[ python-Bugs-1436428 ] urllib has trouble with Windows filenames

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Bugs item #1436428, was opened at 2006-02-22 07:03
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by shadowmorpher
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Category: Python Library
Group: Python 2.4
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Submitted By: Donovan Eastman (dpeastman)
Assigned to: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Summary: urllib has trouble with Windows filenames

Initial Comment:
When you pass urllib the name of a local file including
a Windows drive letter (e.g. 'C:\dir\My File.txt')
URLopener.open() incorrectly interprets the drive
letter as the scheme of a URL.  Of course, given that
there is no scheme 'C', this fails.

I have solved this in my own code by putting the
following test before calling urllib.urlopen():

if url[1] == ':' and url[0].isalpha():
    url = 'file:' + url

Although this works fine in my particular case, it
seems like urllib should just simply "do the right
thing" without having to worry about it.  Therefore I
propose that urllib should automatically assume that
any URL that begins with a single alpha followed by a
colon is a local file.

The only potential downside would be that it would
preclude the use of single letter scheme names.  I did
a little research on this.  RFC 3986 suggests, but does
not explicitly state that scheme names must be more
than one character.
(http://www.gbiv.com/protocols/uri/rfc/rfc3986.html#scheme)
.  That said, there are no currently recognized single
letter scheme names
(http://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes.html) and
it seems very unlikely that there every would be.

I would gladly write the code for this myself -- but I
suspect that it would take someone longer to review and
integrate my changes than it would to just write the code.

Thanks,
Donovan


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Comment By: Koen van de Sande (shadowmorpher)
Date: 2006-03-13 20:19

Message:
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Why should the URL lib module support opening of local 
files? It already does so through the file: protocol prefix, 
and do not see why it should support automatic detection of 
Windows filenames. AFAIK it does not do automatic detection 
of Unix filenames (one could recognize it from /home/
something), so why would Windows work differently?

I'm not an expert or anything, so I might be wrong.

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