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

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Neil Hodgson wrote:
> 
> M.-A. Lemburg, regarding unicodefilenames():
> 
> > 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.
> 
>    It is much better to choose a technique that will always work rather than
> try to recover from a technique that may fail.

Is it really ? The problem is that under some OSes it is possible
to work with multiple very different file system from within a
single Python program. In those cases, the unicodefilename()
API wouldn't really help all that much.
 
>    unicodefilenames() can be dropped in favour of explicit OS and version
> checks but this is replacing a simple robust check with a more fragile one.

What kind of checks do you have in mind then ? If possible, it should
be possible to pass unicodefilenames() a path to check for Unicode-
capability, since on Unix (and probably Mac OS X as well), the path
decides which file system get's the ioctrl calls.

> unicodefilenames() will allow other environments to declare that client code
> will be more robust by choosing to use Unicode strings as file name
> arguments. This could include UTF-8 based systems such as OS X and BeOS, as
> well as Windows variants like CE.

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