[Python-Dev] PEP 383: Non-decodable Bytes in System C haracter Interfaces

[Michael Foord]

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> Antoine Pitrou writes:
>
>  > > or (better for 2.x, where bytes are strings as far as most
>  > > programmers are concerned) as a new data type,
>  > 
>  > I'm -1 on any new string-like type (for file paths or whatever
>  > else) with custom encoding/decoding semantics. It's the best way to
>  > ruin the clean str/bytes separation that 3.x introduced.
>
> Excuse me, but I can't see a scheme that encodes bytes as Unicodes but
> only sometimes as a "clean separation".  It's a dirty hack that makes
> life a lot easier for Windows programmers and a little easier for many
> Unix programmers.  Practicality beats purity, true, but at the cost of
> the purity.
>
>   

The problem you don't address, which is still the reality for most 
programmers (especially Mac OS X where filesystem encoding is UTF 8), is 
that programmers *are* going to treat filenames as strings.

The proposed PEP allows that to work for them - whatever platform their 
program runs on.

Michael

>  > Besides, the goal is also to makes things easier for the
>  > programmer. Otherwise, we'll have the same situation as in 2.x
>  > where many English-centric programmers produced code that was
>  > incapable of dealing with non-ASCII input, because they didn't care
>  > about the distinction between str and unicode.
>
> So what you'll get here, AFAICS, is a new situation where many
> Windows-centric programmers will produce code that's incapable of
> dealing with non-Unicode input because they don't have to care about
> the distinction between Unicode and bytes.
>
> That's an improvement, but we can do still better and not at huge
> expense to programmers.
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