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Related issues are:
http://bugs.python.org/issue13824 - argparse.FileType opens a file and never closes it
http://bugs.python.org/issue14156 - argparse.FileType for '-' doesn't work for a mode of 'rb'
As discussed earlier FileType was meant as a convenience for small scripting applications, ones that don't try to close the file before exiting.
But now we are encouraged to open files in a context that guarantees closure. In 13824 I proposed a 'FileContext', and included a dummy context like this handle stdin/out.
But I think the closefd=False approach raised in 14156 and David is probably the better way to go.
I think the main thing that is lacking is a testing mechanism.