plistlib documentation should indicate that it base64-encodes data implicitly
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Description
Documentation (plistlib)
The plistlib documentation (see https://docs.python.org/3/library/plistlib.html) should indicate that it implicitly base64-encodes plist "data" values (which are indicated by the values being Python bytes objects).
See code at: https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/96f8d3619d839266491b722b943de65892bb0e81/Lib/plistlib.py#L369
The plist file specifications require data values to be encoded with base64. However, I was thinking that I have to do that before using the plistlib, and was wondering what happened (since the data was encoded twice then in the resulting plist file)...
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Research direction
Read the plistlib documentation at https://docs.python.org/3/library/plistlib.html and the referenced implementation in Lib/plistlib.py around line 369. Update the documentation to state that Python bytes values are implicitly base64-encoded in plist data, so users do not encode them beforehand.
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Assessment
- Tech stack
- python
- Domain
- documentation
- Issue type
- Documentation
- Difficulty
- 1/5
- Estimated time
- Under an hour
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Clearly specified
- Newbie friendliness
- 45/100