[ python-Bugs-835353 ] logging.StreamHandler encodes log message in UTF-8

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Bugs item #835353, was opened at 2003-11-03 22:45
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by vsajip
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Category: Python Library
Group: Python 2.3
>Status: Closed
>Resolution: Invalid
Priority: 5
Submitted By: Vaclav Dvorak (vdvo)
Assigned to: Vinay Sajip (vsajip)
Summary: logging.StreamHandler encodes log message in UTF-8

Initial Comment:
For some reason that I do not see,
logging.StreamHandler in Python 2.3 insists on writing
plain non-Unicode strings to the stream, and the
encoding is hard-coded as UTF-8:

            if not hasattr(types, "UnicodeType"): #if
no unicode support...
                self.stream.write("%s\n" % msg)
            else:
                try:
                    self.stream.write("%s\n" % msg)
                except UnicodeError:
                    self.stream.write("%s\n" %
msg.encode("UTF-8"))

This behaviour is neither documented nor reasonable.
Files can be perfectly able to write Unicode strings
(e.g., through the use of codecs.EncodedFile or with a
default encoding of sys.stdout), and even if they are
not, UTF-8 is hardly the only choice for an encoding. I
propose to simply replace the above code with:

self.stream.write(msg)
self.stream.write("\n")


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>Comment By: Vinay Sajip (vsajip)
Date: 2004-03-02 13:32

Message:
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If you want to use some other encoding, why not use a 
stream created using codecs.open(), and if necessary use a 
Formatter which is Unicode-aware to convert from msg + args 
to the formatted message? Then the exception handler should 
never be invoked.

Or, do you mean, for the exception handler? I think UTF-8 is 
OK as the default, since it is the most commonly used. I may 
consider making this configurable for a future release, if there 
is enough demand; for now you can patch it yourself.

I'll close this bug report now, I assume that's OK with you?

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Comment By: Vaclav Dvorak (vdvo)
Date: 2004-03-02 09:22

Message:
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Hmmm... I can't remember what the exact problem was, but now
that I look at it again, I see that it must have been my
error. What a poor bug report this is. :-( Sorry.

Still, I'd like the encoding to be configurable: UTF-8 can
stay as the default, but it would be nice to have an option
to use, say, "iso-8859-2" or "windows-1250".

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Comment By: Vinay Sajip (vsajip)
Date: 2004-03-01 12:10

Message:
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Notice that UTF-8 is only used if a UnicodeError is detected. 
By default, "%s\n" % msg is written to the stream using the 
stream's write(). If the stream can handle this without raising 
a UnicodeError, then UTF-8 will not be used. Is there a 
specific use case/test script which demonstrates a problem?

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Comment By: Martin v. Löwis (loewis)
Date: 2003-11-05 20:30

Message:
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That would be an incompatible change, of course, as you then
may get encoding errors where you currently get none.

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