[Python-Dev] Windows: Remove support of bytes filenames in theos module?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Andrew Barnert via Python-Dev writes:

 > That doesn't mean the problem can't be solved. Apple solved their
 > equivalent problem, albeit by sacrificing backward compatibility in
 > a way Microsoft can't get away with. I haven't seen a MacRoman or
 > Shift-JIS filename since they broke the last holdout

If you lived where I do, you'd still be seeing both, because you
wouldn't be able to escape archival files on CD and removable media
(typically written on Windows boxen).  They still work, sort of ==
same as always, and as far as I know, that's because Apple has *not*
sacrificed backward compatibility: under the hood, Darwin is still a
POSIX kernel which thinks of file names and everything else outside of
memory as bytestreams.

One place they *fail very badly* is Shift JIS filenames in zipfiles,
which nothing provided by Apple can deal with safely, and InfoZip
breaks too (at least in MacPorts).  Yes, I know that is specifically
disallowed.  Feel free to tell 1_0000_0000 Japanese Windows users.
Thank heaven for Python there!  A three-line hack and I'm free!

 > So Python 2 works great on Macs, whether you use bytes or
 > unicode. But that doesn't help us on Windows, where you can't use
 > bytes, or Linux, where you can't use Unicode (without surrogate
 > escape or some other mechanism that Python 2 doesn't have).

You contradict yourself! ;-)