On 13 Apr., 09:24, Carl Banks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Apr 12, 11:51 am, Kay Schluehr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On 12 Apr., 16:29, Carl Banks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > And making an utf-8 encoding default is not possible without writing a > > > > new function? > > > > I believe the Zen in effect here is, "In the face of ambiguity, refuse > > > the temptation to guess." How do you know if the bytes are utf-8 > > > encoded? > > > How many "encodings" would you define for a Rectangle constructor? > > I'm not sure what you're insinuating. If you are arguing that it's > inappropriate for a constructor to take an "encoding" argument (as you > put it), be my guest. I wasn't commenting on that specifically. > > I was commenting on your suggestion of having str assume utf-8 > encoding, which IMO would be very unPythonic, whether you can pass > encodings to it or not.
That's o.k. I don't primarily advocate default values or such things just reduction of mental and scripting overhead. We shouldn't lose the goal out of sight. I played a bit with several encodings but this didn't enable much of an impression how it will feel in real code. I can see though the inadequacy of my original claim mainly due to the overlooked fact that there isn't even a mapping of the range \x0 - \xff to utf-8 but only one from \x0 - \x7f. Same with the ASCII encoding which is limited to 7 bits as well. One has to be careful not just because "you can select the wrong encoding" but stringification with an utf-8 encoding can simply activate the exception handler even though there will be no type error! A default value shall work under all circumstances supposed you pass in an object of the correct type. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
