[Python-Dev] Bytes path support

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Marko Rauhamaa writes:

 > My point is that the poor programmer cannot ignore the possibility of
 > "funny" character sets.

*Poor* programmers do it all the time.  That's why Python codecs raise
when they encounter bytes they can't handle.

 > If Python tried to protect the programmer from that possibility,

I don't understand your point.  The existing interfaces aren't going
anywhere, and they're enough to do anything you need to do.  Although
there are a few radicals (like me in a past life :-) who might like to
see them go away in favor of opt-in to binary encoding via
surrogateescape error handling, nobody in their right mind supports
us.

The question here is not about going backward, it's about whether to
add new bytes APIs, and which ones.