Python 3.2 has some deadly infection
Terry Reedy
tjreedy at udel.edu
Thu Jun 5 14:11:46 EDT 2014
On 6/5/2014 10:45 AM, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
> Mostly I'm saying Python3 will not be able to hide the fact that linux
> data consists of bytes. It shouldn't even try. The linux OS outside the
> Python process talks bytes, not strings.
A text file is a binary file wrapped with a codex to translate to and
from a universal text format on input and output. Much of the time, the
wrapping is a great user convenience. Since the wrapping is optional,
nothing is forced or really hidden.
> A different OS might have different assumptions.
Different OSes *do* have different assumptions. Both MacOSX and current
Windows use (UCS-2 or) UTF-16 for text. It seems that unicode strings
are better than ascii+??? strings as a universal basis for OS
interfacing. For Windows, at least, the interface is much improved in
Python 3.
I understand that some, but not all, Latin alphabet *nix programmers
wish that Python 3 continued to be strongly in their favor. But they are
a small minority of the world's programmers, and Python 3 is aimed at
everyone on all systems.
--
Terry Jan Reedy
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