[Python-Dev] Unicode (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Tue, 30 Apr 2002 08:59:58 -0400

Jack Jansen <Jack.Jansen@oratrix.com> writes:

> It could be argued that open(..., 'r').read() returns a text string > and open(..., 'rb').read() returns a binary blob. That can't work: to get a text string, you need to know the encoding. Regards, Martin

In my ideal rewrite of the I/O subsystem, an encoding is specified (or a site-or-app-specific default encoding used) when a file is opened.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)