[Python-3000] Support for PEP 3131 (original) (raw)

Steve Howell showell30 at yahoo.com
Fri May 25 01:49:49 CEST 2007

--- "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:

> FWIW the Ruby interpreter (1.8.5) seems to require > this flag to allow you to turn on the Japanese code > set. > > -Kkcode specifies KANJI (Japanese) code-set > > I have no idea whether or not this cripples the > feature in Ruby, and perhaps it's an apples/oranges > comparison.

If you don't have source encoding declarations (like the one in PEP 263), you must have some means of setting the source encoding; this is what -Kkcode does (similar to javac's -encoding command line option). This approach has several flaws, e.g. you can only specify a single encoding, which breaks if you have modules in different encodings. In any case, it's different from the suggested -UU option: Python already knows what the source encoding is, -UU would not change that. Instead, that option would merely serve to constrain the source code (if it's not being passed).

Ok, I think it's pretty clear that this is an apples/oranges comparison, and there are lots of differences between Ruby's implementation and PEP 3131 that muddy the waters.

Still, the reason I brought it up is still valid, I think.

Ruby is a language that presumably has a lot of Japanese users, and it appears to me (I'm not a Ruby person, so I admit this is speculation) that Japanese users have to explicitly choose to use Japanese encoding to run source files encoded in Japanese.

Setting aside all the limitations of Ruby, wouldn't the fact that non-latin-writing Japanese Ruby users live with the command line restriciton in Ruby suggest that they'd be just as willing to live with command line burdens in Python, if they decided to switch to Python?

To your point about Py3k being more flexible, couldn't you imagine a scenario where a Japanese programmer gets fed up with Ruby's all-or-nothing capability with respect to Kanji, and switches over to Python, and changes his little wrapper shell script to say "python -U" instead of "ruby -Kkcode"? He could then start to use non-Japanese Python modules while still writing his own Python code in Japanese.

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