[Python-Dev] Re: [Csv] Minor change to behaviour of csv module

[Alex Martelli]

On 2005 Jan 07, at 14:45, Michael Chermside wrote:

> Andrew explains that in the CSV module, escape characters are not
> properly removed.
>
> Magnus writes:
>> IMO this is the *only* reasonable behaviour. I don't understand why
>> the escape character should be left in; this is one of the reason why
>> UNIX-style colon-separated values don't work with the current module.
>
> Andrew writes back later:
>> Thinking about this further, I suspect we have to retain the current
>> behaviour, as broken as it is, as the default: it's conceivable that
>> someone somewhere is post-processing the result to remove the 
>> backslashes,
>> and if we fix the csv module, we'll break their code.
>
> I'm with Magnus on this. No one has 4 year old code using the CSV 
> module.
> The existing behavior is just simply WRONG. Sure, of course we should
> try to maintain backward compatibility, but surely SOME cases don't
> require it, right? Can't we treat this misbehavior as an outright bug?

+1 -- the nonremoval of escape characters smells like a bug to me, too.


Alex