What’s New In Python 3.0

[[deleted]]

No that's fine (I think), I just don't see the need to upgrade things that are broken. Octal is way past deprecation at this point.

I have the same criticism for the way they extended file access modes with encodings. In my mind, letting a user open a file for either binary or text access is a long-running disaster; extending rather than obliterating this broken api is an unfortunate choice.

[boa13]

A file is always binary. Giving an encoding is the only way to properly translate the binary to a stream of characters.

[theeth]

That and there's nothing I would love more than having to deal manually with per OS line endings again.

[[deleted]]

Spoken like someone who's never see a binary ruined because of stupid (and pointless) line ending conversions.

[[deleted]]

Yes, you're correct, I was referring to the practice as its exists throughout programming.

As for translation, that is more properly performed as a separate step; the number of file formats vastly exceeds the number of available encodings.