[Feature Request] Introduce alias Byte = UInt8

[soraros]

Review Mojo's priorities

• I have read the roadmap and priorities and I believe this request falls within the priorities.

What is your request?

As title.

What is your motivation for this change?

It helps document the intent, especially in low-level code (e.g., memcpy), where we treat the underlying type as just a pack of bits rather than a numerical type, similar to the distinction between i1 and bool.

We could introduce a nominal type Byte which implicitly converts to UInt8, but that feels more complex than necessary.

Any other details?

N/A

[martinvuyk]

I think it's also important to note that in Python byte is it's own object type with it's own type of representation (prints with b'{value_here}') and many other byte related things.

Also, Span[Uint8] could be aliased to ByteArray and List[UInt8] to Bytes since their APIs are very similar to byte operations

(btw typo in the title)

[JoeLoser]

Have you seen #2096 (comment) and our feedback there? I'd be open to someone adding a lightweight alias in the meantime to improve readability/express intent better at call sites.

[soraros]

Have you seen #2096 (comment) and our feedback there?

Yea, I think Bytes needs way more justification and design.

I'd be open to someone adding a lightweight alias in the meantime to improve readability/express intent better at call sites.

Let's move forward with simply alias Byte = UInt8 then. I think it's a good first issue.

[JoeLoser]

Sounds good, just added "good first issue". Whoever takes this, feel free to add the alias and we can incrementally apply it where we're working with "Bytes".