[Python-ideas] Fixing the Python 3 bytes constructor

[Nick Coghlan]

On 30 March 2014 17:03, Gregory P. Smith <greg at krypto.org> wrote:
> Okay I see where you're going with this.  So long as we limit this to APIs
> specifically surrounding bytes and bytearray I guess I'm "fine" with it
> (given the status quo and existing mess of never knowing which behaviors
> will be allowed where).
>
> Other APIs that accept numbers outside of bytes() and bytearray() related
> methods should *never* accept a bytes() of any length as valid numeric
> input.

Yeah, agreed.

I've also reworked the relevant section of the PEP to give the
examples I posted in my reply to you - I think they do a good job of
showing why the current behaviour is problematic, and why "accept
both" is the most plausible backwards compatible remedy available to
us.

> Thanks for exploring all of the APIs, we do have quite a mess that can be
> made better.

Thank Brandon Rhodes, too - he recently pointed me to bytes.replace()
not accepting integers as a specific example of the current behaviour
being confusing for users, and after I started down that rabbithole...
well, this thread and the PEP were the end result :)

Cheers,
Nick.



-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia