Hiding

[Peter Hansen]

Jason Drew wrote:
> Also, I think
> using file("C:\file.txt") is now preferred to open("C:\file.txt").

As others have noted, "open" is preferred as the method for opening 
files, while "file" is the _type_ involved, for testing or subclassing 
or what-have-you.

But neither file("C:\file.txt") nor open("C:\file.txt") is actually 
correct at all, unless you have strange files whose names start with 
ASCII FF characters.  '\f' is an escape sequence, equivalent to '\x0c'.

Always use forward slashes ("C:/file.txt") in path names unless you are 
passing them to the shell, or use raw strings (r"C:\file.txt") to avoid 
mysterious problems with escape sequences.

-Peter