[Python-Dev] Proposal for new core module: UserFIle (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Thu Dec 11 19:57:05 EST 2003

> > rwio = UserFile.MergedIO(sys.stdin, sys.stdout)

> That's not a motivation. How does writing rwio.readline() and > rw.write() enable your program to do something that wasn't > possible by using sys.stdin and sys.stdout directly?

MY programs could do that, but what if you got some third party module that wanted a single read/write file object and you wanted to use it on stdio?

It makes APIs more regular and consistent by requiring only one read/write object. For example, the library method could be passed a single read/write Unix socket, or a read/write TCP socket, or stdio object (MergedIO object).

Well, the standard way of wrapping a file object around a socket pretty much forces you to have separate read and write objects; check out the makefile() method. :-)

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

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