[Python-Dev] Minor change to behaviour of csv module

[Andrew McNamara]

>I'm considering a change to the csv module that could potentially break
>some obscure uses of the module (but CSV files usually quote, rather
>than escape, so the most common uses aren't effected).
>
>Currently, with a non-default escapechar='\\', input like:
>
>    field one,field \
>    two,field three
>
>Returns:
>
>    ["field one", "field \\\ntwo", "field three"]
>
>In the 2.5 series, I propose changing this to return:
>
>    ["field one", "field \ntwo", "field three"]
>
>Is this reasonable? Is the old behaviour desirable in any way (we could
>add a switch to enable to new behaviour, but I feel that would only
>allow the confusion to continue)?

Thinking about this further, I suspect we have to retain the current
behaviour, as broken as it is, as the default: it's conceivable that
someone somewhere is post-processing the result to remove the backslashes,
and if we fix the csv module, we'll break their code.

Note that PEP-305 had nothing to say about escaping, nor does the module
reference manual.

-- 
Andrew McNamara, Senior Developer, Object Craft
http://www.object-craft.com.au/