In 2.7.4, io.py shows: import _io import abc
from _io import (DEFAULT_BUFFER_SIZE, BlockingIOError, UnsupportedOperation, open, FileIO, BytesIO, StringIO, BufferedReader, BufferedWriter, BufferedRWPair, BufferedRandom, IncrementalNewlineDecoder, TextIOWrapper) but, cannot find _io.py, though there is the old _pyio.py in the //Python27//Lib folder. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list