[Python-Dev] Unicode Imports

Steve Holden steve at holdenweb.com
Fri Sep 8 12:28:27 CEST 2006


Anthony Baxter wrote:
> On Friday 08 September 2006 19:19, Steve Holden wrote:
> 
>>But it *is* a desirable, albeit new, feature, so I'm surprised that you
>>don't appear to perceive it as such for a downstream release.
> 
> 
> Point releases (2.x.1 and suchlike) are absolutely not for new features. 
> They're for bugfixes, only. It's possible that this could be considered a 
> bugfix, but as I said right now I'm dubious.
> 
OK, in that case I'm going to argue that the current behaviour is buggy.

I suppose your point is that, assuming the patch is correct (and it 
seems the authors are relying on it for production purposes in tens of 
thousands of installations), it doesn't change the behaviour of the 
interpreter in existing cases, and therefore it is providing a new feature.

I don't regard this as the provision of a new feature but as the removal 
of an unnecessary restriction (which I would prefer to call a bug). If 
it was *documented* somewhere that Unicode paths aren't legal I would 
find your arguments more convincing. As things stand new Python users 
would, IMHO, be within their rights to assume that arbitrary directories 
could be added to the path without breakage.

Ultimately, your call, I guess. Would it help if I added "inability to 
import from Unicode directories" as a bug? Or would you prefer to change 
the documentation to state that some directories can't be used as path 
elements <0.3 wink>?

regards
  Steve
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