[Python-Dev] new buffer in python2.7

[Lennart Regebro]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 12:36, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 27 Oct 2010 10:13:12 +0800
> Kristján Valur Jónsson <kristjan at ccpgames.com> wrote:
>> Although 2.7 has the new buffer interface and memoryview
>> objects, these are widely not accepted in the built in modules.
>
> That's true, and slightly unfortunate. It could be a reason for
> switching to 3.1/3.2 :-)

It's rather a reason against it, as it makes supporting both Python 2
and Python 3 harder.
However, fixing this in 2.7 just means that you need to support 2.7x
or later only, so it's not a good solution.
I think using compatibility types is a better solution. I suggested
something like that for inclusion in "six", but it was softly
rejected. :-)

Something like this, for example. It's a str in Python2 and a Bytes in
Python3, but it extends both classes with a consistent interface.
Improvements, comments and ideas are welcome.

bites.py:
--------------------
import sys
if sys.version < '3':
    class Bites(str):
        def __new__(cls, value):
            if isinstance(value[0], int):
                # It's a list of integers
                value = ''.join([chr(x) for x in value])
            return super(Bites, cls).__new__(cls, value)

        def itemint(self, index):
            return ord(self[index])

        def iterint(self):
            for x in self:
                yield ord(x)
else:

    class Bites(bytes):
        def __new__(cls, value):
            if isinstance(value, str):
                # It's a unicode string:
                value = value.encode('ISO-8859-1')
            return super(Bites, cls).__new__(cls, value)

        def itemint(self, x):
            return self[x]

        def iterint(self):
            for x in self:
                yield x
--------------------

-- 
Lennart Regebro: http://regebro.wordpress.com/
Python 3 Porting: http://python3porting.com/
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