[Python-ideas] file API

[Calvin Spealman]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 4:00 PM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> Also you can't express lseek()'s "relative to end of file" mode using
> the proposed API. -1 on the whole thing.

You could use negative indexes, which is consistent with subscript and
slice interfaces. I still don't know that this is a good idea, but I'm
just saying.

If someone wants a more sequence-like interface to files, they should use mmap

> On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 12:40 PM, Jim Jewett <jimjjewett at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 9/24/12, Mark Adam <dreamingforward at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> For some time now, I've wanted to suggest a better abstraction for the
>>> <file> type in Python.  It currently uses an antiquated, low-level
>>> C-style interface for moving around in a file, with methods like
>>> tell() and seek().
>>
>> I agree, but I'm not sure the improvement can be *enough* of an
>> improvement to justify the cost of change.
>>
>>>>>> file.pos = x0ae1       #move file pointer to an absolute address
>>>>>> file.pos += 1             #increment the file pointer one byte
>>
>> For text files, I would expect it to be a character count rather than
>> a byte count.  So this particular proposal might end up adding as much
>> confusion as it hopes to remove.
>>
>> -jJ
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>
>
>
> --
> --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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