What happens when python seeks a text file

[dieter]

"=?GBK?B?wO68zsX0?=" <lijpbasin at 126.com> writes:

> Hi, I tried using seek to reverse a text file after reading about the
> subject in the documentation:
>
> https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/inputoutput.html#methods-of-file-objects
>
> https://docs.python.org/3/library/io.html#io.TextIOBase.seek
> ...
> However, an exception is raised if a file with the same content encoded in
> GBK is provided:
>
>     $ ./reverse_text_by_seek3.py Moon-gbk.txt
>     [0, 7, 8, 19, 21, 32, 42, 53, 64]
>     µÍͷ˼¹ÊÏç
>     ¾ÙÍ·ÍûÃ÷ÔÂ
>     Traceback (most recent call last):
>       File "./reverse_text_by_seek3.py", line 21, in <module>
>         print(f.readline(), end="")
>     UnicodeDecodeError: 'gbk' codec can't decode byte 0xaa in position 8: illegal multibyte sequence

The "seek" works on byte level while decoding works on character level
where some characters can be composed of several bytes.

The error you observe indicates that you have "seeked" somewhere
inside a character, not at a legal character beginning.

That you get an error for "gbk" and not for "utf-8" is a bit of
an "accident". The same problem can happen for "utf-8" but the probability
might by sligtly inferior.


Seek only to byte position for which you know that they are also
character beginnings -- e.g. line beginnings.