On 2014-01-09 00:07, Ben Finney wrote:
> Kristján Valur Jónsson <kristjan at ccpgames.com> writes:
>
>> Believe it or not, sometimes you really don't care about encodings.
>> Sometimes you just want to parse text files.
>
> Files don't contain text, they contain bytes. Bytes only become text
> when filtered through the correct encoding.
>
> Python should not guess the encoding if it's unknown. Without the right
> encoding, you don't get text, you get partial or complete gibberish.
>
> So, if what you want is to parse text and not get gibberish, you need to
> *tell* Python what the encoding is. That's a brute fact of the world of
> text in computing.
>
>> Python 3 forces you to think about abstract concepts like encodings
>> when all you want is to open that .txt file on the drive and extract
>> some phone numbers and merge in some email addresses. What encoding
>> does the file have? Do I care? Must I care?
>
> Yes, you must.
>
>> Python forcing you to think about this is like the cashier at the
>> hardware store who won't let you buy the hammer you brought to the
>> cash register because you don't know what wood its handle is made of.
>
> The cashier is making a mistake: the hammer, regardless of the wood in
> the handle, still functions just fine as a hammer. Hence, the question
> is unimportant to the purpose.
>
On the other hand:
"I need a new battery."
"What kind of battery?"
"I don't care!"
> The same is not true of changing the encoding for text. The encoding
> matters, and the programmer needs to care.
>
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