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

Adam Olsen rhamph at gmail.com
Fri Dec 12 06:22:37 CET 2008

On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 6:55 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:

Unfortunately, even programmers experienced in I18N like Martin, and those with intuition-that-has-the-force-of-law like Guido, express deliberate disbelief on this point. They say that filesystem names and environment variable values are text, which is true from the semantic viewpoint but can't be fully supported by any implementation.

With all the focus on backup tools and file managers I think we've lost perspective. They're an important use case, but hardly the dominant one.

Please, as a user, if your app is creating new files, do NOT use bytes! You have no excuse for creating garbage, and garbage doesn't help the user any. Getting the encoding right, use the unicode APIs, and don't pass the buck on to everything else.

The fact that the unicode is easier is a bonus for doing the right thing.

-- Adam Olsen, aka Rhamphoryncus

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list