[Tutor] Confirm that Python 2.6 ftplib does not support Unicode file names? Alternatives?

[Sander Sweers]

----- Original message -----
> On Fri, 25 Jun 2010 04:51:13 am Lie Ryan wrote:
> > On 06/24/10 02:10, python at bdurham.com wrote:
> > > Can someone confirm that Python 2.6 ftplib does *NOT* support
> > > Unicode file names? Or must Unicode file names be specially
> > > encoded in order to be used with the ftplib module?
> > 
> > I don't know the specifics about ftplib, however I believe in most
> > file systems, file names are plain byte-strings, i.e. most file
> > systems do not handle encoding, they only deal with plain bytes.
> 
> That is completely backwards. Most modern file systems use Unicode, not 
> bytes.

-snip-

> These days, if you're a developer on a non-Linux PC who doesn't need to 
> worry about legacy file systems, most file systems you come across will 
> be Unicode and not bytes. It's mostly Linux developers who have to deal 
> with byte file names.

Linux filesystems do not store encoding information as part of the filesystem. It does not care if you give it an unicode filename or byte filename to write to disk. It is up to the userland applications to properly make sense of the filename.

Greets
Sander