Guido> I agree that binary pipelines are useful and should be Guido> possible. I just don't think this should be the default behavior Guido> for stdin/stdout.
Binary has (like it or not) been the default behavior on all previous Pythons running on Unix systems where text and binary were never different (a view of the computing world which VMS ruined with it's morass of file types and which Windows NT lapped up like antifreeze). The only time I ever open a file with the "b" attribute is when I expect that code to run on Windows (thankfully a rare occurrence for me). Python 3 will obviously be changing behavior in this regard for some of us, though as I indicated before, satisfying those of us who hold this perspective (apparently just Bill, Fred and me at this point) would probably be counter to the needs of the Python community as a whole, fully 90% of whom think a pipe is made out of PVC, not copper and can't understand what I'm telling them to type unless I say grep -i python VERTICAL BAR lpr instead of grep -i python PIPE lpr Unix folks of course know to type '|' when you say PIPE and if you say VERTICAL BAR they type 'vertical bar'. But enough wistful reminiscing. I will shut up after one more parting shot: Dennis-Ritchie-had-it-right-ly yr's, Skip _______________________________________________ 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