On 2/14/06, Jim Jewett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 2/14/06, Neil Schemenauer <nas at arctrix.com> wrote:
> > People could spell it bytes(s.encode('latin-1')) in order to make it
> > work in 2.X.
>
> Guido wrote:
> > At the cost of an extra copying step.
>
> That sounds like an implementation issue. If it is important
> enough to matter, then why not just add some smarts to the
> bytes constructor?
Short answer: you can't.
> If the argument is a str, and the constructor owns the only
> reference, then go ahead and use the argument's own
> underlying array; the string itself will be deallocated when
> (or before) the constructor returns, so no one else can use
> it expecting an immutable.
Hard to explain, but the VM usually keeps an extra reference on the
stack so the refcount is never 1. But you can't rely on that so
assuming that it's safe to reuse the storage if it's >1. Also, since
the str's underlying array is allocated inline with the str header,
this require str and bytes to have the same object layout. But since
bytes are mutable, they can't.
Summary: you don't understand the implementation well enough to
suggest these kinds of things.
--
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
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