[I18n-sig] Modified open() builtin (Re: Python Character Model)

[M.-A. Lemburg]

"Barry A. Warsaw" wrote:
> 
> >>>>> "TE" == Tom Emerson <tree@basistech.com> writes:
> 
>     TE> What if it were possible to specify the "default" encoding at
>     TE> configure time, while keeping the argument to open()
>     TE> optional. Ruby does this, as does MySQL, so there *is*
>     TE> precedent.
> 
> That's a little scary because then Python programs may cease to be
> portable.  Moderately better would be an API to select the default
> encoding at runtime, but that's still worrisome.

A default value for encoding wouldn't work, since not all files
you open are text files. The only reasonable default for the
encoding parameter is 'binary'.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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