[Python-Dev] deleting setdefaultencoding iin site.py is evil (original) (raw)

exarkun at twistedmatrix.com exarkun at twistedmatrix.com
Thu Aug 27 15:08:57 CEST 2009

On 26 Aug, 11:51 pm, chris at simplistix.co.uk wrote:

exarkun at twistedmatrix.com wrote:

The ability to change the default encoding is a misfeature. There's essentially no way to write correct Python code in the presence of this feature. How so? If every single piece of text in your project is encoded in a superset of ascii (such as utf-8), why would this be a problem? Even if you were evil/stupid and mixed encodings, surely all you'd get is different unicode errors or mayvbe the odd strange character during display?

This is what I meant when I said what I said about correct code. If you're happy to have encoding errors and corrupt data, then I guess you're happy to have a function like setdefaultencoding.

It may be a major task, but the best thing you can do is find each str and unicode operation in the software you're working with and make them correct with respect to your inputs and outputs. Flipping a giant switch for the entire process is just going to change which things are wrong. Well, flipping that giant switch has worked in production for the past 5 years, so I'm afraid I'll respectfully disagree. I'd suspect the pragmatics of real world software are with that function even exists, and it's extremely useful when used correctly...

I suppose it's fortunate for you that the function exists, then. For my part, I have managed to write and operate a lot of code in production for at least as long without ever touching it. Generally speaking, I also don't find that I encounter lots of unicode errors or corrupted data (sometimes I do; in those cases, I fix the broken code and it doesn't happen again).

Jean-Paul

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