Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org> writes:

This might beling on SF, except it's already been solved in Python 2.3, and I need guidance about what to do for Python 2.2.2.

In 2.2.1, a lone surrogate encoded into utf8 gives an utf8 string that cannot be decode back. In 2.3, this is fixed. Should this be fixed in 2.2.2 as well?

I think this was discussed really quite a long time ago, like six months or so.

I'm asking because it caused problems with reading .pyc files: if there's a Unicode literal containing a lone surrogate, reading the .pyc file causes an exception:

UnicodeError: UTF-8 decoding error: unexpected code byte

It looks like revision 2.128 fixed this for 2.3, but that patch doesn't cleanly apply to the 2.2 maintenance branch. Can someone help?

I think the reason this didn't get fixed in 2.2.1 is that it necessitates bumping MAGIC. I can probably dig up more references if you want. Cheers, M. -- 34. The string is a stark data structure and everywhere it is passed there is much duplication of process. It is a perfect vehicle for hiding information. -- Alan Perlis, http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html