Re: [Python-ideas] Python 3000 TIOBE -3%

Masklinn writes:

Why not open the file in binary mode in stead? (and replace `'*'` by `b'*'` in the startswith call)

This will often work, but it's task-dependent. In particular, I believe not just `.startswith(), but general regexps work with either bytes or str in Python 3. But other APIs may not. and you're going to need to prefix *all* literals (including those in modules your code imports!) with `b`. So you import a module that does exactly what you want, and be stymied by a TypeError because the module wants Unicode. This would not happen with Python 2, and there's the rub.