On Fri, 12 Nov 2010 13:13:08 +0100 Victor Stinner <victor.stin...@haypocalc.com> wrote: > On Thursday 11 November 2010 21:02:43 Antoine Pitrou wrote: > > On Thu, 11 Nov 2010 20:44:52 +0100 > > > > "Martin v. Löwis" <mar...@v.loewis.de> wrote: > > > > How do you support cross-platform code using bytes filenames? > > > > IIRC, it has already been argued that it was an important feature. Many > > > > filesystem-related utilities might prefer to handle filenames in bytes > > > > form. > > > > > > It would be a policy decision. However, I think it is hear-say that > > > filesystem-related utilities might prefer byte file names. > > > > One possible situation is when you receive filenames in bytes form from > > an external API or tool (or even the contents of a file). If you don't > > know the encoding, keeping the bytes form is obviously recommended. > > I disagree with you: the filename stored in the binary content/network stream > may be encoded with a different code page than the current Windows code page. > The application have to decode the filename itself, the application has more > information about the right encoding than Windows.
I'm not talking about Windows obviously. POSIX filenames are natively bytes, so if you get a bytes filename from an external source, it makes sense to reuse the bytes form. I think it would be a mistake to allow bytes filenames under POSIX but not under Windows. It makes porting harder. > - tar stores filenames... in the locale encoding (except for PAX format > which > uses utf-8) So bytes filenames are useful at least for tar. I'm sure there are many other cases (actually, most kinds of configuration files containing paths would apply). Regards Antoine. _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
