[Python-Dev] PEP 461: Adding % formatting to bytes and bytearray -- Final, Take 2

[Ethan Furman]

On 02/23/2014 02:54 PM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
>
> It's a harm containment tactic, based on the assumption people *will*
> want to include the output of ascii() in binary protocols containing
>  ASCII segments, regardless of whether or not we consider their reasons
> for doing so to be particularly good.

One possible problem with %a -- it becomes the bytes equivalent of %s in Python 2 strings, with the minor exception of 
how unicode strings are handled (quote marks are added).  In other words, instead of %d, one could use %a.

On the other hand, %a is so much more user-friendly than b'%s' % ('%d' % 123).encode('ascii', errors='backslashreplace').

--
~Ethan~