PEP 332 – Byte vectors and String/Unicode Unification
- Author:
- Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox >
- Status:
- Rejected
- Type:
- Standards Track
- Created:
- 11-Aug-2004
- Python-Version:
- 2.5
- Post-History:
Table of Contents
Abstract
This PEP outlines the introduction of a rawbytes
sequence object
and the unification of the currentstr
andunicode
objects.
Rejection Notice
This PEP is rejected in this form. The author has expressed lack of time to continue to shepherd it, and discussion on Python -dev has moved to a slightly different proposal which will (eventually) be written up as a new PEP. See the thread starting at https://mail. Python.org/pipermail/ Python -dev/2006-February/060930.html.
Rationale
Python’s current string objects are overloaded. They serve both to hold ASCII and non-ASCII character data and to also hold sequences of raw bytes which have no reasonable interpretation as displayable character sequences. This overlap hasn’t been a big problem in the past, but as Python moves closer to requiring source code to be properly encoded, the use of strings to represent raw byte sequences will be more problematic. In addition, as Python’s Unicode support has improved, it’s easier to consider strings as ASCII-encoded Unicode objects.
Proposed Implementation
The number in parentheses indicates the Python version in which the feature will be introduced.
- Add a
bytes
builtin which is just a synonym forstr
.(2.5) - Add a
b "..."
string literal which is equivalent to raw string literals, with the exception that values which conflict with the source encoding of the containing file not generate warnings. (2.5) - Warn about the use of variables named “bytes”. (2.5 or 2.6)
- Introduce a
bytes
builtin which refers to a sequence distinct from thestr
type. (2.6) - Make
str
a synonym forunicode
.(3.0)
Bytes Object API
TBD.
Issues
- Can this be accomplished before Python 3.0?
- Should
bytes
objects be mutable or immutable? (Guido seems to like them to be mutable.)
Copyright
This document has been placed in the public domain.
Source:https://github / Python /peps/blob/main/peps/pep-0332.rst
Last modified:2023-09-09 17:39:29 GMT