[Python-Dev] XML codec?

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> First, XML-RPC is not the only mechanism using XML over a network
> connection. Second, you don't want to do this if you're dealing
> with several 100 MB of data just because you want to figure
> out the encoding.

That's my original claim/question: what SPECIFIC application do
you have in mind that transfers XML over a network and where you
would want to have such a stream codec?

If I have 100MB of XML in a file, using the detection API, I do

  f = open(filename)
  s = f.read(100)
  while True:
    coding = xml.utils.detect_encoding(s)
    if coding is not undetermined:
       break
    s += f.read(100)
  f.close()

Having the loop here is paranoia: in my application, I might be
able to know that 100 bytes are sufficient to determine the encoding
always.

>> Again, I don't see the use case. For XML-RPC, it's very feasible
>> and standard procedure to have the entire document in memory
>> (in a processed form).
> 
> You may not see the use case, but that doesn't really mean
> anything if the use cases exist in real life applications,
> right ?!

Right. However, I' will remain opposed to adding this to the
standard library until I see why one would absolutely need to
have that. Not every piece of code that is useful in some
application should be added to the standard library.

Regards,
Martin