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email.header.decode_header return type is not consistent #68985
Description
| BPO | 24797 |
|---|---|
| Nosy | @warsaw, @bitdancer |
| Superseder |
Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.
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GitHub fields:
assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2015-08-05.15:49:44.577>
created_at = <Date 2015-08-05.15:18:45.131>
labels = ['type-bug', 'expert-email']
title = 'email.header.decode_header return type is not consistent'
updated_at = <Date 2015-08-17.16:10:37.946>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/SebastianKreft'bugs.python.org fields:
activity = <Date 2015-08-17.16:10:37.946>
actor = 'r.david.murray'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2015-08-05.15:49:44.577>
closer = 'r.david.murray'
components = ['email']
creation = <Date 2015-08-05.15:18:45.131>
creator = 'Sebastian Kreft'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 24797
keywords = []
message_count = 4.0
messages = ['248047', '248049', '248734', '248735']
nosy_count = 3.0
nosy_names = ['barry', 'r.david.murray', 'Sebastian Kreft']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'duplicate'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = '21492'
type = 'behavior'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue24797'
versions = ['Python 3.4', 'Python 3.5', 'Python 3.6']
Activity
SebastianKreft commentedon Aug 5, 2015
The return type of email.header.decode_header is not consistent. When there are encoded parts the return type is a list of (bytes, charset or None) (Note that the documentation says it is a list of (str, charset)). However, when there are no encoded parts the return type is [(str, None)]. Note that, at the end of the function, there is a routine that converts everything to bytes.
Compare:
In [01]: email.header.decode_header('=?UTF-8?Q?foo?=bar')
Out[01]: [(b'foo', 'utf-8'), (b'bar', None)]
In [02]: email.header.decode_header('foobar')
Out[02]: [('foobar', None)]
bitdancer commentedon Aug 5, 2015
Yeah, don't use that, use the new APIs.
SebastianKreft commentedon Aug 17, 2015
And what would the new API be?
There is nothing pointing to it either in the documentation https://docs.python.org/3.4/library/email.header.html or source code.
bitdancer commentedon Aug 17, 2015
Right, it's provisional in 3.4. I'm working on the doc rewrite now (although I suppose there's a chance it won't get accepted for 3.5, I expect it to).
Take a look at https://docs.python.org/3/library/email.policy.html. Basically, if you use EmailMessage instead of Message (and therefore policy.default instead of policy.compat32) header parsing and decoding is handled for you.