error when printing a UTF-8 string (python 2.6.2)

[python at bdurham.com]

Hi Peter,

>> Are you saying all open() calls in Python that read text files,
>> automatically convert UTF-8 content to Unicode in the same manner as the
>> following might when using Python 2.6?
>> 
>> codecs.open( fileName, mode='r', encoding='UTF8', ... )

> That's what I meant to say, but it's not actually true.

Thanks for the clarification.

It sounds like Python 3 has unified the standard library open() function
and the codecs.open() into a single function?

In other words, would it be accurate to say that in Python 3, there is
no longer a need to use codecs.open()?

Any idea if the above applies to Python 2.7?

Thank you Peter!

Malcolm