Where read() is documented

[MRAB]

On 2020-08-29 17:48, Chris Green wrote:
> Stefan Ram <ram at zedat.fu-berlin.de> wrote:
>> Chris Green <cl at isbd.net> writes:    I can't find the documentation for
>> >read().  It's not a built-in function and it's not documented with
>> >(for example) the file type object sys.stdin.
>> 
>> |read() (asyncio.StreamReader method), 894
>> |read() (chunk.Chunk method), 1385
>> |read() (codecs.StreamReader method), 164
>> |read() (configparser.ConfigParser method), 537
>> |read() (http.client.HTTPResponse method), 1276
>> |read() (imaplib.IMAP4 method), 1291
>> |read() (in module os), 578
>> |read() (io.BufferedIOBase method), 622
>> |read() (io.BufferedReader method), 625
>> |read() (io.RawIOBase method), 621
>> |read() (io.TextIOBase method), 626
>> |read() (mimetypes.MimeTypes method), 1146
>> |read() (mmap.mmap method), 1053
>> |read() (ossaudiodev.oss_audio_device method), 1388
>> |read() (ssl.MemoryBIO method), 1024
>> |read() (ssl.SSLSocket method), 1005
>> |read() (urllib.robotparser.RobotFileParser method), 1268
>> |read() (zipfile.ZipFile method), 499
>> Index of "The Python Library Reference, Release 3.9.0a3"
>> 
>> 
> But none of those is the documentation for read(), they're just places
> that refer to read().
> 
There's no read() function. What you're referring to are the 'read' 
methods of various classes.

If you open a file in text mode, you'll get an instance of 
TextIOWrapper, which inherits .read from TextIOBase.

If you open a file in binary mode, you'll get an instance of 
BufferedReader, which has a .read method.

Multiple classes, each with its own 'read' method.

sys.stdin is an instance of TextIOWrapper, so for that you should look 
at the methods of TextIOWrapper.