python tutorial

[Robert Kern]

On 2009-06-17 19:36, steve wrote:
>> "Carl Banks"<pavlovevidence at gmail.com>  wrote in message
>> news:2f6271b1-5ffa-4cec-81f8->>0276ad647026 at p5g2000pre.googlegroups.com...
>> On Jun 15, 7:56 pm, "steve"<st... at nospam.au>  wrote:
>>> I was just looking at the python tutorial, and I noticed these lines:
>>>
>>> http://docs.python.org/tutorial/inputoutput.html#reading-and-writing-...
>>>
>>> "Windows makes a distinction between text and binary files;
>>> "the end-of-line characters in text files are automatically altered
>>> "slightly when data is read or written.
>>>
>>> I don't see any obvious way to at docs.python.org to get that corrected:
>>> Is
>>> there some standard procedure?
>> What's wrong with it?
>>
>>
>> Carl Banks
>
> 1) Windows does not make a distinction between text and binary files.
>
> 2) end-of-line characters in text files are not automatically altered by
> Windows.

The Windows implementation of the C standard makes the distinction. E.g. using 
stdio to write out "foo\nbar\n" in a file opened in text mode will result in 
"foo\r\nbar\r\n" in the file. Reading such a file in text mode will result in 
"foo\nbar\n" in memory. Reading such a file in binary mode will result in 
"foo\r\nbar\r\n". In your bug report, you point out several proprietary APIs 
that do not make such a distinction, but that does not remove the 
implementations of the standard APIs that do make such a distinction.

   http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/yeby3zcb.aspx

Perhaps it's a bit dodgy to blame "Windows" per se rather than its C runtime, 
but I think it's a reasonable statement on the whole.

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
  that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
  an underlying truth."
   -- Umberto Eco