[Python-Dev] Python 3.x and bytes

[Eric Smith]

On 05/18/2011 12:16 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> Robert Collins writes:
> 
>  > Its probably too late to change, but please don't try to argue that
>  > its correct: the continued confusion of folk running into this is
>  > evidence that confusion *is happening*. Treat that as evidence and
>  > think about how to fix it going forward.
> 
> Sorry, Rob, but you're just wrong here, and Nick is right.  It's
> possible to improve Python 3, but not to "fix" it in this respect.
> The Python 3 solution is correct, the Python 2 approach is not.
> There's no way to avoid discontinuity and confusion here.

I don't think there's any connection between the way 2.x confused text
strings and binary data (which certainly needed addressing) with the way
that 3.x returns a different type for byte_str[i] than it does for
byte_str[i:i+1]. I think it's the latter that's confusing to people.
There's no particular requirement for different types that's needed to
fix the byte/str problem.

And of course it's too late to make any change to this.

Eric.