File handling: The easy and the hard way

[Steve Holden]

Jeremy Jones wrote:
> Hopefully, I'm not belaboring this.

[...belabors issue at great length :-) ...]

> 
> I hope that I haven't come across as antagonistic as I fear I may have.  
> I greatly respect you, Steve.  You're a great writer and a valuable 
> contributor to this group.  I don't think we're too far off from what 
> the other is saying.  I don't even think I'm too far off from the spirit 
> of what the OP was trying to say.  I just had a problem with what I 
> perceived the OP to be saying (WRT generalization of a solution) and 
> didn't care for how it came across.  I feel better after getting that 
> out.  Hope we can still be friends :-)
> 
Well I certainly don't normally take offense when someone promotes a 
defensible point of view in a reasonable manner, and I don't feel 
inclined to make an exception (no pun intended) in your case.

I don't think our points of view are that far apart either, since we 
both appear (like the majority of the Python community) to prefer 
pragmatism to blindly following rigid rules.

> Mr. Holden, I remain sincerely and respectfully yours,
> 
> Jeremy Jones
> 
I think that probably the OP wasn't criticizing Python in the way you 
believed, but in the final analysis Python is a programming language, 
and it can't take offense. So I try not to take offense on its behalf. 
And thank you for your complements. I'm glad you feel better!

regards
  Steve
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