On Thu, 09 May 2013 05:23:59 +0000, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > There is no sensible use-case for creating a file without opening it. > What would be the point? Any subsequent calls to just about any method > will fail. Since you have to open the file after creating the file object > anyway, why make them two different calls?
As a counterpoint, some OSes (e.g. Plan 9) allow you to get a "handle" to a file without opening it. This can then be used for deleting, renaming or stat()-type operations without either the risk of race conditions (if another process renames files between operations, the operations may be performed on different files) or the side-effects of actually opening the file (particularly for device files, e.g. opening a tape drive may rewind the tape). Python's file model doesn't allow for this, so there isn't really anything meaningful that you can do on a file object which isn't open (although these actually exist; any file object on which the .close() method has been called will be in this state). However: there are situations where it is useful to be able to separate the simple task of creating an object from more invasive actions such as system calls. Particularly in multi-threaded or real-time code (although the latter is a non-starter in Python for many other reasons). -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
