Help with python-list archives

[random joe]

On Jan 5, 5:39 pm, Miki Tebeka <miki.teb... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is the Google groups search not good enough?

That works but i would like to do some regexes and set up some
defaults.

> Also, can you give an example of the code and an input file?

Sure. Take the most recent file as example. "2012 - January.txt.gz".
If you use the python doc example this is the result. If i use "r" or
"rb" the result is the same.

>>> import gzip
>>> f1 = gzip.open('C:\\2012-January.txt.gz', 'rb')
>>> data = f1.read()
>>> data[:100]
'\x1f\x8b\x08\x08x\n\x05O\x02\xff/srv/mailman/archives/private/python-
list/2012-January.txt\x00\xec\xbdy\x7f\xdb\xc6\xb50\xfcw\xf0)\xa6z|+
\xaa!!l\xdc\x14[\x8b-;V\xe2-\x92\x12'
>>> f2 = gzip.open('C:\\2012-January.txt.gz', 'r')
>>> data = f2.read()
>>> data[:100]
'\x1f\x8b\x08\x08x\n\x05O\x02\xff/srv/mailman/archives/private/python-
list/2012-January.txt\x00\xec\xbdy\x7f\xdb\xc6\xb50\xfcw\xf0)\xa6z|+
\xaa!!l\xdc\x14[\x8b-;V\xe2-\x92\x12'

The docs and google provide no clear answer. I even tried 7zip and
ended up with nothing but gibberish characters. There must be levels
of compression or something. Why could they not simply use the tar
format? Is there anywhere else one can download the archives?