[Python-Dev] Python 3.x and bytes

[Robert Collins]

On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 4:16 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org> 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.

The top level description: 'bytes is a different type to text[unicode]
and casting between them must be explicit' is completely correct in
Python 3: I didn't (and have never AFAIK) quibbled about that.

Thats separate to the implementation issues I have mentioned in this
thread and previous.

Arguing that implicit casting is a good idea isn't what I was doing,
nor what Nick was rebutting, AFAICT.

-Rob