[Python-ideas] Python 3000 TIOBE -3%

[Terry Reedy]

On 2/11/2012 5:47 AM, Paul Moore wrote:
> On 11 February 2012 00:07, Terry Reedy<tjreedy at udel.edu>  wrote:
>>>>   Nor is there in 3.x.
>>
>> I view that claim as FUD, at least for many users, and at least until the
>> persons making the claim demonstrate it. In particular, I claim that people
>> who use Python2 knowing nothing of unicode do not need to know much more to
>> do the same things in Python3.
>
> Concrete example, then.
>
> I have a text file, in an unknown encoding (yes, it does happen to
> me!) but opening in an editor shows it's mainly-ASCII. I want to find
> all the lines starting with a '*'. The simple
>
> with open('myfile.txt') as f:
>      for line in f:
>          if line.startswith('*'):
>              print(line)
>
> fails with encoding errors. What do I do?

Good example. I believe adding ", encoding='latin-1'" to open() is 
sufficient. (And from your response elsewhere to Stephen, you seem to 
know that.) This should be in the tutorial if not already. But in 
reference to what I wrote above, knowing that magic phrase is not 
'knowledge of unicode'. And I include it in the 'not much more 
knowledge' needed for Python 3.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy