[Python-Dev] Removal of Win32 ANSI API

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Fri, 12 Nov 2010 13:13:08 +0100
Victor Stinner <victor.stinner at 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" <martin at 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.