[Python-Dev] Should ftplib use UTF-8 instead of latin-1 encoding?

[rdmurray at bitdance.com]

On Fri, 23 Jan 2009 at 21:23, "Martin v. Löwis" wrote:
>> Given that a Unix OS can't know what encoding a filename is in (*),
>> I can't see that one could practically implement a Unix FTP server
>> in any other way.
>
> However, an ftp server is different. It might start up with an empty
> folder, and receive *all* of its files through upload. Then it can
> certainly know what encoding the file names have on disk. It *could*
> also support operation on pre-existing files, e.g. by providing a
> configuration directive telling the encoding of the file names, or
> by ignoring all file names that are not encoded in UTF-8.

I don't see how starting with an empty directory helps.  The filename
comes from the client, and the FTP server can't know what the actual
encoding of that filename is.

--RDM