[Python-Dev] bytes with trailing \0?

[Guido van Rossum]

It is to improve the experience of passing bytes to a C function that
expects a trailing \0. For example syscalls taking filenames. The wrapper
must still check for embedded \0 but the bytes don't need to be copied.

On Monday, April 28, 2014, Nikolaus Rath <Nikolaus at rath.org> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I was surprised to find the following in bytesobject.c:
>
> ,----
> | [...]
> |    As always, an extra byte is allocated for a trailing \0 byte (newsize
> |    does *not* include that), and a trailing \0 byte is stored.
> | */
> |
> | int
> | _PyBytes_Resize(PyObject **pv, Py_ssize_t newsize)
> | {
> | [...]
> |
> `----
>
> Does this mean that bytes objects are internally stored with a trailing
> \0? Why is that? Isn't that just wasting a byte, because \0 might also
> be in the middle of the byte sequence, and the bytes objects stores its
> length explicitly anyway?
>
>
> Best,
> -Nikolaus
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-- 
--Guido van Rossum (on iPad)
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