[Python-Dev] file() or open()?

[Nick Bastin]

On Jul 6, 2004, at 7:09 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> I'm not sure I agree with this.  While open() and file() are currently
> aliases for the same object, this may not always be the case (it
> certainly wasn't always the case :-).  In the future, I could see
> open() become a factory function again that could return an instance
> of a different class depending on the mode argument, the default
> encoding for files, or who knows what; but file will always remain a
> class.

I agree - I could see a future where open() would support any valid 
URI, for example, while that wouldn't likely be true for file() 
(although file() could reasonably support a local subset).

--
Nick