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

M.-A. Lemburg mal at egenix.com
Thu Feb 16 21:50:10 CET 2006

Guido van Rossum wrote:

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.

All the variations aside:

What will be the explicit way to open a file in bytes mode and in text mode (I for one would like to move away from open() completely as well) ?

Will we have a single file type with two different modes or two different types ?

-- Marc-Andre Lemburg eGenix.com

Professional Python Services directly from the Source (#1, Feb 16 2006)

Python/Zope Consulting and Support ... http://www.egenix.com/ mxODBC.Zope.Database.Adapter ... http://zope.egenix.com/ mxODBC, mxDateTime, mxTextTools ... http://python.egenix.com/

::: Try mxODBC.Zope.DA for Windows,Linux,Solaris,FreeBSD for free ! ::::

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list