[Python-Dev] PEP 461: Adding % formatting to bytes and bytearray -- Final, Take 3

[Ethan Furman]

On 03/27/2014 04:24 AM, Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Mar 2014 15:37:11 -0700 Ethan Furman wrote:
>>
>> ``%a`` will call ``ascii()`` on the interpolated value.  This is intended
>> as a debugging aid, rather than something that should be used in production.
>> Non-ASCII values will be encoded to either ``\xnn`` or ``\unnnn``
>> representation.  Use cases include developing a new protocol and writing
>> landmarks into the stream; debugging data going into an existing protocol
>> to see if the problem is the protocol itself or bad data; a fall-back for a
>> serialization format; or even a rudimentary serialization format when
>> defining ``__bytes__`` would not be appropriate [8].
>
> The "use cases" you are enumerating for "%a" are chimeric.

Cool word!  Haven't seen it a long time.  :)

> Did you *actually* do those things in real life, or are you inventing them
> for the PEP?

The examples came from Jim Jewett, but I can easily see myself using them.

--
~Ethan~