test_mailcap fails if a mailcap file contains a non-decodable character

[petrosr2]

BPO	24152
Nosy	@ned-deily
Files	results

^{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 = None
created_at = <Date 2015-05-09.20:45:44.388>
labels = ['library']
title = 'test_mailcap fails if a mailcap file contains a non-decodable character'
updated_at = <Date 2015-05-09.21:42:06.442>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/petrosr2'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2015-05-09.21:42:06.442>
actor = 'ned.deily'
assignee = 'none'
closed = False
closed_date = None
closer = None
components = ['Library (Lib)']
creation = <Date 2015-05-09.20:45:44.388>
creator = 'petrosr2'
dependencies = []
files = ['39330']
hgrepos = ['308']
issue_num = 24152
keywords = []
message_count = 3.0
messages = ['242840', '242842', '242843']
nosy_count = 2.0
nosy_names = ['ned.deily', 'petrosr2']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = None
stage = 'needs patch'
status = 'open'
superseder = None
type = None
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue24152'
versions = ['Python 3.4', 'Python 3.5']

[petrosr2]

UnicodeDecodeError

[petrosr2]

running command over PuTTY on Ubuntu 3.13, python 2.7.6

$ ./python -m test test_mailcap

[1/1] test_mailcap
test test_mailcap failed -- Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/petrosr2/Documents/opensource/cpy/Lib/test/test_mailcap.py", line 126, in test_system_mailcap
    caps = mailcap.getcaps()
  File "/home/petrosr2/Documents/opensource/cpy/Lib/mailcap.py", line 26, in getcaps
    morecaps = readmailcapfile(fp)
  File "/home/petrosr2/Documents/opensource/cpy/Lib/mailcap.py", line 64, in readmailcapfile
    line = fp.readline()
  File "/home/petrosr2/Documents/opensource/cpy/Lib/encodings/ascii.py", line 26, in decode
    return codecs.ascii_decode(input, self.errors)[0]
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 3820: ordinal not in range(128)

1 test failed:
test_mailcap

[ned-deily]

I can reproduce the failure by arbitrarily adding a non-ascii character to one of the mailcap files searched for by the mailcap module (https://docs.python.org/3/library/mailcap.html#mailcap.getcaps), like $HOME/.mailcap, and by setting the process to an ascii-only locale (export LANG=C). While this might be a somewhat unusual combination in practice, mailcap should be able to handle it.

By the way, this is a Python 3 problem since test_mailcap does not exist in Python 2. 2.7.6 might be the version of the system-supplied Python, but you appeared to be running with a Python you built. Try

./python -V

to show the version of the Python you are using.

[hugovk]

Note that mailcap will be deprecated in Python 3.11 and removed in 3.13:

• PEP 594 – Removing dead batteries from the standard library
• Deprecate modules listed in PEP 594 #91217

[AA-Turner]

Closing per Hugo's comment.

A

[hugovk]

Actually closing per my comment :)

Plus 3.12 is now closed to new features, and realistically this won't be fixed in the next two weeks.

https://discuss.python.org/t/postponing-3-12-beta-1-feature-freeze/26406/11?u=hugovk