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

James Y Knight foom at fuhm.net
Tue Dec 9 18:01:10 CET 2008

On Dec 9, 2008, at 6:04 AM, Anders J. Munch wrote:

The typical application will just obliviously use os.listdir(dir) and get the default elide-and-warn behaviour for un-decodable names. That rare special application

I guess this is a new definition of rare special application: "an
application which deals with user-specified files".

This is the problem I see in having two parallel APIs: people keep
saying "most applications can just go ahead and use the [broken]
unicode string API". If there was a unicode API and a bytes API, but
everyone was clear that "always use the bytes API" is the right thing
to do, that'd be okay... But, since even python-dev members are saying
that only a rare special app needs to care about working with users'
existing files, I'm rather worried this API design will cause most
programs written in python to be broken. Which seems a shame.

that needs more control can use os.listdirb and handle decoding itself.

James

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