[Python-ideas] Direct byte<->int conversions (was Re: bitwise operations on bytes)

[Nick Coghlan]

Mark Dickinson wrote:
> [Nick Coghlan]
>> What would we be converting them to in that case? 2.x strings? (I don't
>> have a problem with that, just pointing out there may be some additional
>> work due to changing the target type).
> 
> Yes, the 2.x 'str' type.  I haven't thought about whether this could cause
> 2-to-3 translation problems for people using this in 2.x.  (I don't
> immediately see why it would.)
> 
> Might there be political reasons not to backport this to 2.x?  I seem to
> recall it being suggested at the PyCon language summit that we
> should consider making new features 3.x only, but I don't entirely
> remember what the rationale for this was.

I wasn't there, but there were rumbles about having a few nice carrots
in 3.x to help people think it was worthwhile to switch. That said, I
think the final consensus was that new features *must* go into 3.x, but
if they can be backported and someone is happy to do the work then
backporting isn't an issue.

And in this case, the fact that the methods will produce/consume strings
in 2.x shouldn't cause any more problems than any other cases that
involve 2.x storing binary data in text strings.

Cheers,
Nick.

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