[Python-Dev] unicode Exception messages in py2.7

[Tres Seaver]

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On 11/14/2013 04:02 PM, Benjamin Peterson wrote:
> 2013/11/14 Chris Barker <chris.barker at noaa.gov>:
>> So a proposal:
>> 
>> Use 'replace" mode for the encoding to the default, and at least
>> the user would see SOMETHING of the message. In a common case, it
>> would be a lot of ascii, and in the worse case it would be a lot of
>> question marks -- still better than a totally blank message.
>> 
>> Another option would be to use the str(repr(the_message)) so the
>> user would get the escaped version. Though I think that would be
>> more ugly.
> 
> Unfortunately both of these things change behavior so cannot be 
> changed in Python 2.7.

Fixing any bug is "changing behavior";  2.7 is not frozen for bugfixes.
The real question is whether third-party code will break when the
now-empty error messages appear with '?' littered through them?

About the only things I can think of which might break would be doctests,
but people *expect* those to break across third-dot releases of Python
(one reason why I hate them).  Exception repr is explicitly *not* part of
any backward-compatibility guarantees in Python.  Or code which
explicitly works around the breakage could fail (urlparse changes between
2.7.3 and 2.7.4, anyone?d(


Tres.
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Tres Seaver          +1 540-429-0999          tseaver at palladion.com
Palladion Software   "Excellence by Design"    http://palladion.com
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