[Python-Dev] Bug #112265: Tkinter seems to treat everything as Latin 1 (original) (raw)

Tim Peters tim_one@email.msn.com
Sat, 26 Aug 2000 17:14:37 -0400

UnicodeError: ASCII decoding error: ordinal not in range(128)

btw, what the heck is an "ordinal"?

It's a technical term . But it's used consistently in Python, e.g., that's where the name of the builtin ord function comes from!

print ord.doc ord(c) -> integer

Return the integer ordinal of a one character string.

... how about an "ordinal number"? that is, "a number designating the place (as first, second, or third) occupied by an item in an ordered sequence".

Exactly. Each character has an arbitrary but fixed position in an arbitrary but ordered sequence of all characters. This isn't hard.

wouldn't "character" be easier to grok for mere mortals?

Doubt it -- they're already confused about the need to distinguish between a character and its encoding, and the character is most certainly not "in" or "out" of any range of integers.

...and isn't "range(128)" overly cute?

Yes.

UnicodeError: ASCII decoding error: character not in range 0-127

As above, it makes no sense. How about compromising on

UnicodeError: ASCII decoding error: ord(character) > 127

?