Question: Does PTY.write() take in unicode string or bytes?

[shuheng-liu]

Hi there,
First, thanks for this awesome library! However, I have a minor confusion about the input type of PTY.write() and I'd appreciate your explanation.

from winpty import PTY

cols, rows = 80, 25
process = PTY(cols, rows)
process.spawn("python.exe")

process.write('print(123)\r\n')   # <-- line in question
print(process.read(), end="", flush=True)

Through reading the README.md example and the doc-string here, I think process.write takes in a python bytes string, meaning I need to add a b in front of the string literal. However, if I do so, I get the following TypeError

TypeError: argument 'to_write': 'bytes' object cannot be converted to 'PyString'

The only way I can make it work is to pass a unicode string (default string for python3).

This is fine in most circumstances, as I can just decode the bytes into unicode string. However, in cases where we want to pass in certain control characters, e.g., ARROW UP (\xe0H) on my device and terminal, I cannot decode the bytes it into unicode. Is there a workaround?

---

FYI, I'm using an ARM-based Windows 11 via Parallels on a M2 MacBook Pro. The python version is 3.12.1. My python environment is pretty pristine with only the following packages installed

colorama==0.4.6
flaky==3.7.0
iniconfig==2.0.0
packaging==23.2
pexpect==4.9.0
pluggy==1.3.0
ptyprocess==0.7.0
pytest==7.4.3
pytest-lazy-fixture==0.6.3
pywinpty==2.0.12

All the above packages are installed using pip install.