Python 3.2 has some deadly infection

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Jun 6, 2014 at 1:37 AM, Robin Becker <robin at reportlab.com> wrote:
> I think I'm in the unix camp as well. I just think that an extra assumption
> on input output isn't always helpful. In python 3 byte strings are second
> class which I think is wrong; apparently pressure from influential users is
> pushing to make byte strings more first class which is a good thing.

I wouldn't say they're second-class; it's more that the bytes type was
considered to be more like a list of ints than like a Unicode string,
and now that there are a few years' worth of real-world usage
information to learn from, it's known that some more string-like
operations will be extremely helpful. So now they're being added,
which I agree is a good thing.

Whether b"a"[0] should be b'a' or ord(b'a') is another sticking point.
The Py2 str does the first, the Py3 bytes does the second. That one's
a bit hard to change, but what I'm not sure of is how significant this
is to new-build Py3 code. Obviously it's a barrier to porting, but is
it important on its own? However, that's still not really "byte
strings are second class".

ChrisA