On Fri, 18 May 2007 04:45:30, Dennis Lee Bieber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote >On 17 May 2007 13:12:10 -0700, i3dmaster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> declaimed >the following in comp.lang.python: > >> 'b' is generally useful on systems that don't treat binary and text >> files differently. It will improve portability. > > "b" is needed for binary files on systems that /do/ treat binary >differently from text. And it does add to portability only in that it >has no effect on those that treat all files the same. > > However, as I recall the thread, the intent is to process text lines >from a file -- and using "b" is going to affect how the line endings are >being treated.
Yes that was my understanding too, Dennis, and the reason I queried it in the first place. I had to remove the "b" option in order to get the sample code to work under Windows, because the standard line termination under Windows is carriage return + linefeed (\r\n). Of course if I manually edit the command file so that it only has a linefeed character at the end of each line, the binary mode works. So I think i3dmaster's method is only portable as long as the command file is created with unix-style line termination. -- Doug Woodrow -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
