accepting file path or file object?

Mon Nov 5 13:30:17 EST 2012

On 11/5/2012 5:54 AM, andrea crotti wrote:
> Quite often I find convenient to get a filename or a file object as
> argument of a function, and do something as below:
>> def grep_file(regexp, filepath_obj):
> """Check if the given text is found in any of the file lines, take
> a path to a file or an opened file object
> """
> if isinstance(filepath_obj, basestring):
> fobj = open(filepath_obj)
> else:
> fobj = filepath_obj
>> for line in fobj:
> if re.search(regexp, line):
> return True
>> return False
>>> This makes it also more convenient to unit-test, since I can just pass
> a StringIO. But then there are other problems, for example if I pass
> a file object [it] is the caller that has to make sure to close the file
> handle..

Which is as it should be. The caller should (normally) call your 
function within a with statement or might want to do other operations on 
the file before or after passing it to your grep_file.
-- 
Terry Jan Reedy