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| PEP: 332 | |
| Title: Byte vectors and String/Unicode Unification | |
| Version: $Revision$ | |
| Last-Modified: $Date$ | |
| Author: Skip Montanaro <skip@pobox.com> | |
| Status: Rejected | |
| Type: Standards Track | |
| Content-Type: text/x-rst | |
| Created: 11-Aug-2004 | |
| Python-Version: 2.5 | |
| Post-History: | |
| Abstract | |
| ======== | |
| This PEP outlines the introduction of a raw ``bytes`` sequence object | |
| and the unification of the current ``str`` and ``unicode`` 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 for ``str``. (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 the ``str`` type. (2.6) | |
| - Make ``str`` a synonym for ``unicode``. (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. | |
| .. | |
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