In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Mike wrote:
> The example below shows that result of a marshaled data structure is
> nothing but a string
>
>>>> data = {2:'two', 3:'three'}
>>>> import marshal
>>>> bytes = marshal.dumps(data)
>>>> type(bytes)
> <type 'str'>
>>>> bytes
> '{i\x02\x00\x00\x00t\x03\x00\x00\x00twoi\x03\x00\x00\x00t\x05\x00\x00\x00three0'
>
> Now, I need to store this data safely in my database as CLEAR TEXT, not
> BLOB. It seems to me that it should work just fine since it is string
> anyways. So, why does O'reilly's Python Cookbook is insisting in saving
> it as a binary file and BLOB type?
>
> Am I missing out something?
Yes, that a string is *binary* data. But only a subset of strings is safe
to use as `TEXT` in databases. Do you see all those '\x??' escapes?
'\x00' is *one* byte! A byte with the value zero. Something your DB
doesn't allow in a `TEXT` type.
Ciao,
Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch
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