[issue40382] Make 'rt' the default for open in docs

[Terry J. Reedy]

Terry J. Reedy  added the comment:

The inconsistency might be a residue of the transition from 2.x.  But the 'r' 
versus 'rt' confusion originates in the code and signature.   The text 't' 
default is built into the code, while the read 'r' default is in the 'mode=r' 
part of the signature.

If text 't' were only a signature default, from 'mode=rt', then changing 
'read-text' to 'something_else-text' would require including the 't', as in 
'wt', etc.  But it is not.  On the other hand, passing mode as 'b' or using 
'mode=b' is a ValueError because one of 'r', 'w', or 'a', optionally followed 
by '+', is required.

I think the doc entry for open might stand a change to make this a bit clearer, 
but I don't have a specific proposal yet.

--
nosy: +terry.reedy

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[issue40382] Make 'rt' the default for open in docs

[Facundo Batista]

New submission from Facundo Batista :

This is mostly a confusion about 'r' being a synonym of 'rt', while it's more 
explicit if we consider 'r' as one default, and 't' as other (as other parts of 
the documentation do).

Doing `help(open)` we get:

mode is an optional string that specifies the mode in which the file
is opened. It defaults to 'r' which means open for reading in text
mode. 

Later in the same text it's stated:

The default mode is 'rt' (open for reading text).

Which reflects the wording I want to have, but is confusing that initially it 
said a different thing.

If we get the html docs, it says "The default mode is 'r' (open for reading 
text, synonym of 'rt')."

Why not just stating that the default mode is 'rt'?

--
assignee: docs@python
components: Documentation
messages: 367219
nosy: docs@python, facundobatista
priority: normal
severity: normal
stage: needs patch
status: open
title: Make 'rt' the default for open in docs
type: enhancement
versions: Python 3.9

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