sys.getfilesystemencoding()

[manlioperillo]

BPO	964870
Nosy	@loewis

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2004-06-16.04:54:19.000>
created_at = <Date 2004-06-02.09:15:10.000>
labels = ['docs']
title = 'sys.getfilesystemencoding()'
updated_at = <Date 2004-06-16.04:54:19.000>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/manlioperillo'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2004-06-16.04:54:19.000>
actor = 'loewis'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = None
closer = None
components = ['Documentation']
creation = <Date 2004-06-02.09:15:10.000>
creator = 'manlioperillo'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 964870
keywords = []
message_count = 4.0
messages = ['20979', '20980', '20981', '20982']
nosy_count = 2.0
nosy_names = ['loewis', 'manlioperillo']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'fixed'
stage = None
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = None
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue964870'
versions = []

[manlioperillo]

>>> sys.version
'2.3.3 (#51, Dec 18 2003, 20:22:39) [MSC v.1200 32 bit
(Intel)]'
>>> sys.platform
'win32'
>>> sys.getwindowsversion()
(5, 1, 2600, 2, '')

Hi.
In the documentation it is reported that:
'On Windows NT+, file names are Unicode natively, so no
conversion is performed'.

But:
import sys
>>> sys.getfilesystemencoding()
'mbcs'

Thanks and regards Manlio Perillo

[loewis]

Logged In: YES
user_id=21627

The documentation is correct. Filenames are not converted.

[manlioperillo]

Logged In: YES
user_id=1054957

I'm not an expert but... mbcs is the encoding used by
Windows 9x.
This is not clear, if the encoding for win NT+ is 'mbcs'
this should be written in the documentation explicitly.

[loewis]

Logged In: YES
user_id=21627

When filenames need to be converted between byte strings and
unicode strings, "mbcs" is the right encoding even on
Windows NT. Python rarely needs to perform this conversion,
as it passes Unicode strings directly to the operating
system. It might be that applications have the need to
perform the conversion themselves.

I have added a comment in this direction in libsys.tex 1.72.