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

R. David Murray rdmurray at bitdance.com
Wed Apr 29 13:07:11 CEST 2009

On Tue, 28 Apr 2009 at 20:29, Glenn Linderman wrote:

On approximately 4/28/2009 7:40 PM, came the following characters from the keyboard of R. David Murray:

On Tue, 28 Apr 2009 at 13:37, Glenn Linderman wrote: > C. File on disk with the invalid surrogate code, accessed via the str > interface, no decoding happens, matches in memory the file on disk with > the byte that translates to the same surrogate, accessed via the bytes > interface. Ambiguity.

Unless I'm missing something, one of these is type str, and the other is type bytes, so no ambiguity. You are missing that the bytes value would get decoded to a str; thus both are str; so ambiguity is possible.

Only if you as the programmer decode it. Now, I don't understand the subtleties of Unicode enough to know if Martin has already successfully addressed this concern in another fashion, but personally I think that if you as a programmer are comparing funnydecoded-str strings gotten via a string interface with normal-decoded strings gotten via a bytes interface, that we could claim that your program has a bug.

--David

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