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argparse.FileType serves 2 purposes
- handling filenames for simple quick shell-like scripts
- as a model for custom 'types', specifically one that uses a class to generate the desired type callable.
Other bug-issues show that it hasn't aged well. It doesn't work nicely with the newer open/close context paradigm. It needs changes to handle 'rb' and 'wb' modes.
I suppose it could be modified to accept the full range of parameters that the modern 'open' takes:
 open(file, mode='r', buffering=-1, encoding=None,
 errors=None, newline=None, closefd=True, opener=None) 
either explicitly, or as a pass through **kwargs.
But it is also something that you could easily subclass or modify for your own purposes.
Or just accept the filenames as strings, and do your own open/close after parsing. This gives you more control over when and how the files are opened.