[Python-Dev] file system path protocol PEP

[Nikolaus Rath]

On May 11 2016, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
> This PEP proposes a protocol for classes which represent a file system
> path to be able to provide a ``str`` or ``bytes`` representation.
[...]

As I said before, to me this seems like a lot of effort for a very
specific use-case. So let me put forward two hypothetical scenarios to
better understand your position:

- A new module for URL handling is added to the standard library (or
  urllib is suitably extended). There is a proposal to add a new
  protocol that allows classes to provide a ``str`` or ``bytes``
  representation of URLs.

- A new (third-party) library for natural language processing arises
  that exposes a specific class for representing audio data. Existing
  language processing code just uses bytes objects. To ease transition
  and interoperability, it is proposed to add a new protocol for classes
  that represend audio data to provide a bytes representation.

Do you think you would you be in favor of adding these protocols to
the stdlib/languange reference as well? If not, what's the crucial
difference to file system paths?


Thanks,
-Nikolaus

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