[New-bugs-announce] [issue3849] FUD in documentation for urllib.urlopen()

[raz]

New submission from raz <filter-pythonbugs at mbox.bz>:

The documentation for urllib.urlopen() states:

"One caveat: the read() method, if the size argument is omitted or
negative, may not read until the end of the data stream; there is no
good way to determine that the entire stream from a socket has been read
in the general case."

To an innocent reader this effectively translates to:
"The read() method may silently truncate your data but we won't tell you
any details about it."

The paragraph should be clarified as follows:

- Under what circumstances can truncation happen (which protocols are
affected, under which conditions?)
- What are safe use-cases where truncation can not happen (e.g. the
common case of a simple HTTP-GET)

----------
assignee: georg.brandl
components: Documentation
messages: 73122
nosy: georg.brandl, raz
severity: normal
status: open
title: FUD in documentation for urllib.urlopen()
type: behavior
versions: Python 2.4, Python 2.5

_______________________________________
Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue3849>
_______________________________________