[Python-Dev] Re: PEP 277: Unicode file name support for Windows NT, was PEP-time ? ...

[M.-A. Lemburg]

"Martin v. Loewis" wrote:
> > [unicodefilenames()]
> > Perhaps we ought to drop that function altogether and let the
> > various file IO functions raise run-time errors instead ?!
> 
> That was my suggestion as well. However, Neil points out that, on
> Windows, passing Unicode is sometimes better: For some files, there is
> no byte string file name to identify the file (if the file name is not
> representable in MBCS). OTOH, on Unix, some files cannot be accessed
> with a Unicode string, if the file name is invalid in the user's
> encoding.

Sounds like the run-time error solution would at least "solve"
the issue in terms of making it depend on the used file name
and underlying OS or file system.

I'd say: let the different file name based APIs try hard enough
and then have them bail out if they can't handle the particular
case.

> It turns out that only OS X really got it right: For each file, there
> is both a byte string name, and a Unicode name.

I suppose this is due to the fact that Mac file systems store
extended attributes (much like what OS/2 does too) along with the
file -- that's a really nice way of being able to extend file
system semantics on a per-file basis; much better than the Windows
Registry or the MIME guess-by-extension mechanisms.

Oh well.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
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