On 8 Apr 2021, at 22:31, Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> wrote:

In issue14243 [1] there are two issues being tracked:

- the difference in opening shared files between posix and Windows
- the behavior of closing the underlying file in the middle of
NamedTemporaryFile's context management

I'd like to address and get feedback on the context management issue.

```python
from tempfile import NamedTemporaryFile

with NamedTemporaryFile() as fp:
fp.write(b'some data’)

fp.flush(). # needed to ensure data is actually in the file ;-)

fp = open(fp.name())
data = fp.read()

assert data == 'some_data'
```

I generally use a slightly different pattern for this:

with NamedTemporaryFile() as fp:

fp.write(b'some data’)

fp.flush()

fp.seek(0)

data = fp.read()

That is, reuse the same “fp” and just reset the stream. An advantage of this approach is that you don’t need a named temporary file for this (and could even use a spooled one). That said, I at times use this pattern with a named temporary file with a quick self-test for the file contents before handing of the file name to an external proces.

Occasionally, it is desirable to close and reopen the temporary file in order to read the contents (there are OSes that cannot open a temp file for reading while it is still open for writing). This would look like:

```python
from tempfile import NamedTemporaryFile

with NamedTemporaryFile() as fp:
   fp.write(b'some data')
   fp.close() # Windows workaround
   fp.open()
   data = fp.read()

assert data == 'some_data'
```

The problem is that, even though `fp.open()` is still inside the context manager, the `close()` call deletes the file [2]. To handle this scenario, my proposal is two-fold:

1) stop using the TEMPFILE OS attribute so the OS doesn't delete the file on close
2) add `.open()` to NamedTemporaryFile

I’ve never had the need for such an API, but must say that I barely use Windows and hence have not run into the “cannot open file for reading what it is still open for writing” issue.

A possible side effect of (1) is that temp files may accumulate if the interpreter crashes, but given the file-management abilities in today's software that seems like a minor annoyance at most.

The backwards compatibility issue of (1) is that the file is no longer deleted after a manual `close()` -- but why one would call close() and then stay inside the CM, outside of testing, I cannot fathom. [3]

So, opinions on modifying NamedTemporaryFile to not delete on close() if inside a CM, and add open() ?

--
~Ethan~