[Python-Dev] Changing string constants to byte arrays in Py3k

[Steven Bethard]

On 5/5/07, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
> On 2007-05-04 19:51, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > [-python-dev]
> >
> > On 5/4/07, Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at acm.org> wrote:
> >> On Friday 04 May 2007, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
> >>  > I also suggest making all bytes literals immutable to avoid running
> >>  > into any issues like the above.
> >>
> >> +1 from me.
> >
> > Rather than adding immutability to bytes objects (which has big
> > implementation and type checking implications), consider using
> > buffer(b"123") as an immutable bytes literal. You can freely
> > concatenate and compare buffer objects with bytes objects.
>
> I like Georg's idea of having an immutable bytes subclass.
> b"abc" could then be a shortcut constructor for this subclass.
>
> In general, I don't think it's a good idea to have literals
> turn into mutable objects, since literals are normally perceived
> as being constant.

Does that mean you want list literals to be immutable too?

    lst = ['a', 'b', 'c']
    lst.append('d') # raises an error?

STeVe
-- 
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