[Python-Dev] pathlib - current status of discussions (original) (raw)

Ethan Furman ethan at stoneleaf.us
Tue Apr 12 12:10:55 EDT 2016

On 04/11/2016 02:58 PM, Ethan Furman wrote:

Sticking points: ---------------

Do we allow bytes to be returned from os.fspath()? If yes, then do we allow bytes from fspath()?

On 04/11/2016 10:28 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

In text applications, "bytes as carcinogen" is an apt metaphor.

On 04/12/2016 08:25 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:

I would say No and No, on the basis that it's far easier to widen their scope in 3.7 than to narrow it.

On 04/11/2016 08:45 PM, Nick Coghlan wrote:

I've come around to the point of view that allowing both str and bytes-like objects to pass through unchanged makes sense, with the rationale being the one someone mentioned regarding ease-of-use in os.path. [...] One possible way to address this concern would be to have the underlying protocol be bytes/str (since boundary code frequently needs to handle the paths-are-bytes assumption in POSIX), but offer an "os.fspathname" API that rejected bytes output from os.fspath.

I think this is the way forward: offer a standard way to get paths-as-strings, with an easily supported way of working with paths-as-bytes.

This could be with on os.fspathname() & os.fspath() pair of functions, or with a single function that has a parameter specifying what to do with bytes objects: reject (default), accept, or (maybe) an encoding to use to coerce to bytes.

-- Ethan

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