5 ms·

Disagree. The original commenter is correct in saying that the naming scheme is not obvious. Something like to_bytes(encoding) would be a lot more clear.

• the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
  > Disagree. The original commenter is correct in saying that the naming scheme is not obvious. Something like to_bytes(encoding) would be a lot more clear. But then function would do something completely different. "\x01\x02".encode('zlib') for instance is a bytes to bytes operation. The problem is that "foo".encode('utf-8') does not give you an exception. If the coercion would not be enabled you would get an error: >>> reload(sys).setdefaultencoding('undefined') >>> 'foo'.encode('utf-8') Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/.../encodings/undefined.py", line 22, in decode raise UnicodeError("undefined encoding") UnicodeError: undefined encoding That's not any worse than what Python 3 does: >>> b'foo'.encode('utf-8') Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> AttributeError: 'bytes' object has no attribute 'encode'
  • kenko 11y ago
    > "\x01\x02".encode('zlib') for instance is a bytes to bytes operation. I think the inclusion of things like zlib (or rot13 or whatever) was a conceptual error that just fosters confusion.
    • the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
      > I think the inclusion of things like zlib (or rot13 or whatever) was a conceptual error that just fosters confusion. We should not optimize languages for idiots. There is nothing confusing about such an operation for anyone who can use their brain. Python 3 still contains those operations but instead of x.encode(y) you now do encode(x, y).
      • bpicolo 11y ago
        The principle of least astonishment and optimizing for idiocy are not the same thing.
        • the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
          How is an attribute error clearer than an exception that says something like: operation does not make sense of this type?
  • bronson 11y ago
    "\x01\x02".encode('zlib') is a really odd API. Just making sure: this is a real thing, and you're in favor of it?
    • the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
      > "\x01\x02".encode('zlib') is a really odd API. Just making sure: this is a real thing, and you're in favor of it? Of course this is a real thing and it's very frequently used. Yes I am in favour of it as the codec system in Python is precisely the place where things like this should live.
    • tveita 11y ago
      It is in Python 2, but not in Python 3, where str.encode() and bytes.decode() have been restricted to only convert between strings and bytes. >>> "foo".encode('zlib') LookupError: 'zlib' is not a text encoding; use codecs.encode() to handle arbitrary codecs