[Python-Dev] Improve open() to support reading file starting with an unicode BOM (original) (raw)

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Sat Jan 9 21:09:27 CET 2010

Antoine Pitrou wrote:

Walter Dörwald <walter livinglogic.de> writes:

On the surface this looks like there's an encoding named "BOM", but looking at your patch I found that the check is still done in TextIOWrapper. IMHO the best approach would to the implement a real codec named "BOM" (or "sniff"). This doesn't require any changes to the IO library. It could even be developed as a standalone project and published in the Cheeseshop. Sorry but this is missing the point. The point here is to improve the open() function. I'm sure people who know about encodings are able to install the chardet library or even whip up their own BOM detection routine...

How does the requirement that it be implemented as a codec miss the point?

FWIW, I agree with Walter that if it is provided through the encoding= argument, it should be a codec. If it is built into the open function (for whatever reason), it must be provided by some other parameter.

I do see the point that it becomes available to end users only when released as part of Python. However, this also means that applications won't be using it for another three years or so, since they'll have to support older Python versions as well (unless it is integrated in the case where no encoding is specified).

Regards, Martin

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