Sorry to be confusing. I hadn't meant to imply that the split between text and binary files were somehow the fault of any programming languages, just the split between "write" and "writeln". Equally bad ideas with different origins. Though I continue to believe that Python should default to opening a file as "binary", not "text", and that the current default is a defect in Python.
Bill > Bill Hanssen writes: > > I think the "-ln" > > variants made familiar by Pascal and Java were a bad idea, on a par > > with the notion of a split between "text" and "binary" file opens. > > It's a bit off topic, but it wasn't the languages that introduced the > difference between "text" and "binary" files. Pascal defined a difference > between "text" and "record" files because the operating systems of the > time had two distinct file types. Java initially had only one type > (binary files which got automagically converted to a stream of unicode > characters) and later modified things to allow manual control of the > encoding because "modern" operating systems (like Windows) have two > distinct file types. > > Don't blame the language designers, blame the OS folks. > > -- Michael Chermside > > _______________________________________________ > Python-Dev mailing list > Python-Dev@python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev > Unsubscribe: > http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/janssen%40parc.com _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
