PEP 358 and operations on bytes

[Steve Holden]

Ben Finney wrote:
> Steve Holden <steve at holdenweb.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>This would just be bloat
> 
> 
> How would it be bloat? I'm describing a situation where the existing
> methods merely move, being implemented in a common ancestor rather
> than directly in the concrete sequence classes.
> 
> 
>>without any use cases being demonstrated. What is your crying need
>>for these methods?
> 
> 
> I don't think I claimed a crying need for one. Consistency, where not
> foolish, is desirable.
> 
> I don't deny that there is work involved; my suggestion was in the
> context of talking about a common ancestor to 'bytes' and 'str', in
> order to refactor some of the common methods.
> 
> 
>>Your *real* generalisation of the string method would actually
>>require you to write
>>
>>     ["foo", "bar", "spam", "baz", "quux", "wibble"].startswith(["foo"])
> 
> 
> Yes, you're right. I realised that after sending, but didn't correct
> it.
> 
> 
>>Python didn't get to be the language it is today by adding
>>unnecessary hypergeneralisations on a whim. Show me how these
>>methods will improve the daily lives of programmers and I'll
>>champion them to the developers, but I don't think the world will be
>>beating a path to your door.
> 
> 
> Again, I'm discussing a still-nascent suggestion for a common sequence
> ancestor; there are no demands here. If there is to be generalisation,
> I'm merely pointing out that it could be at a higher level and be more
> useful.
> 
> If nothing else, it would lend more coherence to the "str is a
> sequence" confusion if *all* sequences shared some str-derived
> methods.
> 
Unfortunately this is where your argument falls to the ground.  Strings 
really are special, since each element of a string is another string. 
What confusion?

Any proposal that tries to make strings and lists subclasses of a common 
ancestor is doomed to failure: strings are highly optimised for 
performance (in Python and in other languages), and the optimisations 
just wouldn't translate to a "generic sequence". That's just life in the 
real world.

regards
  Steve
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