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

Bob Ippolito bob at redivi.com
Wed Jul 7 22:51:09 CEST 2004

n Jul 7, 2004, at 4:46 PM, orbitz wrote:

Terry Reedy wrote:

"François Pinard" <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca> wrote in message news:20040707183033.GA30577 at alcyon.progiciels-bpi.ca...

I perceived the introduction of `file()' as a nice cleanup in Python. As a user, so did I. I like the cosistency of using file along with int, tuple, list, dict, type, (and did I leave out something), and all user classes as constructors of instances of themselves. I considered more as the action being performed. I'm opening something, in this case a file. And now I have an object which has been opened, I can perform operations on it, and when I'm done I close it.

But you also open sockets, pipes, applications, bank accounts, etc.
"open" seems seriously ambiguous to me, and it's not a "generic" function like len or iter. The only good reason I see is to associate "open" with files is because that's just how it's always been done in Python and C.

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