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Sat Feb 18 12:06:37 CET 2006 · https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-February/061355.html

Martin, v. Löwis wrote:
>> How are users confused?
> 
> Users do
> 
> py> "Martin v. Löwis".encode("utf-8")
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xf6 in position 11:
> ordinal not in range(128)
> 
> because they want to convert the string "to Unicode", and they have
> found a text telling them that .encode("utf-8") is a reasonable
> method.
> 
> What it *should* tell them is
> 
> py> "Martin v. Löwis".encode("utf-8")
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
> AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'encode'

I've already explained why we have .encode() and .decode()
methods on strings and Unicode many times. I've also
explained the misunderstanding that can codecs only do
Unicode-string conversions. And I've explained that
the .encode() and .decode() method *do* check the return
types of the codecs and only allow strings or Unicode
on return (no lists, instances, tuples or anything else).

You seem to ignore this fact.

If we were to follow your idea, we should remove .encode()
and .decode() altogether and refer users to the codecs.encode()
and codecs.decode() function. However, I doubt that users
will like this idea.

>> bytes.encode CAN only produce bytes.
> 
> I don't understand MAL's design, but I believe in that design,
> bytes.encode could produce anything (say, a list). A codec
> can convert anything to anything else.

True. However, note that the .encode()/.decode() methods on
strings and Unicode narrow down the possible return types.
The corresponding .bytes methods should only allow bytes and
Unicode.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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