[Python-Dev] Python-3.0, unicode, and os.environ

[rdmurray at bitdance.com]

On Mon, 8 Dec 2008 at 13:16, Terry Reedy wrote:
>>  And the decoding problems don't pass silently either - they just get
>>  emitted as a warning by default instead of causing the application to
>>  crash.
>
> Do they get automatically logged?  In any case, the errors parameter has an 
> in between option to neither ignore or raise but to replace and give 
> *something* printable.
>
> This situation seems like an ideal situation for a parameter which gives the 
> application program who uses Python a range of options to working with an 
> un-ideal world.  I am really flabbergasted why there is so much opposition to 
> doing so in favor of more difficult or less functional alternatives.

I'm in favor of an option to control what happens.

I just really really don't want the _default_ to be "ignore".  Defaulting
to a warning is fine with me, as would be defaulting to a traceback.

But defaulting to "silently ignore", as we have now, is just asking for user
confusion and debugging headaches, as detailed by Toshio.  A _worse_ user
experience, IMO, than having a program fail when undecodable filenames
match the selection criteria.

--RDM