[Python-ideas] Adding 'bytes' as alias for 'latin_1' codec.

[Terry Reedy]

On 6/1/2011 12:34 PM, Bill Janssen wrote:

> IMO, the thing that bit us on the fundament with the 2.x str/unicode
> divide, and continues to bite us with the 3.x str/bytes divide is that
> we don't carry the encoding as part of the 2.x 'str' value (or as part
> of the 3.x 'bytes' value).  The key here is to store the encoding
> internally in the string object, so that it's available to do automatic
> coercion when necessary, rather than *requiring* all coercions to be
> done manually by some program code.

Some time ago, I posted here a proposal to do just that -- add an 
encoding field to byte strings (or, I believe, add a new class). It was 
horribly shot down. Something like 'conceptually wrong, some bytes have 
0 or multiple encodings, can just use an attribute or tuple, don't need it'.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy