[Python-ideas] Python 3.x and bytes

[Alexander Belopolsky]

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 5:33 PM, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Stefan Behnel wrote:
>
>> Even CPython could optimise b'x'[0] into a constant, if people ever find
>> this to be a bottleneck.
>
> The need to write such circumlocutions would still be a
> nuisance, though.

Not a nuisance enough to warrant a syntax change, IMO.  Note that one
of the proposed alternatives, 0'b' visually is very similar to
b'x'[0].  There are plenty of other options available to users.  My
own favorite is probably,

if bytesdata[i] == 98: # ord('b')
   ..

In some cases, when single-byte values have protocol mnemonics, it may
be more appropriate to give them descriptive names:

quit_code = ord('q')
if bytesdata[i] == quit_code:
   ..

Finally, I find it rare to have single-byte codes at fixed positions
in protocols.  More often such codes are found after splitting the
bytes data on some kind of separator.