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| author | Skip Montanaro <skip@pobox.com> | 2007-09-26 01:10:12 +0000 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Skip Montanaro <skip@pobox.com> | 2007-09-26 01:10:12 +0000 |
| commit | 4e02c503e789337b07cc14ece3f5adbf23732c89 (patch) | |
| tree | 94b8c2b5afc2e09a261f28c3ba57b2d334bd26b2 | |
| parent | 5dde61d0b96f6e22ef887e7cc262c479d9787eb7 (diff) | |
| download | cpython-git-4e02c503e789337b07cc14ece3f5adbf23732c89.tar.gz | |
Clarify the difference between text and binary files. I'm not sure the
tutorial is the right place to mention a file object's encoding.
| -rw-r--r-- | Doc/tutorial/inputoutput.rst | 22 |
1 files changed, 14 insertions, 8 deletions
diff --git a/Doc/tutorial/inputoutput.rst b/Doc/tutorial/inputoutput.rst index 2f4cdd3f82..cfea7bbd57 100644 --- a/Doc/tutorial/inputoutput.rst +++ b/Doc/tutorial/inputoutput.rst @@ -197,14 +197,20 @@ automatically added to the end. ``'r+'`` opens the file for both reading and writing. The *mode* argument is optional; ``'r'`` will be assumed if it's omitted. -On Windows and the Macintosh, ``'b'`` appended to the mode opens the file in -binary mode, so there are also modes like ``'rb'``, ``'wb'``, and ``'r+b'``. -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. This behind-the-scenes modification to file data is fine for ASCII -text files, but it'll corrupt binary data like that in :file:`JPEG` or -:file:`EXE` files. Be very careful to use binary mode when reading and writing -such files. +``'b'`` appended to the mode opens the file in binary mode, so there are +also modes like ``'rb'``, ``'wb'``, and ``'r+b'``. Python distinguishes +between text and binary files. Binary files are read and written without +any data transformation. In text mode, platform-specific newline +representations are automatically converted to newlines when read and +newline characters are automatically converted to the proper +platform-specific representation when written. This makes writing portable +code which reads or writes text files easier. In addition, when reading +from or writing to text files, the data are automatically decoded or +encoding, respectively, using the encoding associated with the file. + +This behind-the-scenes modification to file data is fine for text files, but +will corrupt binary data like that in :file:`JPEG` or :file:`EXE` files. Be +very careful to use binary mode when reading and writing such files. .. _tut-filemethods: |