* Phil Mayers p.mayers@imperial.ac.uk [2008-09-20 11:44:30 +0100]:
Unfortunately, for 'file-like' objects, like StringIOs, this
trashes the 'file'; not so useful since I need to work with the result.
Huh, so it does. That's a pretty rubbish feature of StringIO
Perhaps you could subclass StringIO to "neutralize" the data-destroying functionality of close()?