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update readme with "Why Uint8Array" and "Why type: bytes" #14

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styfle merged 1 commit into from
Aug 1, 2025
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update readme with "Why Uint8Array" and "Why type: bytes" #14

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8 changes: 8 additions & 0 deletions README.md
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Expand Up @@ -141,6 +141,10 @@ Mutable can be problematic for several reasons:

See discussion in Issue https://github.com/styfle/proposal-import-bytes/issues/2 and https://github.com/styfle/proposal-import-bytes/issues/5

### Why Uint8Array?

Uint8Array is compatible with [Node.js Buffer](https://nodejs.org/api/buffer.html#buffer) which makes it widely compatible with existing JavaScript code.

### Why not ArrayBuffer?

ArrayBuffers cannot be read from directly; the developer must create a view, such as a Uint8Array, to read data. Providing a Uint8Array avoids that additional effort.
Expand All @@ -158,3 +162,7 @@ Blob is part of the W3C [File API](https://www.w3.org/TR/FileAPI/), not part of
ReadableStream is part of the WHATWG [Streams](https://streams.spec.whatwg.org), not part of JavaScript, so it is not a viable solution to include in a TC39 Proposal. Furthermore, there is [no helper method](https://github.com/whatwg/streams/issues/1019) to turn a stream into a buffer so this won't solve the original motivation of writing isomorphic JavaScript.

See discussion in Issue https://github.com/styfle/proposal-import-bytes/issues/3

### Why `type: bytes`?

The `bytes()` method is familiar to those using [Response.bytes()](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Response/bytes) or newer [Blob.bytes()](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Blob/bytes) which both return Uint8Array.