[Python-ideas] Stop displaying elements of bytes objects as printable ASCII characters in CPython 3

[Chris Lasher]

On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 6:50 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org>
wrote:

> Chris Lasher writes:
>
>  > Okay, but a definite -1e6 from me on making my Python interpreter do
> this:
>  >
>  >     >>> my_packed_bytes = struct.pack('ffff', 3.544294848931151e-12,
>  > 1.853266900760489e+25, 1.6215185358725202e-19, 0.9742483496665955)
>  >     >>> my_packed_bytes
>  >     b'Why, Guido? Why?'
>
> If you actually have a struct, why aren't you wrapping
> your_packed_bytes in a class that validates the struct and displays it
> nicely formatted?  Or, alternatively, simply replaces __repr__?
>

The point was to demonstrate that although text must be represented by
bytes, not all bytes represent text. I have the bytes from four 32-bit
floating point numbers, but repr() displays these bytes as ASCII
characters. It looks like I wrote "Why, Guido? Why?" illustrating how
implicit behavior that's "usually helpful" can be rather unhelpful.
Explicitly showing the hexadecimal values is always accurate, because bytes
are always bytes.


> Your judgment doesn't rule, and it definitely doesn't have a weight of
> 1e6.


I meant the "-1e6" as a cheeky response, not as a reflection of the
importance of my opinions or ideas.
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