[Python-Dev] Unicode strings as filenames (original) (raw)

Martin v. Loewis martin@v.loewis.de
Sun, 6 Jan 2002 23:47:45 +0100

Well, I only know about the Mac and (to a lesser extent) about Windows, but there's lots of methods that are not in {posix,mac,nt}module.c there that want filenames. And I think mmap also uses filenames, no? All in all I'm in favor of a single place where file name encoding magic is handled.

I think Marc not only things about encoding, he also wants that the single place actually performs the system calls. So if you want to support mmap, or an additional system call that expects or returns a file name, you cannot put it into your module; instead, you must put it in fileapi.c first, and then call the function in fileapi.c from your module.

It may be necessary to call different routines depending on whether you have a byte or a character string; this is not something a getargs converter can do. It also may be that, depending on which system routine you call, the system will return either wide or narrow strings to you. Every time you find another use of file names, Marc suggests you put that into fileapi.c.

Regards, Martin