Changing the mode between text and binary is not feasible (since it would have to change the class). But it is perfectly acceptable to use sys.std{in,out}.buffer if you need to write a binary transparent filter. Of course you'll be dealing with bytes at that point so the usual cautions apply. I wouldn't do the assignments you propose though, since that might surprise other code which expects text files.
--Guido On 9/19/07, Christian Heimes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Today I stumbled over another problem that is related to the unicode and > OS string topic. The new io system - or to be more precisely the > implicit converting of input and output data to UTF-8 makes it > impossible to pipe binary data through Python 3.0. > > For example an user wants to write a filter for binary data like images > in Python. With Python 2.5 the input and output data isn't implicitly > converted: > > # stdredirect.py > # simple stupid example > import sys > sys.stdout.write(sys.stdin.read()) > > $ chmod 755 stdredict.py > $ cat ./Mac/Demo/html.icons/python.gif | python2.5 stdredirect.py >out.gif > $ diff ./Mac/Demo/html.icons/python.gif out.gif > > But Python 3.0 is using TextIOWrapper for stdin, stdout and stderr: > > $ cat ./Mac/Demo/html.icons/python.gif | ./python stdredirect.py > >out.gifTraceback (most recent call last): > File "./stdredict.py", line 4, in <module> > sys.stdout.write(sys.stdin.read()) > File "/home/heimes/dev/python/py3k/Lib/io.py", line 1225, in read > res += decoder.decode(self.buffer.read(), True) > File "/home/heimes/dev/python/py3k/Lib/codecs.py", line 291, in decode > (result, consumed) = self._buffer_decode(data, self.errors, final) > UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode bytes in position 10-13: > invalid data > > An easy workaround for the problem is: > > sys.stdout = sys.stdout.buffer > sys.stdin = sys.stdin.buffer > > I recommend that the problem and fix gets documented. Maybe stdin, > stdout and stderr should get a method that disables the implicit > conversion like setMode("b") / setMode("t"). -- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/) _______________________________________________ Python-3000 mailing list Python-3000@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-3000 Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-3000/archive%40mail-archive.com