using python with tar files and compressed files

[enigmadude at rock.com]

This syntax works on other bzipped tar files. But it's not unheard of
that large tarballs will get corrupted from a download mirror. Use a
download manager and try redownloading the file. Usually a mirror will
include an md5sum text file so that you can compare the checksum to
your downloaded file to verify its integrity. For some reason, the
wxPython site doesn't have them.

John Salerno wrote:
> Here's the name of a file I have: wxPython-newdocs-2.6.3.3.tar.bz2
>
> Now, I tried this:
>
> import tarfile
> tar = tarfile.open('wxPython-newdocs-2.6.3.3.tar.bz2', 'r:bz2')
>
> but got this:
>
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>    File "<pyshell#5>", line 1, in -toplevel-
>      tar = tarfile.open('wxPython-newdocs-2.6.3.3.tar.bz2', 'r:bz2')
>    File "C:\Python24\lib\tarfile.py", line 901, in open
>      return func(name, filemode, fileobj)
>    File "C:\Python24\lib\tarfile.py", line 1006, in bz2open
>      raise ReadError, "not a bzip2 file"
> ReadError: not a bzip2 file
>
> So I'm a little confused. When dealing with a tar.gz or tar.bz2 file, do
> you need to uncompress it first with the proper module (gzip or bz2)? Or
> does tarfile take care of this? If so, why doesn't it recognize the
> above file? Or am I just doing it the wrong way? (I'm following an
> example in the docs)