Re: [RFC/PATCH 2/8 v3] git_remote_helpers: fix input when running under Python 3

john@keeping.me.uk wrote on Wed, 16 Jan 2013 09:45 +0000:

On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 07:03:16PM -0500, Pete Wyckoff wrote:

quoted

I'd suggest for this Python conundrum using byte-string literals, e.g.:

        lines = check_output(args).strip().split(b'\n')
	value, name = line.split(b' ')
	name = name.strip(b'commit\t')

Essentially identical to what you have, but avoids naming "utf-8" as
the encoding.  It instead relies on Python's interpretation of
ASCII characters in string context, which is exactly what C does.

The problem is that AFAICT the byte-string prefix is only available in
Python 2.7 and later (compare [1] and [2]).  I think we need this more
convoluted code if we want to keep supporting Python 2.6 (although
perhaps 'ascii' would be a better choice than 'utf-8').

[1] http://docs.python.org/2.6/reference/lexical_analysis.html#literals
[2] http://docs.python.org/2.7/reference/lexical_analysis.html#literals

Drat.  The b'' syntax seems to work on 2.6.8, in spite of
the docs, but certainly isn't in 2.5.

I think you had hit on the best compromise with encoding,
but maybe ascii is a little less presumptuous than utf-8,
and more indicative of the encoding assumption.

		-- Pete