[Python-Dev] marshal (was:Buffer interface in abstract.c? )

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Greg Stein wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 10 Aug 1999, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> >...
> > > or maybe the buffer design needs an overhaul?
> >
> > I think most places that should use the charbuffer interface actually
> > use the readbuffer interface.  This is what should be fixed.
> 
> I believe that I properly changed all of these within the core
> distribution. Per your requested design, third-party extensions must
> switch from "s#" to "t#" to move to the charbuffer interface, as needed.

Shouldn't this be the other way around ? After all, extensions
using "s#" do expect character data and not arbitrary binary
encodings of information. IMHO, the latter should be special
cased, not the prior. E.g. it doesn't make sense to use the
re module to scan over 2-byte Unicode with single character
based search patterns.

Aside: Is the buffer interface reachable in any way from within
Python ? Why isn't the interface exposed via __XXX__ methods
on normal Python instances (could be implemented by returning a
buffer object) ?

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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