1.The link I provided wasn't how I wanted it to be. I was using it as an example to show it wasn't impossible.
2.You yourself stated it doesn't work on UTF-8 files. If you wanted one that worked on all text files, it wouldn't work right.
3.Did no one get the 'nothingness/is/eternal' joke?
So...although that is a nice piece of code, an os.path implementation would probably be more complete and foolproof.
Eli Bendersky
On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 8:40 AM, Ryan
wrote: Here's something more interesting than my shlex idea.
os.path is, pretty much, the Python FS toolbox, along with shutil. But, there's one feature missing: check if a file is binary. It isn't hard, see http://code.activestate.com/recipes/173220/. But, writing 50 lines of code for a more common task isn't really Python-ish.
So...
What if os.path had a binary checker that works just like isfile: os.path.isbinary('/nothingness/is/eternal') # Returns boolean
Some time ago I put on a gas mask and dove into the Perl source code to figure out how its "is binary" and "is text" operators work: http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2011/10/19/perls-guess-if-file-is-text-or-binar...
I would recommend against including such a simplistic heuristic in the Python stdlib.
Eli
-- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.