[Python-Dev] [Python-3000] New proposition for Python3 bytes filename issue

[Guido van Rossum]

On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 8:20 AM, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
> In the end, I think it's better not to be clever and just return
> the filenames that cannot be decoded as bytes objects in os.listdir().

Unfortunately that's going to break most code that is using
os.listdir(), so it's hardly an improved experience.

> Passing those to open() will then open the files as expected, in most
> other cases the application will have to provide explicit conversions
> in whatever way best fits the application.

In most cases the app will try to concatenate a pathname given as a
string and then it will fail.

> Also note that os.listdir() isn't the only source of filesnames. You
> often read them from a file, a database, some socket, etc, so letting
> the application decide what to do is not asking too much, IMHO.

In all those cases, the code that reads them is responsible for
picking an encoding or relying on a default encoding, and the
resulting filenames are always expressed as text, not bytes. I don't
think it's the same at all.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)