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

Steven D'Aprano steve at pearwood.info
Tue Apr 28 02:27:17 CEST 2009

On Tue, 28 Apr 2009 04:13:47 am Antoine Pitrou wrote:

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

How is that possible on POSIX systems where the underlying file system uses bytes for filenames?

If I write a piece of Python code:

filename = 'some path/some name'

I might call it a filename, I might think of it as a filename, but it isn't, it's a string in a Python program. It isn't a filename until it hits the file system, and in POSIX systems that makes it bytes.

-- Steven D'Aprano

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