[Python-Dev] Python 3.0.1 (io-in-c) (original) (raw)

Steven Bethard steven.bethard at gmail.com
Wed Jan 28 19:40:22 CET 2009

On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 10:29 AM, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:

Notice that the determination of the specific encoding used is fairly elaborate: - if IO is to a terminal, Python tries to determine the encoding of the terminal. This is mostly relevant for Windows (which uses, by default, the "OEM code page" in the terminal). - if IO is to a file, Python tries to guess the "common" encoding for the system. On Unix, it queries the locale, and falls back to "ascii" if no locale is set. On Windows, it uses the "ANSI code page". On OSX, it uses the "system encoding". - if IO is binary, (clearly) no encoding is used. Network IO is always binary. - for file names, yet different algorithms apply. On Windows, it uses the Unicode API, so no need for an encoding. On Unix, it (again) uses the locale encoding. On OSX, it uses UTF-8 (just to be clear: this applies to the first argument of open(), not to the resulting file object)

This a very helpful explanation. Is it in the docs somewhere, or if it isn't, could it be?

Steve

I'm not in-sane. Indeed, I am so far out of sane that you appear a tiny blip on the distant coast of sanity. --- Bucky Katt, Get Fuzzy

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