The Library documentation about SimpleHTTPServer.
py is out of date:



In extensions_map:
Default is signified by an empty string, and is 
considered to be text/plain.[...]

should read

Default is signified by an empty string, and is 
considered to be application/octet-stream.



In do_GET:
If the request was mapped to a directory, a 403 
respond is output, followed by the explanation 
'Directory listing not supported'. Any IOError [...]

should read:

If the request was mapped to a directory, a file 
named index.html or index.htm (in that order) is 
searched inside it. If found, then its contents are 
returned; otherwise a directory listing is generated 
using os.listdir. (In case the os.listdir call fails, a 404 
error response is sent).
Any IOError [...]


Later in do_GET:
The file is always opened in binary mode.

should read:

If the file MIME type starts with 'text/' the file is 
opened in text mode; in any other case binary mode 
is used.



The docstrings inside the module are outdated too.
Line 28 (class SimpleHTTPRequestHandler) says:

It assumes that all files are plain text files unless 
they have the extension ".html" in which case it 
assumes they are HTML files.

That's not true; that paragraph should be deleted, 
or make a reference to method guess_type() below.



Docstring for method guess_type() says:

[...] using text/plain as a default [...]

should read:

[...] using application/octet-stream as a default [...]

Logged In: YES 
user_id=11375

Fixed on both the CVS HEAD and the 2.3 branch.  Thanks for reporting 
this!