[Python-Dev] PEP 461 updates

[Nick Coghlan]

On 17 Jan 2014 09:36, "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
>
> On 1/16/2014 4:59 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>
>> I'm getting tired of "did you understand what I said".
>
>
> I was asking whether I needed to repeat myself, but forget that.
> I was also saying that while I understand 'ascii-compatible encoding', I
do not understand the notion of 'ascii-compatible data' or statements based
on it.

There are plenty of data formats (like SMTP and HTTP) that are constrained
to be ASCII compatible, either globally, or locally in the parts being
manipulated by an application (such as a file header). ASCII incompatible
segments may be present, but in ways that allow the data processing to
handle them correctly. The ASCII assuming methods on bytes objects are
there to help in dealing with that kind of data.

If the binary data is just one large block in a single text encoding, it's
generally easier to just decode it to text, but multipart formats generally
don't allow that.

>
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