[Python-Dev] Python-3.0, unicode, and os.environ (original) (raw)

rdmurray at bitdance.com rdmurray at bitdance.com
Sat Dec 6 06:15:44 CET 2008

On Sat, 6 Dec 2008 at 13:06, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

Applications can deal with such weird file names. KDE's file manager (konqueror) and file selection dialog both show the character as a small square, presumably the font's missing character glyph, and KDE apps can open and save the file. Still speaking as a user, I think it is quite reasonable to expect applications to deal with undisplayable filenames: displaying the name and opening the file are orthogonal

Agreed. I would file a bug report if an application couldn't handle a file that validly exists in my file system, no matter how broken the filename might appear to be.

concepts, although I accept that command-line interfaces will have difficulty with file names that can't be typed by the user!

Difficult, but not impossible: tab completion in the shell can allow the user to submit otherwise difficult to type filenames to a program. Which means python should be able to handle such things in argument strings, so that my python utilities can manipulate such files when specified as command line arguments....and a sensible error should be generated by default if the program hasn't been written in such a way that it can handle such input.

It would be wonderful if all Unix variants would switch to all UTF-8 (I have done so on my own machines...I think :). But it is a slow process.

--RDM

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