The open
builtin function can open files in different modes. These modes are provided as a combination of characters. Using an invalid
sequence of characters will make open
fail with a ValueError
.
A valid mode:
- should contain only one of the following characters:
r
(read), w
(write), a
(append), x
(create).
- should contain zero or one of the following characters:
t
(text), b
(binary).
- should contain zero or one
+
character (open for updating)
For example: a
, rt
, r+
and w+b
are valid modes.
If no t
or b
character is provided the mode will default to t
(text), so specifying r
is
equivalent to rt
.
Note: In Python 2, providing an incorrect mode may have an undefined behavior (ex: it might ignore some characters)