[Python-Dev] file() or open()? (original) (raw)

Nick Bastin nbastin at opnet.com
Wed Jul 7 04:55:24 CEST 2004

On Jul 6, 2004, at 7:09 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote:

I'm not sure I agree with this. While open() and file() are currently aliases for the same object, this may not always be the case (it certainly wasn't always the case :-). In the future, I could see open() become a factory function again that could return an instance of a different class depending on the mode argument, the default encoding for files, or who knows what; but file will always remain a class.

I agree - I could see a future where open() would support any valid URI, for example, while that wouldn't likely be true for file() (although file() could reasonably support a local subset).

-- Nick

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