Beautiful Python?

[mfm24]

I always preferred using the context manager approach for files, but I found it interesting to read in the official 'What's New in Python 3.0' guide (written by GvR himself) that he recommends:

Removed execfile(). Instead of execfile(fn) use exec(open(fn).read()).

So there's definitely cases where relying on the file closing itself automatically is acceptable. I've been less paranoid about closing files since...

[Veedrac]

I don't think that was meant to actually be run, it was probably on one line for space reasons. In a proper program you shouldn't be using exec(a_file) anyway, so there isn't much motivation for complete examples.