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Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers?

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On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 12:52 AM, MRAB <python@mrabarnett.plus.com> wrote:
> I don't think you should be saying that it stores the string in Latin-1
> or UTF-16 because that might suggest that they are encoded. They aren't.

Except that they are. RAM stores bytes [1], so by definition
everything that's in memory is encoded. You can't store a list in
memory; what you store is a set of bits which represent some metadata
and a bunch of pointers. You can't store a non-integer in memory, so
you use some kind of efficient packed system like IEEE 754. You can't
even store an integer without using some kind of encoding, most likely
by packing it into some number of bytes and laying those bytes out
either smallest first or largest first. So yes, CPython 3.3 stores
strings encoded Latin-1, UCS-2 [2], or UCS-4. The Python string *is* a
sequence of characters, but it's *stored* as a sequence of bytes in
one of those encodings. (And other Pythons may not use the same
encodings. MicroPython uses UTF-8 internally, which gives it *very*
different indexing performance.)

ChrisA

[1] On modern systems it stores larger units, probably 64-bit or
128-bit hunks, but whatever. Same difference.
[2] As Steven says, UTF-16 or UCS-2. I prefer the latter name here; as
it (like Latin-1) is restricted in character set rather than variable
in length. But same thing.

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How to turn a string into a list of integers? cl@isbd.net - 2014-09-03 13:27 +0100
  Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Peter Otten <__peter__@web.de> - 2014-09-03 14:52 +0200
    Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? cl@isbd.net - 2014-09-03 15:48 +0100
      Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Joshua Landau <joshua@landau.ws> - 2014-09-04 22:06 +0100
        Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? cl@isbd.net - 2014-09-05 09:42 +0100
          Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Kurt Mueller <kurt.alfred.mueller@gmail.com> - 2014-09-05 19:56 +0200
            Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-09-06 15:47 +1000
              Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Peter Otten <__peter__@web.de> - 2014-09-06 10:22 +0200
                Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-09-06 21:17 +1000
              Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Kurt Mueller <kurt.alfred.mueller@gmail.com> - 2014-09-06 14:15 +0200
                Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-09-07 04:19 +1000
                Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Kurt Mueller <kurt.alfred.mueller@gmail.com> - 2014-09-06 21:28 +0200
                Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-09-07 11:47 +1000
                Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? MRAB <python@mrabarnett.plus.com> - 2014-09-07 15:52 +0100
                Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-09-08 03:02 +1000
                Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2014-09-07 10:53 -0700
                Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-09-08 04:08 +1000
                Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2014-09-07 11:34 -0700
                Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-09-08 10:14 +1000
                Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2014-09-08 08:44 +0300
                Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-09-08 15:53 +1000
                Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2014-09-08 03:41 -0400
                Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-09-08 01:04 +1000
                Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-09-07 11:40 -0400
                Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-09-08 04:00 +1000
                Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-09-08 10:12 +1000
              Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-09-06 22:23 +1000
          Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Chris “Kwpolska” Warrick <kwpolska@gmail.com> - 2014-09-05 20:25 +0200
          Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Kurt Mueller <kurt.alfred.mueller@gmail.com> - 2014-09-05 21:16 +0200
          Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Kurt Mueller <kurt.alfred.mueller@gmail.com> - 2014-09-05 22:41 +0200
      Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-09-05 10:12 +1000
      Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2014-09-04 20:09 -0600
      Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-09-05 12:15 +1000
        Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-09-06 14:27 +1000
  Re: How to turn a string into a list of integers? obedrios@gmail.com - 2014-09-03 07:30 -0700

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