-Andrew.