[Python-Dev] The -U flag (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Mon, 14 Oct 2002 08:16:30 -0400

> But didn't we at one point conclude that -U was never gonna work?

I'm not aware of a formal decision about that. I readily admit that it wont' work in any foreseeable future, but I haven't given up for P3k :-)

Maybe MAL remembers after seeing this checkin comment to Modules/main.c:

revision 1.63 date: 2002/02/11 18:46:47; author: lemburg; state: Exp; lines: +0 -1 Remove mentioning of -U option in "python -h" output.

This time, my interest was triggered by someone on c.l.p who could not reverse a string, since it was in UTF-8; he was asking why Python is so difficult for Swedish people.

Yeah, he mailed me first -- I don't understand why his default encoding isn'y Latin-1 though.

> And wasn't that why it's no longer documented?

Yes: because it won't work in any foreseeable future. I'll take your statement that "small" changes towards making -U work are acceptable; I'll see how far I get with small changes until I get stuck again.

Sure.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)