PEP263 (Specifying encoding) and bytecode strings

[Michael Hudson]

bokr at oz.net (Bengt Richter) writes:

> On Tue, 6 May 2003 16:45:44 GMT, Michael Hudson <mwh at python.net> wrote:
> 
> >I'm deeply unconvinced that inserting binary data into string literals
> >is a common enough need to add language support.  Disk space is cheap,
> "Build it and they will come" ;-) It's not a matter of whether it
> _is_ common enough, it's a matter of whether it would be.

Eh?  OK, it's also lousy style.  It seems to me that the fact that
people are tempted to embed chunks of binary data into string literals
is evidence that distutils' and other bits of infrastructure's support
for application data files is lacking, and this is where any energy
should be concentrated to fix the problem.

> >people!  And these files should compress well, too.
> Which files should compress well? Some do, some don't, ISTM.

Files that contain lots of \xAB escapes.

Cheers,
M.

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