265 lines
8.4 KiB
Plaintext
265 lines
8.4 KiB
Plaintext
PEP: 0263
|
||
Title: Defining Python Source Code Encodings
|
||
Version: $Revision$
|
||
Last-Modified: $Date$
|
||
Author: mal@lemburg.com (Marc-André Lemburg),
|
||
martin@v.loewis.de (Martin von Löwis)
|
||
Status: Final
|
||
Type: Standards Track
|
||
Created: 06-Jun-2001
|
||
Python-Version: 2.3
|
||
Post-History:
|
||
|
||
Abstract
|
||
|
||
This PEP proposes to introduce a syntax to declare the encoding of
|
||
a Python source file. The encoding information is then used by the
|
||
Python parser to interpret the file using the given encoding. Most
|
||
notably this enhances the interpretation of Unicode literals in
|
||
the source code and makes it possible to write Unicode literals
|
||
using e.g. UTF-8 directly in an Unicode aware editor.
|
||
|
||
Problem
|
||
|
||
In Python 2.1, Unicode literals can only be written using the
|
||
Latin-1 based encoding "unicode-escape". This makes the
|
||
programming environment rather unfriendly to Python users who live
|
||
and work in non-Latin-1 locales such as many of the Asian
|
||
countries. Programmers can write their 8-bit strings using the
|
||
favorite encoding, but are bound to the "unicode-escape" encoding
|
||
for Unicode literals.
|
||
|
||
Proposed Solution
|
||
|
||
I propose to make the Python source code encoding both visible and
|
||
changeable on a per-source file basis by using a special comment
|
||
at the top of the file to declare the encoding.
|
||
|
||
To make Python aware of this encoding declaration a number of
|
||
concept changes are necessary with respect to the handling of
|
||
Python source code data.
|
||
|
||
Defining the Encoding
|
||
|
||
Python will default to ASCII as standard encoding if no other
|
||
encoding hints are given.
|
||
|
||
To define a source code encoding, a magic comment must
|
||
be placed into the source files either as first or second
|
||
line in the file, such as:
|
||
|
||
# coding=<encoding name>
|
||
|
||
or (using formats recognized by popular editors)
|
||
|
||
#!/usr/bin/python
|
||
# -*- coding: <encoding name> -*-
|
||
|
||
or
|
||
|
||
#!/usr/bin/python
|
||
# vim: set fileencoding=<encoding name> :
|
||
|
||
More precisely, the first or second line must match the regular
|
||
expression "^[ \t\v]*#.*?coding[:=][ \t]*([-_.a-zA-Z0-9]+)".
|
||
The first group of this
|
||
expression is then interpreted as encoding name. If the encoding
|
||
is unknown to Python, an error is raised during compilation. There
|
||
must not be any Python statement on the line that contains the
|
||
encoding declaration. If the first line matches the second line
|
||
is ignored.
|
||
|
||
To aid with platforms such as Windows, which add Unicode BOM marks
|
||
to the beginning of Unicode files, the UTF-8 signature
|
||
'\xef\xbb\xbf' will be interpreted as 'utf-8' encoding as well
|
||
(even if no magic encoding comment is given).
|
||
|
||
If a source file uses both the UTF-8 BOM mark signature and a
|
||
magic encoding comment, the only allowed encoding for the comment
|
||
is 'utf-8'. Any other encoding will cause an error.
|
||
|
||
Examples
|
||
|
||
These are some examples to clarify the different styles for
|
||
defining the source code encoding at the top of a Python source
|
||
file:
|
||
|
||
1. With interpreter binary and using Emacs style file encoding
|
||
comment:
|
||
|
||
#!/usr/bin/python
|
||
# -*- coding: latin-1 -*-
|
||
import os, sys
|
||
...
|
||
|
||
#!/usr/bin/python
|
||
# -*- coding: iso-8859-15 -*-
|
||
import os, sys
|
||
...
|
||
|
||
#!/usr/bin/python
|
||
# -*- coding: ascii -*-
|
||
import os, sys
|
||
...
|
||
|
||
2. Without interpreter line, using plain text:
|
||
|
||
# This Python file uses the following encoding: utf-8
|
||
import os, sys
|
||
...
|
||
|
||
3. Text editors might have different ways of defining the file's
|
||
encoding, e.g.
|
||
|
||
#!/usr/local/bin/python
|
||
# coding: latin-1
|
||
import os, sys
|
||
...
|
||
|
||
4. Without encoding comment, Python's parser will assume ASCII
|
||
text:
|
||
|
||
#!/usr/local/bin/python
|
||
import os, sys
|
||
...
|
||
|
||
5. Encoding comments which don't work:
|
||
|
||
Missing "coding:" prefix:
|
||
|
||
#!/usr/local/bin/python
|
||
# latin-1
|
||
import os, sys
|
||
...
|
||
|
||
Encoding comment not on line 1 or 2:
|
||
|
||
#!/usr/local/bin/python
|
||
#
|
||
# -*- coding: latin-1 -*-
|
||
import os, sys
|
||
...
|
||
|
||
Unsupported encoding:
|
||
|
||
#!/usr/local/bin/python
|
||
# -*- coding: utf-42 -*-
|
||
import os, sys
|
||
...
|
||
|
||
Concepts
|
||
|
||
The PEP is based on the following concepts which would have to be
|
||
implemented to enable usage of such a magic comment:
|
||
|
||
1. The complete Python source file should use a single encoding.
|
||
Embedding of differently encoded data is not allowed and will
|
||
result in a decoding error during compilation of the Python
|
||
source code.
|
||
|
||
Any encoding which allows processing the first two lines in the
|
||
way indicated above is allowed as source code encoding, this
|
||
includes ASCII compatible encodings as well as certain
|
||
multi-byte encodings such as Shift_JIS. It does not include
|
||
encodings which use two or more bytes for all characters like
|
||
e.g. UTF-16. The reason for this is to keep the encoding
|
||
detection algorithm in the tokenizer simple.
|
||
|
||
2. Handling of escape sequences should continue to work as it does
|
||
now, but with all possible source code encodings, that is
|
||
standard string literals (both 8-bit and Unicode) are subject to
|
||
escape sequence expansion while raw string literals only expand
|
||
a very small subset of escape sequences.
|
||
|
||
3. Python's tokenizer/compiler combo will need to be updated to
|
||
work as follows:
|
||
|
||
1. read the file
|
||
|
||
2. decode it into Unicode assuming a fixed per-file encoding
|
||
|
||
3. convert it into a UTF-8 byte string
|
||
|
||
4. tokenize the UTF-8 content
|
||
|
||
5. compile it, creating Unicode objects from the given Unicode data
|
||
and creating string objects from the Unicode literal data
|
||
by first reencoding the UTF-8 data into 8-bit string data
|
||
using the given file encoding
|
||
|
||
Note that Python identifiers are restricted to the ASCII
|
||
subset of the encoding, and thus need no further conversion
|
||
after step 4.
|
||
|
||
Implementation
|
||
|
||
For backwards-compatibility with existing code which currently
|
||
uses non-ASCII in string literals without declaring an encoding,
|
||
the implementation will be introduced in two phases:
|
||
|
||
1. Allow non-ASCII in string literals and comments, by internally
|
||
treating a missing encoding declaration as a declaration of
|
||
"iso-8859-1". This will cause arbitrary byte strings to
|
||
correctly round-trip between step 2 and step 5 of the
|
||
processing, and provide compatibility with Python 2.2 for
|
||
Unicode literals that contain non-ASCII bytes.
|
||
|
||
A warning will be issued if non-ASCII bytes are found in the
|
||
input, once per improperly encoded input file.
|
||
|
||
2. Remove the warning, and change the default encoding to "ascii".
|
||
|
||
The builtin compile() API will be enhanced to accept Unicode as
|
||
input. 8-bit string input is subject to the standard procedure for
|
||
encoding detection as described above.
|
||
|
||
If a Unicode string with a coding declaration is passed to compile(),
|
||
a SyntaxError will be raised.
|
||
|
||
SUZUKI Hisao is working on a patch; see [2] for details. A patch
|
||
implementing only phase 1 is available at [1].
|
||
|
||
Phases
|
||
Implementation of steps 1 and 2 above were completed in 2.3,
|
||
except for changing the default encoding to "ascii".
|
||
|
||
The default encoding was set to "ascii" in version 2.5.
|
||
|
||
Scope
|
||
|
||
This PEP intends to provide an upgrade path from the current
|
||
(more-or-less) undefined source code encoding situation to a more
|
||
robust and portable definition.
|
||
|
||
References
|
||
|
||
[1] Phase 1 implementation:
|
||
http://python.org/sf/526840
|
||
[2] Phase 2 implementation:
|
||
http://python.org/sf/534304
|
||
|
||
History
|
||
|
||
1.10 and above: see CVS history
|
||
1.8: Added '.' to the coding RE.
|
||
1.7: Added warnings to phase 1 implementation. Replaced the
|
||
Latin-1 default encoding with the interpreter's default
|
||
encoding. Added tweaks to compile().
|
||
1.4 - 1.6: Minor tweaks
|
||
1.3: Worked in comments by Martin v. Loewis:
|
||
UTF-8 BOM mark detection, Emacs style magic comment,
|
||
two phase approach to the implementation
|
||
|
||
Copyright
|
||
|
||
This document has been placed in the public domain.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Local Variables:
|
||
mode: indented-text
|
||
indent-tabs-mode: nil
|
||
sentence-end-double-space: t
|
||
fill-column: 70
|
||
coding: utf-8
|
||
End:
|