[Python-Dev] Re: adding a bytes sequence type to Python

[Guido van Rossum]

> Ok, so I suppose that we can learn from Jython and IronPython in
> this respect...
> 
> How do they handle binary data and the interfacing between various
> I/O facilities, e.g. files, sockets, pipes, user input, etc.

I'm not sure, but I expect that in most cases they use Unicode strings
in order to be compatibly with Python's standard library.  That's not
the outcome I'd like to see though.  I believe Jython at least also
has a bytes-like type (probably a thin wrapper around Java's byte
array) that's used for interfacing to java classes.

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