[Python-ideas] Make bytes __repr__ and __str__ representation different?

[Kirill Balunov]

2017-11-21 20:22 GMT+03:00 Chris Barker <chris.barker at noaa.gov> wrote:

> But the way you did your example indicates that:
>

> bytes((42, 43, 44, 45, 46))
>
> would be an even better __repr__, if the goal is to make it clear and easy
> that it is a "container of integers from 0 to 255"
>
> I've been programming since quite some time ago, and hex has NEVER come
> naturally to me :-)
>

Yes, it is better, but it seemed too radical to me:)



2017-11-21 18:16 GMT+03:00 Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:

>  I'd rather give bytes a
> hexdump() method that returns a string:
>
> '2a 2b 2d 2e 2f'
>
> (possibly with optional arguments to specify the formatting).


Since Python 3.5 bytes has a .hex() method, the same as yours .hexdump()
but without spaces. But still it is a string.


2017-11-21 18:38 GMT+03:00 Victor Stinner <victor.stinner at gmail.com>:

>
> While it may shock you, using bytes for "text" makes sense in some
> areas. Please read the Motivation of the PEP 461:
> https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0461/#motivation


It does not, because it is really useful feature. But rather, ascii was
made so that it would fit into a byte, and not vice versa.

Nevertheless, bytes are the strangest object in Python. It looks like a
string (which contains only ascii), but it is not a string,
because if you index, it does not return a byte -> bytes (b'123 '[0])! =
Bytes (b'1'). May be it is closer to tuple, it is also immutable,
but bytes(3) creates a sequence b '\ x00 \ x00 \ x00', but tuple not (and
what the hell is b'\x00\x00\x00'?).
Maybe it has some relationship to integers but int(b'1') == 1 when
bytes([int(49)]) == b'1', i.e with integers it is not a friend either.

It is bytes...

With kind regards, -gdg
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