[Python-Dev] Generalised String Coercion

[Bob Ippolito]

On Aug 7, 2005, at 7:37 PM, Martin v. Löwis wrote:

> Guido van Rossum wrote:
>
>>> If stdin, stdout and stderr go to a terminal, there already is a
>>> default encoding (actually, there always is a default encoding on
>>> these, as it falls back to the system encoding if its not a  
>>> terminal,
>>> or if the terminal's encoding is not supported or cannot be  
>>> determined).
>>>
>>
>>
>> So there is. Wow! I never kew this. How does it work? Can we use this
>> for writing to files to?
>>
>
> On Unix, it uses nl_langinfo(CHARSET), which in turn looks at the
> environment variables.
>
> On Windows, it uses GetConsoleCP()/GetConsoleOutputCP().
>
> On Mac, I'm still searching for a way to determine the encoding of
> Terminal.app.

It's UTF-8 by default, I highly doubt many people bother to change it.

-bob