diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | Doc/whatsnew/2.6.rst | 14 |
1 files changed, 14 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Doc/whatsnew/2.6.rst b/Doc/whatsnew/2.6.rst index d28f8f7..44f019c 100644 --- a/Doc/whatsnew/2.6.rst +++ b/Doc/whatsnew/2.6.rst @@ -949,6 +949,20 @@ or using a :class:`bytes` constructor. For future compatibility, Python 2.6 adds :class:`bytes` as a synonym for the :class:`str` type, and it also supports the ``b''`` notation. + +The 2.6 :class:`str` differs from 3.0's :class:`bytes` type in various +ways; most notably, the constructor is completely different. In 3.0, +``bytes([65, 66, 67])`` is 3 elements long, containing the bytes +representing ``ABC``; in 2.6, ``bytes([65, 66, 67])`` returns the +12-byte string representing the :func:`str` of the list. + +The primary use of :class:`bytes` in 2.6 will be to write tests of +object type such as ``isinstance(x, bytes)``. This will help the 2to3 +converter, which can't tell whether 2.x code intends strings to +contain either characters or 8-bit bytes; you can now +use either :class:`bytes` or :class:`str` to represent your intention +exactly, and the resulting code will also be correct in Python 3.0. + There's also a ``__future__`` import that causes all string literals to become Unicode strings. This means that ``\u`` escape sequences can be used to include Unicode characters:: |