I've recently discovered that pathlib offers some methods for dealing with file paths. When looking through the list of methods, .read_text() caught my attention. It implied that I could keep an object of type Path that stores a bunch of useful info in one neat package as well as offering the option of getting the file string without having to manually close/open a text file or using with open():.
I am about to change my default coding practices fundamentally unless I hear of a good reason why not to do it. So I wanted to know: is there a good reason why _io.TextIOWrapper.read() is better?
read_text() on pathlib-objects in CPython is just a shorthand for
def read_text(self, encoding=None, errors=None, newline=None):
"""
Open the file in text mode, read it, and close the file.
"""
with self.open(mode='r', encoding=encoding, errors=errors, newline=newline) as f:
return f.read()
In other words, all those methods (open, TextIOWrapper, pathlib) work exactly the same. Use whatever is most convenient in your particular situation.