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

Adam Olsen rhamph at gmail.com
Wed Jan 28 20:42:30 CET 2009

On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 11:52 AM, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:

Ah, I see. That is entirely obvious. The key bit of information is that the default io encoding is cp1252, not cp850. I know that in theory, I see the consequences often enough (:-)), but it isn't "instinctive" for me. And the simple "default encoding is system dependent" comment is not very helpful in terms of warning me that there could be an issue.

I do think that more wording around encoding defaults would be useful - as I said, I'll think about how best it could be made into a doc patch. I suspect the best approach would be to have a section (maybe in the docs for the codecs module) explaining all the details, and then a cross-reference to that from the various places (open, io) where default encodings are mentioned.

It'd also help if the file repr gave the encoding:

f = open('/dev/null') f <io.TextIOWrapper object at 0x7ff4468d8a90> import sys sys.stdout <io.TextIOWrapper object at 0x7ff4476126d0>

Of course I can check .encoding manually, but it needs to be more intuitive.

-- Adam Olsen, aka Rhamphoryncus

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