[Python-Dev] Bytes path support

[Oleg Broytman]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 05:30:14PM -0700, Chris Barker - NOAA Federal <chris.barker at noaa.gov> wrote:
> This brings up the other key problem. If file names are (almost)
> arbitrary bytes, how do you write one to/read one from a text file
> with a particular encoding? ( or for that matter display it on a
> terminal)

   There is no such thing as an encoding of text files. So we just
write those bytes to the file or output them to the terminal. I often do
that. My filesystems are full of files with names and content in
at least 3 different encodings - koi8-r, utf-8 and cp1251. So I open a
terminal with koi8 or utf-8 locale and fonts and some file always look
weird. But however weird they are it's possible to work with them.

   The bigger problem is line feeds. A filename with linefeeds can be
put to a text file, but cannot be read back. So one has to transform
such names. Usually s/\\/\\\\/g and s/\n/\\n/g is enough. (-:

> And people still want to say posix isn't broken in this regard?

   Not at all! And broken or not broken it's what I (for many different
reasons) prefer to use for my desktops, servers, notebooks, routers and
smartphones, so if Python would stand on my way I'd rather switch to a
different tools.

Oleg.
-- 
     Oleg Broytman            http://phdru.name/            phd at phdru.name
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.