[Python-Dev] XML codec?

[Adam Olsen]

On Nov 9, 2007 3:59 PM, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
> Martin v. Löwis wrote:
> >> It makes working with XML data a lot easier: you simply don't have to
> >> bother with the encoding of the XML data anymore and can just let the
> >> codec figure out the details. The XML parser can then work directly
> >> on the Unicode data.
> >
> > Having the functionality indeed makes things easier. However, I don't
> > find
> >
> >   s.decode(xml.detect_encoding(s))
> >
> > particularly more difficult than
> >
> >   s.decode("xml-auto-detection")
>
> Not really, but the codec has more control over what happens to
> the stream, ie. it's easier to implement look-ahead in the codec
> than to do the detection and then try to push the bytes back onto
> the stream (which may or may not be possible depending on the
> nature of the stream).

io.BufferedReader() standardizes a .peek() API, making it trivial.  I
don't see why we couldn't require it.

(As an aside, .peek() will fail to do what detect_encodings() needs if
BufferedReader's buffer size is too small.  I do wonder if that
limitation is appropriate.)


-- 
Adam Olsen, aka Rhamphoryncus