safest way to open files on all platforms

[Fredrik Lundh]

"rbt" wrote:

> I'm using 'rb' in a situation where all files on the drive are opened. I'm not checking how the 
> file is encoded before opening it (text, unicode, jpeg, etc.) That's why I though 'rb' would be 
> safest.

if "safest way to open files" meant "safest way to open binary files", why
didn't you say so in your first post?

> Can 'U' be used with 'rb'? Should it be?

"U" is for text files, "b" is for binary files.  binary files contain bytes, text
files contain text.  if you're opening a file to read it as text (readline, read-
lines, iteration, etc), use "r" or "rU".  if you're opening a file to read it as
binary bytes (read), use "rb".

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