On 8/5/07, "Martin v. Löwis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This brings me to join others in the desire for > immutable bytes objects: I think such a type is > needed, and it should probably use the same > hash algorithm as str8. > > I don't think it needs to be a separate type, > instead, bytes objects could have a idem-potent > .freeze() method which switches the "immutable" > bit on. There would be no way to switch it off > again.
I'm sorry, but this is unacceptable. It would make all reasoning based upon the type of the object unsound: if type(X) == bytes, is it hashable? Can we append, delete or replace values? What is the type of a slice of it? If it is currently mutable, will it still be mutable after I call some other function on it? Python has traditionally always used a separate type for this purpose: list vs. tuple, set vs. frozenset. If we are have to have a frozen bytes type, it should be a separate type. > If that is not acceptable, please tell me how else > to fix the dbm modules. By fixing the code that uses them? By using str8 (perhaps renamed to frozenbytes and certainly stripped of its locale-dependent APIs)? -- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/) _______________________________________________ Python-3000 mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-3000 Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-3000/archive%40mail-archive.com
