urllib.request.urlopen() different on Windows than Linux

[mark-summerfield]

BPO	3930
Nosy	@amauryfa, @mark-summerfield

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2008-09-22.12:18:55.667>
created_at = <Date 2008-09-22.11:18:15.324>
labels = ['invalid', 'type-bug', 'library']
title = 'urllib.request.urlopen() different on Windows than Linux'
updated_at = <Date 2008-09-22.12:18:55.666>
user = 'https://github.com/mark-summerfield'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2008-09-22.12:18:55.666>
actor = 'amaury.forgeotdarc'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2008-09-22.12:18:55.667>
closer = 'amaury.forgeotdarc'
components = ['Library (Lib)']
creation = <Date 2008-09-22.11:18:15.324>
creator = 'mark'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 3930
keywords = []
message_count = 3.0
messages = ['73565', '73566', '73568']
nosy_count = 2.0
nosy_names = ['amaury.forgeotdarc', 'mark']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'not a bug'
stage = None
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'behavior'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue3930'
versions = ['Python 3.0']

[mark-summerfield]

Py30rc1

On Windows the file object returned by urllib.request.urlopen() appears
to be in binary mode, so .read() returns a bytes object. But on Linux it
appears to be in text mode, so .read() returns a str object. It seeems
to me that the same type of file object should be returned on all
platforms, otherwise you have to test the platform and use str.encode()
or bytes.decode() depending on where the code is running.

[amauryfa]

I only get bytes on Linux. Do you have a test script?

[mark-summerfield]

Sorry, I now can't reproduce it. I made a tiny test script and it worked
fine on both Windows and Linux. Now when I run the real test that works
fine too. So could you close/remove this "bug" for me please?

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import sys
import urllib.request
print(sys.version)
fh = urllib.request.urlopen("http://www.python.org/index.html")
data = fh.read()
fh.close()
print(type(data))

# output when run on Linux:
3.0rc1 (r30rc1:66499, Sep 18 2008, 17:45:22)
[GCC 4.2.3 (Ubuntu 4.2.3-2ubuntu7)]
<class 'bytes'>

# output when run on Windows:
3.0rc1 (r30rc1:66507, Sep 18 2008, 14:47:08) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)]
<class 'bytes'>