On Wed, Sep 8, 2021 at 10:42 PM Victor Stinner <vstin...@python.org> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Sep 8, 2021 at 7:46 AM Steven D'Aprano <st...@pearwood.info> wrote:
> > >>> bytes.from_int(121404708502361365413651784, 'little')
> > # should return b'Hello world'
>
> Really? I don't know anyone serializing strings as a "bigint" number.
> Did you already see such code pattern in the wild? Usually, bytes are
> serialized as... bytes, no? Sometimes, bytes are serialized as base64
> or hexadecimal to go through into an ASCII ("7-bit") bytestream. But I
> don' recall any file format serializing bytes as a single large
> decimal number.
>
I've seen it, in various places. There are certain protocols in which
the distinction between a number and a byte sequence is immaterial
(for instance, the FOURCC identifier in an IFF family file such as a
.wav - the signature 'WAVE' is identically considered to be the number
0x57415645). Being able to convert between the numeric and character
forms of the same identifier is convenient.
ChrisA
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