[Python-ideas] A possible transition plan to bytes-based iteration and indexing for binary data

[Steven D'Aprano]

A further thought comes to mind...

On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 10:33:14PM +1000, Nick Coghlan wrote:

[...]
> The general principle involved would be to return an integer *subtype*

> >>> bytes(b'hello'[0])
> b'h'


Hmmm. This is, I think, worrying. Now you have two sorts of ints:

a = b'hello'[0]
b = 104
assert a == b  # succeeds
assert bytes(a) == bytes(b)  # fails

I can see problems where one of these _ByteInts gets used where you're 
expecting a regular int, or visa versa, and you're left with a silent 
failure and perplexing, hard to diagnose behaviour.




-- 
Steven