[Python-3000] io library/PEP 3116 bits (original) (raw)

Greg Ewing greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz
Tue Jul 31 03:58:01 CEST 2007


skip at pobox.com wrote:

The other thing I wanted to comment on is the default value for n in the various read methods. In some places it's -1 (why not zero? *),

Maybe because reading 0 bytes already has a well-defined (if not particularly useful) meaning?

You probably wouldn't use it explicitly, but it could arise as the result of a calculation, and it would then need to be special-cased if it had a reserved meaning.

(*) A few days ago at work I saw someone check in a piece of code with

f.read(-1)

That does look strange. Maybe the result of someone reading the docs and failing to notice that there was an easier spelling.

-- Greg



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