On 2007-08-16, John Nagle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>>or the mildy amusing "how do I write bytes not characters to a >>>file" questions at least once a week on this forum. > > Actually, that's a reasonable question, and one that Python didn't do > quite right. > > Remember, in the beginning, Python had only ASCII strings, which > were equivalent to arrays of bytes. Then came Unicode strings. Then > came the restriction of ASCII chars to 0..127. Except that you can > still store binary bytes in ASCII strings, subject to some limitations. > > The next logical step is a complete separation of binary data handling > from text string handling, probably using some type in "numarray" for > arrays of bytes.
Python 3000 makes unicode the standard string type, and ushers in a new type name for the old str type called, I think, 'bytes'. So the 3000 devs seem to agree with you to some extent. -- Neil Cerutti Ushers will eat latecomers. --Church Bulletin Blooper -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list