[Python-Dev] Fuzziness in io module specs - PEP update proposition V2

[Pascal Chambon]

Hello

Below is a corrected version of the PEP update, adding the start/end 
indexes proposition and fixing functions signatures. Does anyone 
disagree with these specifications ? Or can we consider it as a target 
for the next versions of the io module ?
I would have no problem to implement this behaviour in my own pure 
python FileIO system, however if someone is willing to patch the _fileio 
implementation, it'd save a lot of time - I most probably won't have the 
means to setup a C compilation environment under windows and linux, and 
properly update/test this, before January (when I get freelance...).

I launch another thread on other to-be-discussed IO points B-)

Regards,
Pascal

================ PEP UPDATE for new I/O system - v2 ===========

**Truncate and file pointer semantics**

Rationale :

The current implementation of truncate() always move the file pointer to 
the new end of file.

This behaviour is interesting for compatibility, if the file has been 
reduced and the file pointer is now past its end, since some platforms 
might require 0 <= filepointer <= filesize.

However, there are several arguments against this semantic:

    * Most common standards (posix, win32…) allow the file pointer to be
      past the end of file, and define the behaviour of other stream
      methods in this case
    * In many cases, moving the filepointer when truncating has no
      reasons to happen (if we’re extending the file, or reducing it
      without going beneath the file pointer)
    * Making 0 <= filepointer <= filesize a global rule of the python IO
      module doesn’t seems possible, since it would require
      modifications of the semantic of other methods (eg. seek() should
      raise exceptions or silently disobey when asked to move the
      filepointer past the end of file), and lead to incoherent
      situations when concurrently accessing files without locking (what
      if another process truncates to 0 bytes the file you’re writing ?)

So here is the proposed semantic, which matches established conventions:

*IOBase.truncate(n: int = None) -> int*

Resizes the file to the size specified by the positive integer n, or by 
the current filepointer position if n is None.

The file must be opened with write permissions.

If the file was previously larger than size, the extra data is discarded.
If the file was previously shorter than size, its size is increased, and
the extended area appears as if it were zero-filled.

In any case, the file pointer is left unchanged, and may point beyond
the end of file.

Note: trying to read past the end of file returns an empty string, and
trying to write past the end of file extends it by zero-ing the gap. On
rare platforms which don't support file pointers to be beyond the end of
file, all these behaviours shall be faked thanks to internal storage of
the "wanted" file pointer position (silently extending the file, if
necessary, when a write operation occurs).

 

*Propositions of doc update*

*RawIOBase*.read(n: int) -> bytes

Read up to n bytes from the object and return them. Fewer than n bytes
may be returned if the operating system call returns fewer than n bytes.
If 0 bytes are returned, and n was not 0, this indicates end of file. If
the object is in non-blocking mode and no bytes are available, the call
returns None.


*RawIOBase*.readinto(b: bytearray, [start: int = None], [end: int = 
None]) -> int

start and end are used as slice indexes, so that the bytearray taken 
into account is actually range = b[start:end] (or b[start:], b[:end] or 
b[:], depending on the arguments which are not None).

Read up to len(range) bytes from the object and store them in b, returning
the number of bytes read. Like .read, fewer than len(range) bytes may be
read, and 0 indicates end of file if len(range) is not 0.
None is returned if a non-blocking object has no bytes available. The 
length of b is never changed.



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