[Python-Dev] Python-3.0, unicode, and os.environ

[Adam Olsen]

On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 10:22 PM, Adam Olsen <rhamph at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 6:55 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:
>> Unfortunately, even programmers experienced in I18N like Martin, and
>> those with intuition-that-has-the-force-of-law<wink> like Guido,
>> express deliberate disbelief on this point.  They say that filesystem
>> names and environment variable values are text, which is true from the
>> semantic viewpoint but can't be fully supported by any implementation.
>
> With all the focus on backup tools and file managers I think we've
> lost perspective.  They're an important use case, but hardly the
> dominant one.
>
> Please, as a user, if your app is creating new files, do NOT use
> bytes!  You have no excuse for creating garbage, and garbage doesn't
> help the user any.  Getting the encoding right, use the unicode APIs,
> and don't pass the buck on to everything else.
>
> The fact that the unicode is easier is a bonus for doing the right thing.

As a data point, firefox (when pointed at my home dir) DOES skip over
garbage files.


-- 
Adam Olsen, aka Rhamphoryncus