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The Python Apprentice
book

The Python Apprentice

by Robert Smallshire, Austin Bingham
June 2017
Beginner
352 pages
8h 39m
English
Packt Publishing
Content preview from The Python Apprentice

File-like objects

There is a notion in Python of "file-like objects". This isn't as formal as a specific protocol, but, thanks to the polymorphism afforded by duck-typing, it works well in practice.

The reason it's not closely specified is that different types of data streams and devices have many different capabilities, expectations, and behaviors. So in fact defining a set of protocols to model them would be quite complex, and it wouldn't actually gain us much in practice, other than a smug sense of theoretical achievement. This is where the EAFP philosophy comes into its own: If you want to perform seek() on a file-like object without knowing in advance that it supports random access, go ahead and try (literally!). Just be prepared to ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781788293181