[Python-Dev] PEP 263 -- Python Source Code Encoding (original) (raw)

M.-A. Lemburg mal@lemburg.com
Wed, 27 Feb 2002 11:07:15 +0100

Tim Peters wrote:

[M.-A. Lemburg] > Jack had the same question. The simple answer is: we need this > in order to maintain backward compatibility when we move to > phase two of the implementation. > > Here's the longer one: > > ASCII is the standard encoding for Python keywords and identifiers. > There is no standard source code encoding for string literals. But there is: Python uses the 7-bit ASCII character set for program text and string literals. 8-bit characters may be used in string literals and comments but their interpretation is platform dependent; the proper way to insert 8-bit characters in string literals is by using octal or hexadecimal escape sequences. The Ref Man has said "7-bit ASCII" for both "program text and string literals" for a long time. The formal grammar in the Ref Man agrees with this (including the formal grammar for Unicode literals). It's an historical accident that the tokenizer happened to use C isalpha() to "enforce" this for identifiers, and that C isalpha() happened to grow locale-dependence while Guido was too drunk with power to notice .

It's a fact of life that users don't read reference manuals, but simply write programs and feel good if they happen to work :-)

As a result, programs have used string literals in many different encodings for a long time. Changing this situation will take time. The proposal aims at clarifying the situation and to make the transition less painful.

> Unicode literals are interpreted using 'unicode-escape' which > is an enhanced Latin-1 with escape semantics.

I'm sure they do "act like" Latin-1 on your box, and that identifiers also act like Latin-1 was in effect on your box. But the Ref Man explicitly says all that is platform dependent; there's no "backward compatibility" to preserve here beyond 7-bit ASCII unless you want to preserve that Python always rely on what C isalpha() says.

You tell that to the Russians, Japanese or the Europeans writing Python programs -- it just happens that comments and literals are bound to end up using local encodings.

Anyway, with the PEP implemented we'll no longer have to restrict ourselves to 7-bit US-ASCII, so all these problems will go away.

-- Marc-Andre Lemburg CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH

Company & Consulting: http://www.egenix.com/ Python Software: http://www.egenix.com/files/python/