[Python-ideas] os.path.isbinary

[random832 at fastmail.us]

On Mon, Aug 12, 2013, at 10:32, Mathias Panzenböck wrote:
> On 08/12/2013 03:52 PM, Masklinn wrote:
> > On 2013-08-12, at 15:42 , Philipp A. wrote:
> >> well, the only remotely valid thing to do is to test if the input data is
> >> decodable with any of the encodings python knows.
> >
> > Most iso-8859 parts can decode any byte (and thus any byte sequence).
> >
> 
> Are you sure about the null byte? '\0'
> But yes, just looking if there is a '\0' in the file isn't a good
> heuristic either.

It depends on precisely what is meant by "iso-8859 parts" - and the same
with any other character in 0-32 or 127-159 (there is nothing special
about the null byte in this regard). But it's typical to think of
"iso-8859" encodings as being more like IANA ISO-8859-1, which combines
ISO/IEC 8859-1 with the control character definitions from ISO 6429.