[Python-Dev] str with base

[Barry Warsaw]

On Tue, 2006-01-17 at 15:08 +1100, Andrew Bennetts wrote:

> 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.

Hear, hear.  I was similarly perplexed when I first read that!

-Barry

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