[Python-Dev] other "magic strings" issues

Michael Hudson mwh at python.net
Mon Nov 10 10:56:01 EST 2003


Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> writes:

>> 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().

I may just be being thick today but I can't think of many.  Most of
the time passing in an already on file object would be better
interface, surely?  Well, there's things like the codec writers, but
textfile would hopefully subsume them.

> 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).

Does text translation cover unicode issues here?

Cheers,
mwh

-- 
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