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The problem is that codecs.open() forces binary mode on the underlying file object, and this defeats the U mode.
My feeling is that it should be okay to open the underlying file in text mode, thereby enabling the U flag to be passed. Opening the file in text mode would break, however, if one of the following conditions is met:
- there are encodings where 0x0a or 0x0d are valid characters, not end of line.
- there are libc implementations where opening a file in text mode has
more implications than converting \r or \r\n to \n, i.e. if they change
other bytes as well.
Re-assigning to MAL, as he put the binary mode in in the first place. If this was just defensive programming we might try taking it out, if there was a real error case with text mode then codecs.open should probably at least signal an error if universal newline mode is requested.