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

Adam Olsen rhamph at gmail.com
Wed Dec 10 19:31:45 CET 2008

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 3:39 AM, Ulrich Eckhardt <eckhardt at satorlaser.com> wrote:

On Tuesday 09 December 2008, Adam Olsen wrote:

The only thing separating this from a bikeshed discussion is that a bikeshed has many equally good solutions, while we have no good solutions. Instead we're trying to find the least-bad one. The unicode/bytes separation is pretty close to that. Adding a warning gets even closer. Adding magic makes it worse. Well, I see two cases: 1. Converting from an uncertain representation to a known one. 2. Converting from a known representation to a known one.

Not quite:

  1. Using a garbage file name locally (within a single process, not talking to any libs)
  2. Using a unicode filename everywhere (libs, saved to config files, displayed to the user, etc.)

Note that if you have a GUI doing the former, all you technically need is a placeholder like "". You might try to extract some ASCII out of it, but that's just a minor bonus.

On linux the bytes/unicode separation is perfect for this. You decide which approach you're using and use it consistently. If you mess up (mixing bytes and unicode) you'll consistently get an error.

We currently don't follow this model on windows, so a garbage file name gets passed around as if it was unicode, but fails when passed to a lib, saved to a config file, is displayed to a user, etc. (Depending on the API, as many won't validate either.)

-- Adam Olsen, aka Rhamphoryncus

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