[Python-ideas] Ideas for improving the struct module

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, Jan 20, 2017 at 05:16:28AM +1100, Chris Angelico wrote:

> To be fair, the name "struct" implies a C-style structure, which
> _does_ have a fixed size, or at least fixed offsets for its members


Ah, the old "everyone thinks in C terms" fallacy raises its ugly head 
agan :-)

The name doesn't imply any such thing to me, or those who haven't been 
raised on C. It implies the word "structure", which has no implication 
of being fixed-width.

The docs for the struct module describes it as:

    struct — Interpret bytes as packed binary data

which applies equally to the fixed- and variable-width case. The fact 
that we can sensibly talk about "fixed-width" and "variable-width" 
structs without confusion, shows that the concept is bigger than the C 
data-type. (Even if the most common use will probably remain C-style 
fixed-width structs.)

Python is not C, and we shouldn't be limited by what C does. If we 
wanted C, we would use C.


-- 
Steve