[Python-Dev] PEP 460: allowing %d and %f and mojibake

[Greg Ewing]

Nick Coghlan wrote:
> 
> On 13 Jan 2014 01:22, "Kristján Valur Jónsson" <kristjan at ccpgames.com 
> <mailto:kristjan at ccpgames.com>> wrote:
>
>  > Well, my suggestion would that we _should_ make it work, by having 
> the %s format specifyer on bytes objects mean: str(arg).encode('ascii', 
> 'strict')
 >
> It is not explicit, it is implicit - whether or not the resulting string 
> assumes ASCII compatibility or not depends on whether you pass a binary 
> value (no assumption) or a string value (assumes ASCII compatibility).

How do you make that out? As far as I can see, Kristjan's
proposal will *always* call str() on the argument of a
%s format, regardless of its type. The *result*  of that
str() is then *required* (not assumed) to be encodable
as ascii. I don't see any type-dependent changes in
behaviour here.

Interpolating a bytes object as-is, without a conversion
to text, should be done by a different format specifier,
such as %b. All text/bytes conversions are then explicit:
if you write %s, then you're encoding something as ascii,
but if you write %b, you're just inserting something
that's already binary.

--
Greg