A few questiosn about encoding

[Nick the Gr33k]

On 14/6/2013 10:36 πμ, Antoon Pardon wrote:
> Op 13-06-13 10:08, Νικόλαος Κούρας schreef:
>> On 13/6/2013 10:58 πμ, Chris Angelico wrote:
>>> On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 5:42 PM, �������� ������
>>> <support at superhost.gr> wrote:
>>>> On 13/6/2013 10:11 ��, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>>>>> No! That creates a string from 16474 in base two:
>>>>> '0b100000001011010'
>>>>
>>>> I disagree here.
>>>> 16474 is a number in base 10. Doing bin(16474) we get the binary
>>>> representation of number 16474 and not a string.
>>>> Why you say we receive a string while python presents a binary number?
>>>
>>> You can disagree all you like. Steven cited a simple point of fact,
>>> one which can be verified in any Python interpreter. Nikos, you are
>>> flat wrong here; bin(16474) creates a string.
>>
>> Indeed python embraced it in single quoting '0b100000001011010' and
>> not as 0b100000001011010 which in fact makes it a string.
>>
>> But since bin(16474) seems to create a string rather than an expected
>> number(at leat into my mind) then how do we get the binary
>> representation of the number 16474 as a number?
>
> You don't. You should remember that python (or any programming language)
> doesn't print numbers. It always prints string representations of
> numbers. It is just so that we are so used to the decimal representation
> that we think of that representation as being the number.
>
> Normally that is not a problem but it can cause confusion when you are
> working with mulitple representations.
Hold on!
Youa re basically saying here that:


 >>> 16474
16474

is nto a number as we think but instead is string representation of a 
number?

I dont think so, if it were a string representation of a number that 
would print the following:

 >>> 16474
'16474'

Python prints numbers:

 >>> 16474
16474
 >>> 0b100000001011010
16474
 >>> 0x405a
16474

it prints them all to decimal format though.
but when we need a decimal integer to be turned into bin() or hex() we 
can bin(number) hex(number) and just remove the pair of single quoting.

-- 
What is now proved was at first only imagined!