[Python-Dev] [Python-3000] New proposition for Python3 bytes filename issue

[Guido van Rossum]

On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 8:55 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
>
>> Le Monday 29 September 2008 19:06:01 Guido van Rossum, vous avez écrit :
>
>>> I know I keep flipflopping on this one, but the more I think about it
>>> the more I believe it is better to drop those names than to raise an
>>> exception. Otherwise a "naive" program that happens to use
>>> os.listdir() can be rendered completely useless by a single non-UTF-8
>>> filename. Consider the use of os.listdir() by the glob module. If I am
>>> globbing for *.py, why should the presence of a file named b'\xff'
>>> cause it to fail?
>
> To avoid silent skipping, is it possible to drop 'unreadable' names, issue a
> warning (instead of exception), and continue to completion?
> "Warning: unreadable filename skipped; see PyWiki/UnreadableFilenames"

That would be annoying as hell in most cases.

I consider the dropping of unreadable names similar to the suppression
of "hidden" files by various operating systems.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)