[Python-Dev] str with base

[Bob Ippolito]

On Jan 17, 2006, at 4:09 PM, Adam Olsen wrote:

> On 1/17/06, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>> On 1/17/06, Adam Olsen <rhamph at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> In-favour-of-%2b-ly y'rs,
>>>
>>> My only opposition to this is that the byte type may want to use it.
>>> I'd rather wait until byte is fully defined, implemented, and  
>>> released
>>> in a python version before that option is taken away.
>>
>> Has this been proposed? What would %b print?
>
> I don't believe it's been proposed and I don't know what it'd print.
> Perhaps it indicates the bytes should be passed through without
> conversion.

That doesn't make any sense.  What is "without conversion"?  Does  
that mean UTF-8, UCS-2, UCS-4, latin-1, Shift-JIS?  You can't have  
unicode without some kind of conversion.

> In any case I only advocate waiting until it's clear that bytes have
> no need for it before we use it for binary conversions.

I don't see what business a byte type has mingling with string  
formatters other than the normal str and repr coercions via %s and %r  
respectively.

-bob