5 ms·

But people that have that csv issue have deeper lurker encoding issues they're probably not aware of. Sure, don't change the stuff that works and cause yoursel

by aidos 10y ago

But people that have that csv issue have deeper lurker encoding issues they're probably not aware of. Sure, don't change the stuff that works and cause yourself unnecessary pain, but don't blame python 3 for your misencoded data.

jzwinck 10y ago
Oh we are perfectly well aware of our encoding issues. In NumPy, one of the most important libraries in Python 2 or 3, strings always take one byte per character. And it's not going to change. So the built in csv module needs to support a reasonable behavior. Which it does not. If a company tries Python 3 and discovers basic things like CSV produce utter gibberish, they would do well to opt out. And they do--in droves. My data is not misencoded, you see. It's just misunderstood.
- guitarbill 10y ago
  > So the built in csv module needs to support a reasonable behavior. Which it does not. It could be argued that the csv module's behaviour is reasonable, and NumPy's isn't. (I'm not 100% sure about all the details of this issue) Hopefully, NumPy will change it's behaviour to match Python 3, but if not you could still use the NumPy CSV routines like `loadtxt` or `genfromtxt` [0]. So then this becomes a documentation change to add some warnings to both modules. > they would do well to opt out. And they do--in droves. This is simply not true. They would do well to handle strings properly and so avoid bugs in future - something Python 3 actively encourages, and Python 2 obscures. And while I can't speak for every company, our metrics show that our Python 3 code has far less customer issues than Python 2, Perl, or Ruby. Now that's business value. (Edit: I mean it's hard to make the comparison - the Perl code is e.g. older - but we're writing code now, and when the interns add new stuff to the Python 3 codebase, it breaks less. All of them are still actively developed, and the Ruby one is about as old as the Python 3 one). [0] https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/generated/numpy.loadtxt.html https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/generated/numpy.l...
  - jimnotgym 10y ago
    I moved to Python and got back into coding specifically to work with csv files. And from the first time I used code copy and pasted from SO or wherever to import and export CSV's with Python 3 I have not found that I am plagued by unreliable behavior and mischievous encoding. Yes there seems to be a type conversion necessary with NumPy, but it simply is not true that Python 3 has an endemic problem with CSV files! In fact, the reason I chose Python was because I was able to dive so quickly into real problems like this with no problems whatsoever. This is a minor issue for someone porting from 2 to 3, it is not a problem with 3
  - ianamartin 10y ago
    I say this as someone who uses the latest version of Python available in every new project or script. Text encoding issues are absolute garbage in Python 3.x I fucking hate the way that csv module works with text encodings. As soon as I can figure out a reliable way to take latin-1 and save it as UTF-8 without breaking everything, I will try to shoehorn in a PR. Right now, it's fucking awful. My ETL pipeline hates it, I hate it, my boss hates it, and my internal constituents hate it. Because it sucks. A file I can read in one encoding and write as another should be readable with the encoding I wrote it in. That is not currently the case with the latest version of Python. And it makes me hate the world.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
      with open('some latin-1 file', 'rb) as f: text = f.read().decode('latin-1') with open('some utf8 file', 'wb') as f: f.write(text.encode('utf-8')) Python 3's string encoding support is super good. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you use bytes as a string you are Doing It Wrong. If you use bytes as a string you are Doing It Wrong. If you use bytes as a string you are Doing It Wrong.
      - ianamartin 10y ago
        And what happens when you don't get a choice about what strings you are digesting?
- vurpo 10y ago
  >In NumPy, one of the most important libraries in Python 2 or 3, strings always take one byte per character. So I won't be able to use NumPy with either of my two native languages. That sounds like a bit of a shortcoming for the majority of the world.
  - aidos 10y ago
    Numpy isn't really used like that though. It's for numerical computation. There might be cases for putting text in there but you can always keep it locally and map it to an int that you use in numpy for mapping (I do that in places).

by aidos 10y ago

jzwinck 10y ago

Oh we are perfectly well aware of our encoding issues. In NumPy, one of the most important libraries in Python 2 or 3, strings always take one byte per character. And it's not going to change. So the built in csv module needs to support a reasonable behavior. Which it does not. If a company tries Python 3 and discovers basic things like CSV produce utter gibberish, they would do well to opt out. And they do--in droves. My data is not misencoded, you see. It's just misunderstood.

guitarbill 10y ago
> So the built in csv module needs to support a reasonable behavior. Which it does not. It could be argued that the csv module's behaviour is reasonable, and NumPy's isn't. (I'm not 100% sure about all the details of this issue) Hopefully, NumPy will change it's behaviour to match Python 3, but if not you could still use the NumPy CSV routines like `loadtxt` or `genfromtxt` [0]. So then this becomes a documentation change to add some warnings to both modules. > they would do well to opt out. And they do--in droves. This is simply not true. They would do well to handle strings properly and so avoid bugs in future - something Python 3 actively encourages, and Python 2 obscures. And while I can't speak for every company, our metrics show that our Python 3 code has far less customer issues than Python 2, Perl, or Ruby. Now that's business value. (Edit: I mean it's hard to make the comparison - the Perl code is e.g. older - but we're writing code now, and when the interns add new stuff to the Python 3 codebase, it breaks less. All of them are still actively developed, and the Ruby one is about as old as the Python 3 one). [0] https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/generated/numpy.loadtxt.html https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/generated/numpy.l...
- jimnotgym 10y ago
  I moved to Python and got back into coding specifically to work with csv files. And from the first time I used code copy and pasted from SO or wherever to import and export CSV's with Python 3 I have not found that I am plagued by unreliable behavior and mischievous encoding. Yes there seems to be a type conversion necessary with NumPy, but it simply is not true that Python 3 has an endemic problem with CSV files! In fact, the reason I chose Python was because I was able to dive so quickly into real problems like this with no problems whatsoever. This is a minor issue for someone porting from 2 to 3, it is not a problem with 3
- ianamartin 10y ago
  I say this as someone who uses the latest version of Python available in every new project or script. Text encoding issues are absolute garbage in Python 3.x I fucking hate the way that csv module works with text encodings. As soon as I can figure out a reliable way to take latin-1 and save it as UTF-8 without breaking everything, I will try to shoehorn in a PR. Right now, it's fucking awful. My ETL pipeline hates it, I hate it, my boss hates it, and my internal constituents hate it. Because it sucks. A file I can read in one encoding and write as another should be readable with the encoding I wrote it in. That is not currently the case with the latest version of Python. And it makes me hate the world.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
    with open('some latin-1 file', 'rb) as f: text = f.read().decode('latin-1') with open('some utf8 file', 'wb') as f: f.write(text.encode('utf-8')) Python 3's string encoding support is super good. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you use bytes as a string you are Doing It Wrong. If you use bytes as a string you are Doing It Wrong. If you use bytes as a string you are Doing It Wrong.
    - ianamartin 10y ago
      And what happens when you don't get a choice about what strings you are digesting?
vurpo 10y ago
>In NumPy, one of the most important libraries in Python 2 or 3, strings always take one byte per character. So I won't be able to use NumPy with either of my two native languages. That sounds like a bit of a shortcoming for the majority of the world.
- aidos 10y ago
  Numpy isn't really used like that though. It's for numerical computation. There might be cases for putting text in there but you can always keep it locally and map it to an int that you use in numpy for mapping (I do that in places).