[Python-Dev] unicode imports

[Nick Coghlan]

Kristján V. Jónsson wrote:
> A cursory glance at import.c shows that the import mechanism is fairly 
> complicated, and riddled with "char *path" thingies, and manual string 
> arithmetic.  Do you have any suggestions on a clean way to unicodify the 
> import mechanism?

Can you install a PEP 302 path hook and importer/loader that can handle path 
entries that are Unicode strings? (I think this would end up being the 
parallel implementation you were talking about, though)

If the code that traverses sys.path and sys.path_hooks is itself 
unicode-unaware (I don't remember if it is or isn't), then you might be able 
to trick it by poking a Unicode-savvy importer directly into the 
path_importer_cache for affected Unicode paths.

One issue is that the package and file names still have to be valid Python 
identifiers, which means ASCII. Unicode would be, at best, permitted only in 
the path entries.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
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