[Python-Dev] Emit a BytesWarning on bytes filenames on Windows (original) (raw)

Victor Stinner victor.stinner at haypocalc.com
Sun Oct 30 22:26:20 CET 2011

Le 30/10/2011 09:00, "Martin v. Löwis" a écrit :

As quoted above, deprecation of the bytes version of the API sounds fine to me, but isn't this going to run into the usual objections from the "we need bytes for efficiency" crowd? It's OK with me to say "in this restricted area you must convert to Unicode", but is that going to fly with that constituency? I don't think this "we need bytes for efficiency" crowd actually exists. We are talking about file names here. The relevant crowd is the "we need bytes for correctness", and that crowd focuses primarily on Unix.

Oh, by the way, it is important to know that Unicode filenames is the best way to write portable programs with Python 3. On UNIX, since Python 3.1, undecodables filename don't raise Unicode errors: undecodable bytes are stored as surrogates (see the PEP 383). So even if the computer is completly misconfigured, it "just works".

On Windows, you must Unicode for filenames for correctness.

Anyway, with Python 3, it's easier to manipulate Unicode strings than bytes strings.

Martin finally agreed with me, I should hurry to implement my idea! :-)

Victor

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