On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 5:42 PM, Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> wrote:

This sounds more like a job for a file-like object, maybe a subclass

of file that reads (and buffers) the first 512 bytes, guesses whether
it's text or binary, and then watches everything that goes through
after that and revises its guess later on.

Something like:

  if fh.read(512).isprintable():

      do_the_ascii_stuff(fh)

  else:

      do_the_bin_stuff(fh)

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