[Python-Dev] unicode_string future, str -> basestring, fix or feature

[Guido van Rossum]

On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 5:23 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org>wrote:

> >>>>> Guido van Rossum writes:
>
>  > Given that the claim "Python 2 doesn't support Unicode filenames"
>  > is factually incorrect (in Python 2.7, most filesystem calls in
>  > fact do support Unicode, at least on some platforms),
>
> I don't understand what "support Unicode" means.  Just that
>
>     with open(u"\u4e00", "w") as f: f.write("works!\n")
>
> does what is expected[1] if the user knows what he is doing (ie, has
> set PYTHONIOENCODING to a Unicode UTF or one of the Asian encodings)?
>

That's all I'm asking for, since that's what most functions in 2.7 already
do.


>   > I think individual functions in the os module that are found
>  > lacking should be considered bugs, and if someone goes through
>  > the effort to supply an otherwise acceptable fix, we shouldn't
>  > reject it on the basis that we don't want to consider supporting
>  > Unicode filenames.
>
> As above, "acceptable fix" means take whatever the current value is
> for file system name encoding, and use that to encode and decode
> unicode objects to/from str, or raise a UnicodeError if it doesn't
> work?
>

The same thing that is done for other functions that take filenames.


> I think it's important to define this somewhat carefully, because this
> is an area that has a strong tendency to "mission creep".  Given that
> builtin open "works" by the above definition, I guess it's reasonable
> to accept such patches.
>

Right, the interpretation given to Unicode filenames by builtin open()
should be propagated to other functions (I actually suspect that
os.statvfs(), which apparently doesn't, is in the minority here).  AFAIK
that's also roughly what happens in Python 3.


> Footnotes:
> [1] It writes the line "works!\n" to a file whose name consists of the
> single Chinese character for "one".
>
>
>


-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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