[Python-ideas] struct.unpack should support open files

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, Dec 24, 2018 at 03:01:07PM +0200, Andrew Svetlov wrote:

> Handling files overcomplicates both implementation and mental space for API
> saving.

Perhaps. Although the implementation doesn't seem that complicated, and 
the mental space for the API not that much more difficult:

    unpack from bytes, or read from a file;

versus 

    unpack from bytes, which you might read from a file


Seems about the same to me, except that with the proposal you don't have 
to calculate the size of the struct before reading.

I haven't thought about this very deeply, but at first glance, I like 
Drew's idea of being able to just pass an open file to unpack and have 
it read from the file.

 
> Files can be opened in text mode, what to do in this case? What
> exception should be raised?

That is easy to answer: the same exception you get if you pass text to 
unpack() when it is expecting bytes:

py> struct.unpack(fmt, "a")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'

There should be no difference whether the text comes from a literal, a 
variable, or is read from a file.


> How to handle OS errors?

unpack() shouldn't try to handle them. If an OS error occurs, raise an 
exception, exactly the same way file.read() would raise an exception.


-- 
Steve