Ezio Melotti <ezio.melo...@gmail.com> added the comment:
If we can't fix the behavior, it should at least be documented.
Currently the docs says "This function returns a list of (decoded_string,
charset) pairs containing each of the decoded parts of the header.". One could
assume that this means that a Unicode string is returned, but and as far as I
can tell, "decoded_string" means decoded from the format used by the header,
not from bytes -- in fact the example below shows a byte string.
#24797 suggest an alternative solution, but there is no indications about it in
the docs except an easy-to-miss note about the new API at the top.
Coincidentally as I was reporting this issue I also found the recently opened
#37139. There are also a few other reports: #24797, #37139, #32975, #6302,
#4661.
If this method is not actually deprecated, I would document the current
behavior (i.e. sometimes it returns bytes, sometimes unicode -- bonus points if
there's a simple rule to predict which one), explain that it exists for
legacy/backward-compatibility reasons, and point to the alternatives.
FWIW here are 3 more samples that show the inconsistency.
>>> from email.header import decode_header
>>> # str + None
>>> h = '\x80SOKCrGxsbw===== <he...@example.com>'; decode_header(h)
[('\x80SOKCrGxsbw===== <he...@example.com>', None)]
>>> # bytes + '', bytes + None
>>> h = '=??b?SOKCrGxsbw=====?= <he...@example.com>'; decode_header(h)
[(b'H\xe2\x82\xacllo', ''), (b' <he...@example.com>', None)]
>>> # bytes + 'utf8', bytes + None
>>> h = '=?utf8?b?SOKCrGxsbw==?= <he...@example.com>'; decode_header(h)
[(b'H\xe2\x82\xacllo', 'utf8'), (b' <he...@example.com>', None)]
----------
assignee: -> docs@python
components: +Documentation
nosy: +docs@python, ezio.melotti, louis.abra...@yahoo.fr
resolution: duplicate ->
stage: resolved -> needs patch
status: closed -> open
type: behavior -> enhancement
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Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue21492>
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