Is Universal Newlines Mode Supposed To Be Default Behaviour For Open() In Python 2.7?

I'm running Python 2.7.2 (64 Bit) on Windows 7. I'm a little confused about 'universal newline mode' documented here: http://docs.python.org/library/functions.html#open From the do

Solution 1:

You're observing this because \r\n is the line terminator on Windows, so the t mode converts it to \n. On Unix (MacOS here), t doesn't affect \r\n and there's no conversion. The difference between t and U is that U converts \r\n and \r to \n on every platform, while t is platform dependent and only converts LT for the given platform.

Replace your test string to "One\r\nTwo\nThree\rFour" to see the effect of U.

Solution 2:

This documentation explains it.

Basically when you open as a text file (without 'b'), the end-of-line characters in text files are automatically altered slightly when data is read or written. Use binary mode if you don't want this.