On 11/10/2015 12:14 PM, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
On Mon, 9 Nov 2015 22:20:25 -0800, Larry Hudson via Python-list
<python-list@python.org> declaimed the following:
Of course it can. The only difference a text file and a binary file is the way
it's opened.
Text files are opened with 'r' or 'w', while binary files are opened with 'rb'
or 'wb'. Being
different modes, the reading/writing is handled differently. One obvious
difference, the lines
of a text file are marked by ending them with a newline character, so it's easy
to read/write
the text line-by-line. But the data in a binary file is completely arbitrary
and is much
To be strict -- a text file has <some> system defined means of marking
line endings. UNIX/Linux uses just a <LF> character; Windows uses the pair
<CR><LF>. TRS-DOS used just <CR> for end of line. Some operating systems
may have used count-delimited formats (and then there is the VMS FORTRAN
segmented records with start and end segment bits).
The main purpose of my message was to get across the idea of separating the actual data (as
binary values) and the way this data is displayed (to the user/programmer). They are two
entirely different concepts, and the OP was obviously confused about this. But of course,
you're right -- I was careless/imprecise in some of my descriptions.
-=- Larry -=-
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