[Python-ideas] PEP 540: Add a new UTF-8 mode

[Chris Angelico]

On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 8:20 AM, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> On Jan 06, 2017, at 07:22 AM, Stephan Houben wrote:
>
>>Because I have the impression that nowadays all Linux distributions are UTF-8
>>by default and you have to show some bloody-mindedness to end up with a POSIX
>>locale.
>
> It can still happen in some corner cases, even on Debian and Ubuntu where
> C.UTF-8 is available and e.g. my desktop defaults to en_US.UTF-8.  For
> example, in an sbuild/schroot environment[*], the default locale is C and I've
> seen package build failures because of this.  There may be other such "corner
> case" environments where this happens too.

A lot of background jobs get run in a purged environment, too. I don't
remember exactly which ones land in the C locale and which don't, but
check cron jobs, systemd background processes, inetd, etc, etc, etc.
Having Python DTRT in those situations would be a Good Thing.

ChrisA