[Python-Dev] PEP 467: Minor API improvements to bytes, bytearray, and memoryview

[Nick Coghlan]

On 7 June 2016 at 14:33, Paul Sokolovsky <pmiscml at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On Tue, 07 Jun 2016 13:28:13 -0700
> Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us> wrote:
>
>> Minor changes: updated version numbers, add punctuation.
>>
>> The current text seems to take into account Guido's last comments.
>>
>> Thoughts before asking for acceptance?
>>
>>
> []
>
>> Deprecation of current "zero-initialised sequence" behaviour
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Currently, the ``bytes`` and ``bytearray`` constructors accept an
>> integer argument and interpret it as meaning to create a
>> zero-initialised sequence of the given size::
>>
>>      >>> bytes(3)
>>      b'\x00\x00\x00'
>>      >>> bytearray(3)
>>      bytearray(b'\x00\x00\x00')
>>
>> This PEP proposes to deprecate that behaviour in Python 3.6, and
>> remove it entirely in Python 3.7.
>
> Why the desire to break applications of thousands and thousands of
> people?

Same argument as any deprecation: to make existing and future defects
easier to find or easier to debug.

That said, this is the main part I was referring to in the other
thread when I mentioned some of the constructor changes were
potentially controversial and probably not worth the hassle - it's the
only one with the potential to break currently working code, while the
others are just a matter of choosing suitable names.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia