[Python-Dev] PEP 263 -- Python Source Code Encoding

[Guido van Rossum]

> I just got a private response about the proposal from Atsuo Ishimoto, 
> Japan. They use two different encoding in day-to-day life (one for
> windows, one for unix) and have their complete tool chain setup
> to auto-convert all files between the two environments.
> 
> Recognizing the magic comment would pose a problem for them,
> since their tools assume conversion to the PC's locale setting.
> 
> He proposed to make the interpreters default encoding the default
> for source files which don't specify an encoding. That is
> ASCII on all standard Python installations and different
> encodings on tweaked installations.
> 
> He also told me that they put raw Shift-JIS and EUC-JP
> into Python literal strings -- just like Europeans do
> with Latin-1.
> 
> Wouldn't his suggestion be a good compromise for phase 2 ?

I'm OK with a way to change the default to something locale-specific,
as long as there's also a way to make the default strict ASCII (for
export).  Maybe python -A could force the default encoding to be ASCII
even if the locale specifies something different.

(I'd still *prefer* it the other way around, where you have to specify
an explicit option to make the default equal to the locale rather than
ASCII, but I can see the other side.  Sigh.)

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