Experiences/guidance on teaching Python as a first programming language

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 1:34 AM,  <wxjmfauth at gmail.com> wrote:
> Le jeudi 12 décembre 2013 11:28:35 UTC+1, Chris Angelico a écrit :
>> On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 8:17 PM,  <wxjmfauth at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Windows, Py2.(7), ascii. It is not a secret Python uses
>> > ascii for the representation.
>>
>> Actually no, it doesn't.
>
>>>> sys.version
> '2.7.6 (default, Nov 10 2013, 19:24:18) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)]'
>>>> sys.stdout.encoding
> 'cp1252'

What has this to do with ASCII or with Python's internal
representation? All you've proven is that you can convert the repr of
a string back into a byte-string, by replacing "\\xa9" with "\xa9",
and then shown that you can successfully render that as CP-1252 and it
displays as a copyright symbol. Meanwhile when I try the same thing on
my Windows box, the default encoding is cp437, so it throws. Proves
nothing about ASCII, as neither of those encodings is ASCII, and A9
does not decode as ASCII.

ChrisA