[Edu-sig] The fate of raw_input() in Python 3000

[John Posner]

My apologies if someone else has already pointed out this difference between
sys.stdin.readline() and raw_input(): they return different strings.

>>> a = sys.stdin.readline()
spam

>>> b = raw_input()
spam

>>> a
'spam\n'

>>> b
'spam'

IMHO, that trailing NL character ...

(1) ... indicates the fact that these two functions were really designed for
different purposes: getting data from a file vs. getting data interactively
from a person.

(2) ... would impose yet another trap for beginning users to fall into.
("Teacher, I typed in 'Richard', but Python doesn't seem to think I did.")
Sure, we can try to sell strip() to the student, but I wouldn't blame
him/her for suspecting that Python is so dumb that it doesn't distinguish
between the content of a message and the gesture than ends the message.

-John Posner