On 6/5/2014 10:45 AM, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
Mostly I'm saying Python3 will not be able to hide the fact that linux data consists of bytes. It shouldn't even try. The linux OS outside the Python process talks bytes, not strings.
A text file is a binary file wrapped with a codex to translate to and from a universal text format on input and output. Much of the time, the wrapping is a great user convenience. Since the wrapping is optional, nothing is forced or really hidden.
A different OS might have different assumptions.
Different OSes *do* have different assumptions. Both MacOSX and current Windows use (UCS-2 or) UTF-16 for text. It seems that unicode strings are better than ascii+??? strings as a universal basis for OS interfacing. For Windows, at least, the interface is much improved in Python 3.
I understand that some, but not all, Latin alphabet *nix programmers wish that Python 3 continued to be strongly in their favor. But they are a small minority of the world's programmers, and Python 3 is aimed at everyone on all systems.
-- Terry Jan Reedy -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
