Issue 5821: Documentation: mention 'close' and iteration for tarfile.TarFile.extractfile() (original) (raw)

The current documentation for tarfile.TarFile.extractfile() does not mention that the returned 'file-like object' supports close() and also iteration. The attached patch (against svn trunk) fixes this.

(Background: I was wondering whether I could write

def process_and_close_file(f_in): with closing(f_in) as f: # Do stuff with f.

and have it work whether f_in was a true file or the return value of extractfile(), and thought from the documentation that I couldn't. Of course, I could have just tried it, but I think fixing the documentation wouldn't hurt.)