On Tue, Nov 19, 2019 at 5:47 AM Andrew Barnert via Python-ideas <python-ideas@python.org> wrote: > Unless there’s some case where you don’t want to close f at all, I don’t see > why you don’t want a context manager. For example, your return early case: > > with open(filename) as f: > header = f.readline() > if something(header): > return > # use f > > … does exactly what you wanted, and also properly handles exceptions. Which > is the whole point of context managers. > > I suppose if you wanted to close f in some different way in some situations… > but there is no different way to close files. >
There is one other common way you might want to close a file, and that's "close it if I opened it, but otherwise don't". For example, if you're given a file name to output into, then write to that file; but otherwise, write to sys.stdout. I'm not sure what the best way to do that is, other than ExitStack, which feels clunky (like using a while loop to emulate a for loop - sure it works, but it feels wrong). ChrisA _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list -- python-ideas@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-ideas-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-ideas.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/XLJ4TYF5BKIW4Y4CQTRJCWPEH6343MRH/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
