Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com>: > The problem is not Python's Unicode strings, then. The problem is the > notion that path names are text. If they're text, they should be > exclusively text (although, for low-level efficiency, they're more > likely to be defined as "valid UTF-8 sequences" rather than "sequences > of Unicode codepoints"); since they're not, they are fundamentally > bytes. But that's not a problem with Python - it's a problem with the > file system.
The file system does not have a problem. Python has a problem because it tries to present pathnames as Unicode strings, which isn't always possible. The standard input and output are even more problematic because Python very strongly "wishes" them to be Unicode streams. If I were to start a new OS today, I would very much like to placate the likes of Python. Unfortunately, the sins of our forefathers cannot be wished away. Anyway, Python is careful not to paint itself in a corner. It gives you everything you need to break the abstraction and go low-level. It even offers regular expressions and ASCII syntax for bytes objects! For example, Guile 2.x is trying to emulate Python's progressive approach, but doesn't offer such amenities. Thus, Python's b'hi!' is #vu8(104 105 33) or (use-modules (rnrs bytevectors)) (string->utf8 "hi!") in Guile. Marko -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
