What does 'wb' mean in this code, using Python?

python file syntax
zjm1126 picture zjm1126 · Apr 19, 2010 · Viewed 265.8k times · Source

Code:

file('pinax/media/a.jpg', 'wb')

Answer

YOU picture YOU · Apr 19, 2010

File mode, write and binary. Since you are writing a .jpg file, it looks fine.

But if you supposed to read that jpg file you need to use 'rb'

More info

On Windows, 'b' appended to the mode opens the file in binary mode, so there are also modes like 'rb', 'wb', and 'r+b'. Python on 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 JPEG or EXE files.

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