[Python-Dev] Fw: Behavior of buffer()

[Guido van Rossum]

> Raymond did a survey on c.l.py, asking anyone who used buffer objects at
> *all* to speak up.  IIRC, he got no replies.  On Python-Dev, apart from
> musing whether they might conceivably use them, the only person who
> eventually said they actually used them was Marc-Andre.  Fredrik pressed for
> details, but we haven't seen any concrete use cases.  In the absence of the
> latter, it's impossible to guess what would be backward compatible for MAL's
> purposes.
> 
> > ...
> > Maybe we should do something stronger, and deprecate the buffer type
> > altogether.
> 
> I told everyone you forgot the essay you wrote suggesting this the last time
> this rose above everyone's pain threshold.  It's a comfort to know that my
> channeling powers have not diminished with exponentially advancing age
> <wink>:
> 
>      http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2000-October/009974.html

But at least I didn't change my mind. :-)

So let's deprecate buffer().  I also suggest to roll back Raymond's
changes to make slices more consistent -- there's no point in changing
something that's only kept for backwards compatibility reasons.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)