[Python-Dev] Python-3.0, unicode, and os.environ

Tue Dec 9 18:01:10 CET 2008

On Dec 9, 2008, at 6:04 AM, Anders J. Munch wrote:
> The typical application will just obliviously use os.listdir(dir) 
> and get the default elide-and-warn behaviour for un-decodable names. 
> That rare special application

I guess this is a new definition of rare special application: "an 
application which deals with user-specified files".
This is the problem I see in having two parallel APIs: people keep 
saying "most applications can just go ahead and use the [broken] 
unicode string API". If there was a unicode API and a bytes API, but 
everyone was clear that "always use the bytes API" is the right thing 
to do, that'd be okay... But, since even python-dev members are saying 
that only a rare special app needs to care about working with users' 
existing files, I'm rather worried this API design will cause most 
programs written in python to be broken. Which seems a shame.
> that needs more control can use os.listdirb and handle decoding 
> itself.

James