[Python-ideas] changing sys.stdout encoding

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Rurpy writes:

 > I took the time to post here because it took an inordinate
 > amount of effort to find a solution to a legitimate need 
 > (your opinion to the contrary not withstanding)

I don't think I said the need was illegitimate, if I did I apologize,
and I certainly don't believe it is (I'm an economist by trade -- de
gustibus non est disputandum).

I just don't think it's necessary for Python to try to address the
problem, because the problem is somebody else's bad design at root.
And I don't think it would be wise to try to do it in a very general
way, because it's very hard to do that at the general level of the
language.

 > I understand there is no support here for providing a non-
 > obscure, programmatic way of changing the encoding of the 
 > standard streams at program startup 

You're wrong.  There is *some* support for that.

It just has to be done safely, and that means that a generic
.set_encoding() method that can be called after I/O has been performed
probably isn't going to happen.

And it might not happen at the core level, since a 3-line function can
do the job, it might make just as much sense to put up a package on
PyPI.