[issue8514] Create fs_encode() and fs_decode() functions in os.path
STINNER Victor
report at bugs.python.org
Mon Apr 26 13:44:56 CEST 2010
STINNER Victor <victor.stinner at haypocalc.com> added the comment:
> In real life applications, you do run into these problems quite
> often
Yes, I'm agree 100% with you :-)
> > Python3 prefers unicode, eg. print expects an unicode string, not a byte
> > string. I mean it's more pratical to use unicode everywhere in Python,
> > and so fsencode()/fsdecode() can be really useful on POSIX systems.
>
> Sure, but forcing UnicodeDecodeErrors upon Python3 programmers is
> not a good idea. Please keep that in mind.
I proposed to reject bytes on Windows because Martin (who knows Windows better
than me) decided to *not* support byte string on Windows. Windows native API
uses unicode, and conversion from bytes and unicode on Windows using "mbcs" is
not reliable (it depends on the locale, and it may loose some informations).
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2010-April/099556.html
Reject byte string on Windows is just a suggestion. To support byte strings on
Windows, each Python function written in C should be fixed to use the ANSI
version instead of the Wide version (eg. CreateProcessA instead of
CreateProcessW) if it gets byte arguments. The code would become twice bigger,
and it introduces new issues: which function should be choosen if there are
two arguments, one is a byte string, and the other an unicode string?
_subprocess.CreateProcess has 9 arguments...
Since unicode is a superset of MBCS and MBCS has subtle bugs, it's preferable
to use (force) unicode.
--
But on POSIX, it's the opposite: I'm doing my best to support byte string
everywhere (filenames, environment variables, etc.). See the dependency list
of my "meta" issue #8242.
The first goal of fsencode() is to accept byte strings on POSIX systems.
Maybe, I didn't explained it correctly.
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