[Python-3000] Unicode and OS strings (original) (raw)

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Fri Sep 14 14:09:58 CEST 2007

Is it too unreasonable to keep the byte strings we get from the OS as byte strings in Python (since we're not sure about their encoding) and offer functions for getting strings?

I think people will complain if command line arguments aren't strings, and they will complain even more so if file names are not strings.

Of course that's backwards incompatible and I'm not sure if it's too late for something like this now.

That is not a concern. However, it is fundamentally the wrong thing to do. Most people rightfully view command line arguments and file names as strings, as they use the keyboard to enter them, and the computer uses letters from a font to display them. They are not bytes conceptually - they are strings in a potentially unknown encoding.

Regards, Martin

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