[Python-Dev] Why can't I encode/decode base64 without importing a module?
Stephen J. Turnbull
stephen at xemacs.org
Thu Apr 25 08:57:32 CEST 2013
Lennart Regebro writes:
> Base64 is an encoding that transforms between 8-bit streams. Let it be
> that. Don't try to shoehorn it into a completely different kind of
> encoding.
By "completely different kind of encoding" do you mean "codec"?
I think that would be an unfortunate result. These operations on
streams are theoretically nicely composable. It would be nice if
practice reflected that by having a uniform API for all of these
operations (charset translation, encoded text to internal, content
transfer encoding, compression ...). I think it would be useful, too,
though I can't prove that.
Anyway, this discussion belongs on python-ideas at this point. Or
would, if I had an idea about implementation. I'll take it there when
I do have something to say about implementation.
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