[Python-Dev] Adding the 'path' module (was Re: Some RFE for review)

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Neil Hodgson wrote:
> M.-A. Lemburg:
> 
> 
>>I don't really buy this "trick": what if you happen to have
>>a home directory with Unicode characters in it ?
> 
> 
>    Most people choose account names and thus home directory names that
> are compatible with their preferred locale settings: German users are
> unlikely to choose an account name that uses Japanese characters.

It's naive to assume that all people in Germany using the German
locale have German names ;-) E.g. we have a large Japanese community
living here in Düsseldorf. If that example does not convince you,
just have a look at all the Chinese restaurants in cities around
the world - I'm sure that quite a few of the owners will want to
use their correctly written name as account name. Unicode makes
this possible and while it may not be in wide-spread use nowadays,
things will definitely change over the next few years as more and
more OSes and platforms will introduce native Unicode support.

> Unicode is only necessary for file names that are outside your default
> locale. An administration utility may need to visit multiple user's
> home directories and so is more likely to encounter files with names
> that can not be represented in its default locale.

I'm not sure why you bring up an administration tool: isn't
the discussion about being able to load Python modules from
directories with Unicode path components ?

>    I think it would be better if sys.path could include unicode
> entries but expect the code will rarely be exercised.

I think that sys.path should always use Unicode for non-ASCII
path names - this would make it locale setting independent, which
is what we should strive for in Py3k: locales are much easier to
handle at the application level and only introduce portability
problems if used at the OS or C lib level.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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