[Python-Dev] PEP 461: Adding % formatting to bytes and bytearray -- Final, Take 3

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Tue, 25 Mar 2014 15:37:11 -0700
Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us> wrote:
> 
> ``%a`` will call ``ascii()`` on the interpolated value.  This is intended
> as a debugging aid, rather than something that should be used in production.
> Non-ASCII values will be encoded to either ``\xnn`` or ``\unnnn``
> representation.  Use cases include developing a new protocol and writing
> landmarks into the stream; debugging data going into an existing protocol
> to see if the problem is the protocol itself or bad data; a fall-back for a
> serialization format; or even a rudimentary serialization format when
> defining ``__bytes__`` would not be appropriate [8].

The "use cases" you are enumerating for "%a" are chimeric. Did you
*actually* do those things in real life, or are you inventing them for
the PEP?

Regards

Antoine.