181 lines
6.9 KiB
Plaintext
181 lines
6.9 KiB
Plaintext
PEP: 528
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Title: Change Windows console encoding to UTF-8
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Version: $Revision$
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Last-Modified: $Date$
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Author: Steve Dower <steve.dower@python.org>
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Status: Draft
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Type: Standards Track
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Content-Type: text/x-rst
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Created: 27-Aug-2016
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Post-History: 01-Sep-2016
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Abstract
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========
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Historically, Python uses the ANSI APIs for interacting with the Windows
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operating system, often via C Runtime functions. However, these have been long
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discouraged in favor of the UTF-16 APIs. Within the operating system, all text
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is represented as UTF-16, and the ANSI APIs perform encoding and decoding using
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the active code page.
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This PEP proposes changing the default standard stream implementation on Windows
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to use the Unicode APIs. This will allow users to print and input the full range
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of Unicode characters at the default Windows console. This also requires a
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subtle change to how the tokenizer parses text from readline hooks.
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Specific Changes
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================
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Add _io.WindowsConsoleIO
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------------------------
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Currently an instance of ``_io.FileIO`` is used to wrap the file descriptors
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representing standard input, output and error. We add a new class (implemented
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in C) ``_io.WindowsConsoleIO`` that acts as a raw IO object using the Windows
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console functions, specifically, ``ReadConsoleW`` and ``WriteConsoleW``.
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This class will be used when the legacy-mode flag is not in effect, when opening
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a standard stream by file descriptor and the stream is a console buffer rather
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than a redirected file. Otherwise, ``_io.FileIO`` will be used as it is today.
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This is a raw (bytes) IO class that requires text to be passed encoded with
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utf-8, which will be decoded to utf-16-le and passed to the Windows APIs.
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Similarly, bytes read from the class will be provided by the operating system as
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utf-16-le and converted into utf-8 when returned to Python.
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The use of an ASCII compatible encoding is required to maintain compatibility
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with code that bypasses the ``TextIOWrapper`` and directly writes ASCII bytes to
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the standard streams (for example, `Twisted's process_stdinreader.py`_). Code that assumes
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a particular encoding for the standard streams other than ASCII will likely
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break.
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Add _PyOS_WindowsConsoleReadline
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--------------------------------
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To allow Unicode entry at the interactive prompt, a new readline hook is
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required. The existing ``PyOS_StdioReadline`` function will delegate to the new
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``_PyOS_WindowsConsoleReadline`` function when reading from a file descriptor
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that is a console buffer and the legacy-mode flag is not in effect (the logic
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should be identical to above).
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Since the readline interface is required to return an 8-bit encoded string with
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no embedded nulls, the ``_PyOS_WindowsConsoleReadline`` function transcodes from
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utf-16-le as read from the operating system into utf-8.
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The function ``PyRun_InteractiveOneObject`` which currently obtains the encoding
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from ``sys.stdin`` will select utf-8 unless the legacy-mode flag is in effect.
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This may require readline hooks to change their encodings to utf-8, or to
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require legacy-mode for correct behaviour.
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Add legacy mode
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---------------
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Launching Python with the environment variable ``PYTHONLEGACYWINDOWSSTDIO`` set
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will enable the legacy-mode flag, which completely restores the previous
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behaviour.
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Alternative Approaches
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======================
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The `win_unicode_console package`_ is a pure-Python alternative to changing the
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default behaviour of the console. It implements essentially the same
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modifications as described here using pure Python code.
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Code that may break
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===================
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The following code patterns may break or see different behaviour as a result of
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this change. All of these code samples require explicitly choosing to use a raw
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file object in place of a more convenient wrapper that would prevent any visible
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change.
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Assuming stdin/stdout encoding
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------------------------------
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Code that assumes that the encoding required by ``sys.stdin.buffer`` or
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``sys.stdout.buffer`` is ``'mbcs'`` or a more specific encoding may currently be
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working by chance, but could encounter issues under this change. For example:
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>>> sys.stdout.buffer.write(text.encode('mbcs'))
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>>> r = sys.stdin.buffer.read(16).decode('cp437')
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To correct this code, the encoding specified on the ``TextIOWrapper`` should be
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used, either implicitly or explicitly:
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>>> # Fix 1: Use wrapper correctly
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>>> sys.stdout.write(text)
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>>> r = sys.stdin.read(16)
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>>> # Fix 2: Use encoding explicitly
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>>> sys.stdout.buffer.write(text.encode(sys.stdout.encoding))
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>>> r = sys.stdin.buffer.read(16).decode(sys.stdin.encoding)
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Incorrectly using the raw object
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--------------------------------
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Code that uses the raw IO object and does not correctly handle partial reads and
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writes may be affected. This is particularly important for reads, where the
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number of characters read will never exceed one-fourth of the number of bytes
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allowed, as there is no feasible way to prevent input from encoding as much
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longer utf-8 strings.
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>>> raw_stdin = sys.stdin.buffer.raw
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>>> data = raw_stdin.read(15)
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abcdefghijklm
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b'abc'
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# data contains at most 3 characters, and never more than 12 bytes
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# error, as "defghijklm\r\n" is passed to the interactive prompt
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To correct this code, the buffered reader/writer should be used, or the caller
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should continue reading until its buffer is full.
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>>> # Fix 1: Use the buffered reader/writer
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>>> stdin = sys.stdin.buffer
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>>> data = stdin.read(15)
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abcedfghijklm
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b'abcdefghijklm\r\n'
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>>> # Fix 2: Loop until enough bytes have been read
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>>> raw_stdin = sys.stdin.buffer.raw
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>>> b = b''
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>>> while len(b) < 15:
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... b += raw_stdin.read(15)
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abcedfghijklm
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b'abcdefghijklm\r\n'
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Using the raw object with small buffers
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---------------------------------------
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Code that uses the raw IO object and attempts to read less than four characters
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will now receive an error. Because it's possible that any single character may
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require up to four bytes when represented in utf-8, requests must fail.
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>>> raw_stdin = sys.stdin.buffer.raw
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>>> data = raw_stdin.read(3)
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Traceback (most recent call last):
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File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
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ValueError: must read at least 4 bytes
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The only workaround is to pass a larger buffer.
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>>> # Fix: Request at least four bytes
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>>> raw_stdin = sys.stdin.buffer.raw
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>>> data = raw_stdin.read(4)
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a
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b'a'
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>>> >>>
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(The extra ``>>>`` is due to the newline remaining in the input buffer and is
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expected in this situation.)
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Copyright
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=========
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This document has been placed in the public domain.
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References
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==========
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.. _Twisted's process_stdinreader.py: https://github.com/twisted/twisted/blob/trunk/src/twisted/test/process_stdinreader.py
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.. _win_unicode_console package: https://pypi.org/project/win_unicode_console/
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