[Python-3000] locale-aware strings ?

[Guido van Rossum]

On 9/5/06, Paul Prescod <paul at prescod.net> wrote:
> Beyond all of that: It just seems wrong to me that I could send someone a
> bunch of files and a Python program and their results processing them would
> be different from mine, despite the fact that we run the same version of
> Python on the same operating system.

And it seems just as wrong if Python doesn't do what the user expects.
If I were a beginning Python user, I'd hate it if I had prepared a
simple data file in vi or notepad and my Python program wouldn't read
it right because Python's idea of encoding differs from my editor's.

Sorry Paul, I appreciate your standards-driven perspective, but in
this area I'd rather build in more flexibility than strictly needed,
than too little. If it turns out that on a particular platform all
files are in UTF-8, making Python *on that platform* always choose
UTF-8 is simple enough. OTOH, if on a particular platform UTF-8 is
*not* the norm, Python should not insist on using it anyway. We can
remove this feature once everybody uses UTF-8. I don't believe we're
there yet, and "it just seems wrong" doesn't count as proof. :-)

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)