Difference between parsing a text file in r and rb mode

python file-io text-parsing
MxLDevs picture MxLDevs · Mar 10, 2012 · Viewed 74k times · Source

What makes parsing a text file in 'r' mode more convenient than parsing it in 'rb' mode? Especially when the text file in question may contain non-ASCII characters.

Answer

lvc picture lvc · Mar 10, 2012

This depends a little bit on what version of Python you're using. In Python 2, Chris Drappier's answer applies.

In Python 3, its a different (and more consistent) story: in text mode ('r'), Python will parse the file according to the text encoding you give it (or, if you don't give one, a platform-dependent default), and read() will give you a str. In binary ('rb') mode, Python does not assume that the file contains things that can reasonably be parsed as characters, and read() gives you a bytes object.

Also, in Python 3, the universal newlines (the translating between '\n' and platform-specific newline conventions so you don't have to care about them) is available for text-mode files on any platform, not just Windows.

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