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

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Thu Apr 30 06:52:18 CEST 2009

How do get a printable unicode version of these path strings if they contain none unicode data?

Define "printable". One way would be to use a regular expression, replacing all codes in a certain range with a question mark.

I'm guessing that an app has to understand that filenames come in two forms unicode and bytes if its not utf-8 data. Why not simply return string if its valid utf-8 otherwise return bytes?

That would have been an alternative solution, and the one that 2.x uses for listdir. People didn't like it.

Regards, Martin

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