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

Aahz aahz at pythoncraft.com
Mon Jul 12 15:44:44 CEST 2004

On Sat, Jul 10, 2004, Terry Reedy wrote:

In a previous post, Guido justified 'open' on the basis that applications 'open' 'files'. However, in every such application I can think of at the moment, 'open' means 'read the data and convert it to one of the application's internal native formats, even if it was written in a different format by another application. In other words, app.open(path) == file(path).read().convert(filetype(path)). Conversely, one never opens a file before saveing a fresh new document; one just saves-as. So Python's open() is quite different from the app usage of 'open'.

On the gripping hand, just about every programming language in the Algol family uses open(). And yes, I'm specifically including C/C++ and Perl.

Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/

"Typing is cheap. Thinking is expensive." --Roy Smith, c.l.py

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