Why can't you xor bytes objects in python?

Question

I think I understand python bytes objects, but supporting bitwise operations on byte strings seems like such an obvious feature. I don't understand why it is not supported.

>>>'abcdefg'.encode('ascii')
b'abcdefg'

Okay. I went from a string to something like the byte representation of my string in ascii.

So when I try:

>>> a = 'abcdefg'.encode('ascii')
>>> a ^ a
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for ^: 'bytes' and 'bytes'

Why? Why doesn't python support this? Is there something I don't understand about bytes objects that makes this unfeasible or ambiguous?

Answer 1

This feature has been proposed on the python bug tracker. And there is proposed patch (which I wrote after being annoyed by this). But the current feedback is negative, and more is needed if it is to be included.