[Python-Dev] Why can't I encode/decode base64 without importing a module?

M.-A. Lemburg mal at egenix.com
Tue Apr 23 18:04:37 CEST 2013


On 23.04.2013 17:47, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 8:22 AM, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
>> Just as reminder: we have the general purpose
>> encode()/decode() functions in the codecs module:
>>
>> import codecs
>> r13 = codecs.encode('hello world', 'rot-13')
>>
>> These interface directly to the codec interfaces, without
>> enforcing type restrictions. The codec defines the supported
>> input and output types.
> 
> As an implementation mechanism I see nothing wrong with this. I hope
> the codecs module lets you introspect the input and output types of a
> codec given by name?

At the moment there is no standard interface to access supported
input and output types... but then: regular Python functions or
methods also don't provide such functionality, so no surprise
there ;-)

It's mostly a matter of specifying the supported type
combinations in the codec documentation.

BTW: What would be a use case where you'd want to
programmatically access such information before calling
the codec ?

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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