[Python-Dev] str object going in Py3K (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Thu Feb 16 19:33:19 CET 2006

On 2/15/06, Alex Martelli <aleaxit at gmail.com> wrote:

I agree, or, MAL's idea of bytes.open() and unicode.open() is also good.

No, the bytes and text data types shouldn't have to be tied to the I/O system. (The latter tends to evolve at a much faster rate so should be isolated.)

My fondest dream is that we do NOT have an 'open' builtin which has proven to be very error-prone when used in Windows by newbies (as evidenced by beginner errors as seen on c.l.py, the python-help lists, and other venues) -- defaulting 'open' to text is errorprone, defaulting it to binary doesn't seem the greatest idea either, principle "when in doubt, resist the temptation to guess" strongly suggests not having 'open' as a built-in at all.

Bill Janssen has expressed this sentiment too. But this is because open() appears to work for both types to Unix programmers. If open() is only usable for text data, even Unix programmers will be using openbytes() from the start.

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

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