[Python-Dev] PEP 460 reboot

[Guido van Rossum]

On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 10:59 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 13 January 2014 16:52, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>>
>> On Jan 13, 2014, at 12:45 AM, Glenn Linderman <v+python at g.nevcal.com> wrote:
>>
>> So then the question is whether to proceed with 3.4, delay this feature to
>> 3.5, or to delay 3.4 to include this feature, both have been discussed, with
>> the justification for the latter being to make 3.4 the ultimate Python 3
>> porting target for recalcitrant module authors, sooner than later.
>>
>>
>> I really hope this can make it in 3.4, needing to wait another 2 years or so
>> until this is available would be a shame.
>
> Indeed, it would be a shame to have to wait. Fortunately, people don't
> even need to wait until the release of Python 3.4, they can instead
> try to help out with the asciicompat project, which aims to provide
> this functionality in Python 3.3+:
> https://github.com/jeamland/asciicompat
>
> All it takes is to let go of the idea "I wish the Python 3 bytes type
> was more like the Python 2 str type" and instead think "hmm, the
> Python 3 bytes type doesn't seem like a great fit for my use case,
> maybe I need a different type".

Maybe you're letting your excitement about asciistr get the better of
you? IMO we don't need more types. If you can refrain from using
int(b), b.lower() and b += 'abc' when b isn't ASCII-encoded, why
couldn't you also refrain from b += b'%s' % 42?

I'll suppress the urge to quote verbatim from my first message in this
thread (about the motivation for bytes) but I'll just recommend you
re-read it.

(It's too late here to write more, but it looks like we are in for a
bitter fight. :-( )

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)