diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'Doc/tutorial')
| -rw-r--r-- | Doc/tutorial/inputoutput.rst | 19 |
1 files changed, 9 insertions, 10 deletions
diff --git a/Doc/tutorial/inputoutput.rst b/Doc/tutorial/inputoutput.rst index d4cad87..acd82d5 100644 --- a/Doc/tutorial/inputoutput.rst +++ b/Doc/tutorial/inputoutput.rst @@ -195,16 +195,15 @@ automatically added to the end. ``'r+'`` opens the file for both reading and writing. The *mode* argument is optional; ``'r'`` will be assumed if it's omitted. -``'b'`` appended to the mode opens the file in binary mode, so there are -also modes like ``'rb'``, ``'wb'``, and ``'r+b'``. Python distinguishes -between text and binary files. Binary files are read and written without -any data transformation. In text mode, platform-specific newline -representations are automatically converted to newlines when read and -newline characters are automatically converted to the proper -platform-specific representation when written. This makes writing portable -code which reads or writes text files easier. In addition, when reading -from or writing to text files, the data are automatically decoded or -encoding, respectively, using the encoding associated with the file. +On Windows and the Macintosh, ``'b'`` appended to the mode opens the file in +binary mode, so there are also modes like ``'rb'``, ``'wb'``, and ``'r+b'``. +Windows makes a distinction between text and binary files; the end-of-line +characters in text files are automatically altered slightly when data is read or +written. This behind-the-scenes modification to file data is fine for ASCII +text files, but it'll corrupt binary data like that in :file:`JPEG` or +:file:`EXE` files. Be very careful to use binary mode when reading and writing +such files. On Unix, it doesn't hurt to append a ``'b'`` to the mode, so +you can use it platform-independently for all binary files. This behind-the-scenes modification to file data is fine for text files, but will corrupt binary data like that in :file:`JPEG` or :file:`EXE` files. Be |