[Python-Dev] [comp.lang.python] sys.setdefaultencoding (2.0b1)

[Jeremy Hylton]

I was just reading comp.lang.python and saw an interesting question
that I couldn't answer.  Is anyone here game?

Jeremy
------- Start of forwarded message -------
From: Donn Cave <donn@u.washington.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
Subject: sys.setdefaultencoding (2.0b1)
Date: 12 Sep 2000 22:11:31 GMT
Organization: University of Washington
Message-ID: <8pm9mj$3ie2$1@nntp6.u.washington.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

I see codecs.c has gone to some trouble to defer character encoding
setup until it's actually required for something, but it's required
rather early in the process anyway when site.py calls
sys.setdefaultencoding("ascii")

If I strike that line from site.py, startup time goes down by about
a third.

Is that too simple a fix?  Does setdefaultencoding("ascii") do something
important?

	Donn Cave, donn@u.washington.edu
------- End of forwarded message -------