[Python-Dev] Unicode and the Windows file system.

[Guido van Rossum]

> > Also, what would os.listdir() return ? Unicode strings or 8-bit
> > strings ?
> 
> This would not change.
> 
> This is what my testing shows:
> 
> * I can switch to a German locale, and create a file using the keystrokes
> "`atest`o".  The "`" is the dead-char so I get an umlaut over the first and
> last characters.

(Actually, grave accents, but I'm sure that to Aussie eyes, as to
Americans, they's all Greek. :-)

> * os.listdir() returns '\xe0test\xf2' for this file.

I don't understand.  This is a Latin-1 string.  Can you explain again
how the MBCS encoding encodes characters outside the Latin-1 range?

> * That same string can be passed to "open" etc to open the file.
> 
> * The only way to get that string to a Unicode object is to use the
> encodings "Latin1" or "mbcs".  Of them, "mbcs" would have to be safer, as at
> least it has a hope of handling non-latin characters :)
> 
> So - assume I am passed a Unicode object that represents this filename.  At
> the moment we simply throw that exception if we pass that Unicode object to
> open().  I am proposing that "mbcs" be used in this case instead of the
> default "ascii"
> 
> If nothing else, my idea could be considered a "short-term" solution.  If
> ever it is found to be a problem, we can simply move to the unicode APIs,
> and nothing would break - just possibly more things _would_ work :)

I have one more question.  The plan looks decent, but I don't know the
scope.  Which calls do you plan to fix?

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