[Web-SIG] Request for Comments on upcoming WSGI Changes

[Robert Brewer]

P.J. Eby wrote:
> At 03:06 PM 9/20/2009 +0200, Armin Ronacher wrote: 
> >The following things became pretty clear when playing around with
> >various specifications on Python 3:
> >
> >-  Python 3 no longer implicitly converts between unicode and byte
> >    strings.  This covers comparisons, the regular expression engine,
> >    all string functions and many modules in the stdlib.
> >-  The Python 3 stdlib radically moved to unicode for non unicode
> things
> >    as well (the http servers, http clients, url handling etc.)
> >
> >-  A byte only version of WSGI appears unrealistic on Python 3
because
> >    it would require server and middleware implementors to
reimplement
> >    parts of the standard library to work on bytes again.
> 
> IMO, this strongly suggests that it's the stdlib or Python 3 that's
> broken here.  How much of the stdlib are we talking about needing to
> reimplement, aside from cgi.FieldStorage?

urllib.unquote, for one. We had to make a version which accepts bytes
(and outputs bytes). But it's only 8 lines of code.


Robert Brewer
fumanchu at aminus.org