[gdal-dev] RFC 30: Unicode Filenames - call for discussion

[Christopher Barker]

Frank,

This looks great!

One comment about the python bindings:

"""
In theory functions that return filenames, such as gdal.ReadDir?() 
should return unicode strings for filenames, but from my perspective it 
seems adequate to always return utf-8 strings and let the application 
translate if needed.
"""

I think that's a mistake, if an app gets back a utf-8 string it has no 
way of knowing what the heck it is (accept by knowing the GDAL 
convention). So it will essentially always have to translate. And it's 
ripe for bugs, if when testing, the utf-8 string happen to be ascii 
compatible, things will just work, and then break when some odd 
character is inserted later in production.

Better for GDAL to return a unicode object. If the user really needs it 
as a byte string, they can convert, but the normal stuff like:

file()
os.path.*

etc.

will all work with a unicode object.


-Chris






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