index() and count() methods of bytes and bytearray should accept byte ints

[max-alleged]

BPO	12170
Nosy	@rhettinger, @terryjreedy, @jcea, @pitrou, @vstinner, @ezio-melotti, @merwok, @florentx, @IIIIllllIIIIllllIIIIllllIIIIllllIIIIll, @akheron
Files	issue12170.patch issue12170_v2.patch

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2011-10-20.21:58:46.441>
created_at = <Date 2011-05-24.19:49:09.812>
labels = ['interpreter-core', 'type-bug']
title = 'index() and count() methods of bytes and bytearray should accept byte ints'
updated_at = <Date 2012-06-26.07:28:04.227>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/max-alleged'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2012-06-26.07:28:04.227>
actor = 'python-dev'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2011-10-20.21:58:46.441>
closer = 'pitrou'
components = ['Interpreter Core']
creation = <Date 2011-05-24.19:49:09.812>
creator = 'max-alleged'
dependencies = []
files = ['22733', '23465']
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 12170
keywords = ['patch', 'needs review']
message_count = 22.0
messages = ['136786', '136787', '136878', '136883', '140903', '141016', '141033', '141216', '141490', '141491', '145797', '145799', '145929', '145931', '146055', '146056', '148232', '148237', '148287', '149722', '149723', '164054']
nosy_count = 12.0
nosy_names = ['rhettinger', 'terry.reedy', 'jcea', 'pitrou', 'vstinner', 'ezio.melotti', 'eric.araujo', 'flox', 'xuanji', 'max-alleged', 'python-dev', 'petri.lehtinen']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'fixed'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'behavior'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue12170'
versions = ['Python 3.3']

[max-alleged]

Bytes objects when indexed provide integers, but do not accept them to many functions, making them inconsistent with other sequences.

Basic example:
>>> test = b'012'
>>> n = test[1]
>>> n
49
>>> n in test
True
>>> test.index(n)
TypeError: expected an object with the buffer interface.

It is certainly unusual for n to be in the sequence, but not to be able to find it. I would expect the result to be 1. This set of commands with list, strings, tuples, but not bytes objects.

I suspect, from issue bpo-10616, that all the following functions would be affected:
"bytes methods: partition, rpartition, find, index, rfind, rindex, count, translate, replace, startswith, endswith"

It would make more sense to me that instead of only supporting buffer interface objects, they also accept a single integer, and treat it as if it were provided a length-1 bytes object.

The use case I came across this problem was something like this:

Given seq1 and seq2, sequences of the same type:
[seq1.index(x) for x in seq2]

This works for strings, lists, tuples, but not bytes.

[max-alleged]

"This set of commands with list, strings, tuples, but not bytes objects."
should read
"This set of commands works with list, strings, tuples, but not bytes objects."

[terryjreedy]

It is certainly unusual for n to be in the sequence, but not to be able to find it.

Agreed. Doc Lib: 4.6. Sequence Types — str, bytes, bytearray, list, tuple, range says '''
s.index(i) index of the first occurence of i in s
s.count(i) total number of occurences of i in s '''
so everything *in* a bytes should be valid for .index and .count.

>>> test = b'0120'
>>> z = b'0'
>>> zo = ord(z)
>>> z in test
True
>>> zo in test
True
>>> test.index(z)
0
>>> test.index(zo)
...
TypeError: expected an object with the buffer interface
>>> test.count(z)
2
>>> test.count(zo)
...
TypeError: expected an object with the buffer interface
# longer subsequences like b'01' also work

So I think the code for 3.2+ bytes.count() and bytes.index() should do the same branching as the code for bytes.__contains__.

The other functions you list, including .rindex are not general sequence functions but are string functions defined as taking subsequences as inputs. So they would never be used in generic code like .count and .index can be.

[max-alleged]

Fair enough.

I think it would make sense for the string methods to also accept single ints where possible as well:

For haystack and needles both strings:
[haystack.find(n) for n in needles]

For both bytes, it's a bit contortionist:
[haystack.find(needles[i:i+1]) for i in range(len(needles))]

One ends up doing a lot of the [i:i+1] bending when using bytes functions.

[akheron]

This affects bytearray as well as bytes.

What comes to supporting integer argument to str methods, I'm -1 on that. str's "contained items" are strings of length 1.

[akheron]

Attached a patch with the following changes:

Allow an integer argument in range(0, 256) for the following bytes and
bytearray methods: count, find, index, rfind, rindex. Initially, only
count and index were targeted, but as index is implemented in a helper
function that is also used to implement find, rfind and rindex, these
functions were affected too.

The bytes methods were changed to use the new buffer protocol instead
of the deprecated PyObject_AsCharBuffer, for consistency with the
bytearray code.

Tests for all the modified functions were expanded to cover the new
functionality. While at it, the tests for count, index and rindex were
also further expanded (to test for slices, for example), as they were
initially quite minimal.

A paragraph describing the additional semantics of the five methods
was added to the documentation.

The error messages of index and rindex were left untouched
("substring not found" and "subsection not found"). In a case where
the first argument is an integer, the error messages could talk about
a byte instead of substring/subsection. This would have been a bit
non-straightforward to implement, so I didn't.

The docstrings were also left unchanged, as I couldn't find a good
wording for them. The problem is not that the first argument may now
be an integer, but as it can now be more than a substring or
subsection, we might have to specify what a substring or subsection
really means. And that explanation would be lengthy (because of the buffer protocol, that's not a concept that a regular Python programmer is, or even needs to be, familiar with)...

And finally, there's one thing that I'm unsure of:

When an integer out of range(0, 256) is passed as the first argument,
should we raise a ValueError or a TypeError? Currently, a ValueError
is raised, but this may be bad for index and rindex, as they raise a
ValueError when the substring or byte is not found. I made the
decision to raise a ValueError decision because __contains__ of both
bytes and bytearray raise a ValueError when passed an integer not in
range(0, 256).

[ezio-melotti]

When an integer out of range(0, 256) is passed as the first argument,
should we raise a ValueError or a TypeError?

ValueError = Inappropriate argument value (of correct type).
TypeError = Inappropriate argument type.

Currently, a ValueError raised, but this may be bad for index and
rindex, as they raise a ValueError when the substring or byte is not found.

Then the users should check if the value is in range(256) before passing it to (r)index.