[Python-Dev] Support byte string API of Windows in Python3?

[Neil Hodgson]

Victor Stinner:

> It's a choice, I didn't want to patch Windows because I know that Windows use
> unicode internally. I consider that developers using Python3 should use
> unicode on Windows, and byte or unicode+surrogates on other OS.

   The Win32 byte string APIs convert their inputs to Unicode and then
run Unicode code. You don't get additional capabilities by calling the
byte string APIs and should avoid them completely.

   Including an easy way to invoke them on Windows will just lead to
failures. People may think that Unix code that uses the byte string
APIs for better platform fidelity can just run this code on Windows
and get equivalent benefits. They won't and instead will see an
inverted form of the problems they are trying to avoid on Unix.

   If there is ever a reason to use a byte string API on Windows (and
I can't think of any) then ctypes can be used to explicitly call the
API desired.

   Neil