PEP 263 comments

[Martin v. Loewis]

Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> writes:

> Just to make sure I understand correctly, under Stephen's propsal would
> 
>     s = "\xff"
> 
> be correct?  I assume
> 
>     s = "ÿ"
> 
> (a literal 0377 character) would be an error, yes?  

Yes, on both accounts.

> That is, when you saw "arbitrary binary data" you are referring to
> non-printable octets in the source file, right?

Correct (except that whether something is printable is in the eye of
the beholder). On the source level, the four letters '\', 'x', 'f',
'f' are not arbitrary binary - they follow a specific syntax.

I actually doubt anybody is putting "arbitrary binary" data into
source code. Instead, most such occurrences are likely "printable", if
viewed in the encoding of the author of that code. Those would be
outlawed, unless that encoding is UTF-8.

Regards,
Martin