[Python-Dev] PEP 383: Non-decodable Bytes in System Character Interfaces (original) (raw)

Antoine Pitrou solipsis at pitrou.net
Mon Apr 27 20:13:47 CEST 2009

Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen xemacs.org> writes:

Excuse me, but I can't see a scheme that encodes bytes as Unicodes but only sometimes as a "clean separation".

Yet it is. Filenames are all unicode, without exception, and there's no implicit conversion to bytes. That's a clean separation.

So what you'll get here, AFAICS, is a new situation where many Windows-centric programmers will produce code that's incapable of dealing with non-Unicode input because they don't have to care about the distinction between Unicode and bytes.

I don't understand what you're saying. py3k filenames are all unicode, even on POSIX systems, so where is the problem with/for Windows programmers?

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