Proper application of the buffer interface

[Skip Montanaro]

Sorry to be a numbskull, but since there is apparently little or no
documentation for the buffer interface yet, can someone give me a thumbnail
sketch of why we have it and what it's used for?  I can guess that there are
some situations where using string objects as raw buffers could lead to
misinterpretation of their contents, especially since not everything is
US-ASCII anymore.  Beyond that, I'm not sure why there would be a
distinction between buffers and strings.

Thx,

Skip Montanaro	| http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com  | http://www.musi-cal.com/~skip/
847-971-7098