[Python-Dev] other "magic strings" issues

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Mon Nov 10 10:39:07 EST 2003


> I think I prefer Guido's idea that when a function argument is almost
> always constant you should really have two functions and /F's (?)
> idea that there should be a 'textfile' function:
> 
>     textfile(path[, mode='r'[, encoding='ascii']]) -> file object
> 
> or similar.

I'm not so sure about that in this case.  There are quite a few places
where one writes a wrapper for open() that takes a mode and passes it
on to the real open().  Having to distinguish between multiple open()
functions would complexify this.

OTOH my experimental standard I/O replacement (nondist/sandbox/sio)
does a similar thing, by providing different constructors for
different functionality (buffering, text translation, low-level I/O
basis).

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)



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