On Sat, Jan 23, 2021 at 9:04 PM Inada Naoki
On Sat, Jan 23, 2021 at 10:47 AM Chris Angelico
wrote: Highly dubious. I'd rather focus on just moving to UTF-8 as the default, rather than bringing in a new function - especially with such a confusing name.
What exactly are the blockers on making open(fn) use UTF-8 by default?
Backward compatibility. That's what PEP 597 tries to solve.
1. Add optional warning for `open()` call without specifying `encoding` option. (PEP 597) 2. (Several years later) Make the warning default. 3. (Several years later) Change the default encoding.
When (2) happens, users are forced to write `encoding="utf-8"` to suppress the warning.
But note that the default encoding is "utf-8" already in (most) Linux including WSL, macOS, iOS, and Android. And Windows user can read ASCII text files without specifying `encoding` regardless default encoding is legacy codec or "utf-8". So adding `, encoding="utf-8"` everywhere `open()` is used might be tedious job.
Okay, but this (a) has a good end goal, and (b) is only backward-incompatible with its default - adding the encoding parameter makes your code compatible with all versions of Python.
On the other hand, if we add `open_text()`:
* Replacing open with open_text is easier than adding `, encoding="utf-8"`. * Teachers can teach to use `open_text` to open text files. Students can use "utf-8" by default without knowing about what encoding is.
So `open_text()` can provide better developer experience, without waiting 10 years.
But this has a far worse end goal - two open functions with subtly incompatible defaults, and a big question of "why should I choose this over that". And if you start using open_text, suddenly your code won't work on older Pythons.
Can the proposals be written with that as the ultimate goal (even if it's going to take X versions and multiple deprecation phases), rather than aiming for a messy goal where people aren't sure which function to use?
Ultimate goal is make the "utf-8" default. But I don't know when we can change it. So I focus on what we can do in near future (< 5 years, I hope).
Okay. If the goal is to make UTF-8 the default, may I request that PEP 597 say so, please? With a heading of "deprecation", it's not really clear what its actual goal is. From the sound of things - and it's still possible I'm misreading PEP 597, my apologies if so - this open_text function wouldn't really solve anything much, and the original goal of "change the default encoding to UTF-8" is better served by 597. ChrisA