[Python-Dev] Decoding incomplete unicode (original) (raw)

Walter Dörwald walter at livinglogic.de
Thu Aug 26 22:13:17 CEST 2004

Martin v. Löwis wrote:

M.-A. Lemburg wrote:

Martin, there are two reasons for hiding away these details:

1. we need to be able to change the codec state without breaking the APIs

That will be possible with the currently-proposed patch. The codecs methods are not public API, so changing them would not be an API change.

Exactly.

2. we don't want the state to be altered by the user We are all consenting adults, and we can't really prevent it, anyway. For example, the user may pass an old state, or a state originating from a different codec (instance). We need to support this gracefully (i.e. with a proper Python exception).

The state communicated in the UTF-7 decoder is just a bunch of values. Checking the type is done via PyArg_ParseTuple().

A single object serves this best and does not create a whole plethora of new APIs in the codecs module. This is not over-design, but serves a reason. It does put a burden on codec developers, which need to match the "official" state representation policy. Of course, if they are allowed to return a tuple representing their state, that would be fine with me.

Looking at the UTF-7 decoder this seems to be the simplest option.

Bye, Walter Dörwald

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