On windows the open() function defaults to reading
files in text mode.  To get a binary mode file I need
to append a "b" to the mode string.  I think this is an
unnessary platform inconsistency.  Twice now I've had
hard to track down bugs because I was reading a file in
text mode and should have been using binary.  This is a
wart, IMO.  

I'd like to suggest that the default open mode on
windows be made binary, with an option to change it to
text if desired.  

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Sorry, that would break too much existing code. For Python
3.0, where it is okay to break existing code, opening a file
will be explicitly text (with automatic decoding to Unicode)
or binary (where reading fetches you bytes, instead of a
string), and the matter will be solved.

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Closing this.  It can't be changed now without breaking
mountains of code, and it's debatable that changing it would
be a good idea even if not (Python follows C exactly in this
respect now -- but there's no need to debate it since it
ain't  gonna happen before Python 3 regardless).