[Python-Dev] PEP 467: Minor API improvements for bytes & bytearray

[Raymond Hettinger]

On Aug 14, 2014, at 10:50 PM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

> Key points in the proposal:
> 
> * deprecate passing integers to bytes() and bytearray()

I'm opposed to removing this part of the API.  It has proven useful
and the alternative isn't very nice.   Declaring the size of fixed length
arrays is not a new concept and is widely adopted in other languages.
One principal use case for the bytearray is creating and manipulating
binary data.  Initializing to zero is common operation and should remain
part of the core API (consider why we now have list.copy() even though
copying with a slice remains possible and efficient).

I and my clients have taken advantage of this feature and it reads nicely.
The proposed deprecation would break our code and not actually make
anything better.

Another thought is that the core devs should be very reluctant to deprecate
anything we don't have to while the 2 to 3 transition is still in progress.   
Every new deprecation of APIs that existed in Python 2.7 just adds another
obstacle to converting code.  Individually, the differences are trivial.  
Collectively, they present a good reason to never migrate code to Python 3.


Raymond


 

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