StringIO and seek()

[terryjreedy]

BPO	12922
Nosy	@terryjreedy, @pitrou, @PierreQuentel, @vadmium

^{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 2012-01-21.19:30:32.285>
created_at = <Date 2011-09-06.20:48:49.879>
labels = ['type-bug', 'library', 'expert-IO', 'docs']
title = 'StringIO and seek()'
updated_at = <Date 2015-09-20.06:17:30.011>
user = 'https://github.com/terryjreedy'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2015-09-20.06:17:30.011>
actor = 'martin.panter'
assignee = 'docs@python'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2012-01-21.19:30:32.285>
closer = 'pitrou'
components = ['Documentation', 'Library (Lib)', 'IO']
creation = <Date 2011-09-06.20:48:49.879>
creator = 'terry.reedy'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 12922
keywords = []
message_count = 4.0
messages = ['143649', '150078', '151741', '251150']
nosy_count = 6.0
nosy_names = ['terry.reedy', 'pitrou', 'docs@python', 'quentel', 'python-dev', 'martin.panter']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'fixed'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'behavior'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue12922'
versions = ['Python 2.7', 'Python 3.2', 'Python 3.3']

[terryjreedy]

First, there is a minor documentation issue.
15.2.3.1. I/O Base Classes
class io.IOBase
seek(offset, whence=SEEK_SET)
Change the stream position to the given byte offset

Since StringIO seeks by code units that should perhaps say 'byte or code unit offset' or a separate note should be added to the doc entry for StringIO.

>>> txt = StringIO('ab\U00010030')
>>> txt.seek(3)
3
>>> txt.write('x')
1
>>> txt.getvalue()
'ab\ud800x'

The behavior problem is that seeking for StringIO does not work relative to the current position or end.

IOError: Can't do nonzero cur-relative seeks
# Note: this message is wrong for end-relative seeks.

I presume this is inherited from an undocumented restriction on seeking with text streams, because chars *might* be variably sized. However, I do not think it should be. StringIO does not inherit the same reason for the restriction (certainly not on wide builds, and on narrow builds, seeking from the beginning is just as problematical). For StringIO, there is no option of 'opening in binary (byte) mode instead' as there is for disk files. Since a StringIO object is a wrapped array of fixed-size units, seeking from any position is as trivial as it is from the beginning. And again, the current docs imply that it should work.

Note that seeking from the beginning is not limited to the existing content. Instead, skipped areas are filled with nulls.

from io import StringIO
txt = StringIO('0123456789')
txt.seek(15,0) # no problem with absolute seek
txt.write('xxx')
s  = txt.getvalue()
print(ord(s[12]))
# 0

So that is not a reason to limit seeking from other positions either.

[pitrou]

I would rather document it in TextIOBase:
http://docs.python.org/dev/library/io.html#io.TextIOBase

With text I/O streams, tell() returns an arbitrary "position cookie", meaning you can't meaningfully do arithmetic on it: this is why cur-relative seeking and end-relative seeking isn't supported.

Of course, on StringIO the "arbitrary position cookie" is a perfectly well-defined character offset, so we *could* specifically enhance StringIO.tell. Whether it's a good idea to do it (while arbitrary text files would still have the limitation) is left to debate.

[python-dev]

New changeset 03e61104f7a2 by Antoine Pitrou in branch '3.2':
Issue bpo-12922: fix the TextIOBase documentation to include a description of seek() and tell() methods.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/03e61104f7a2

New changeset f7e5abfb31ea by Antoine Pitrou in branch 'default':
Issue bpo-12922: fix the TextIOBase documentation to include a description of seek() and tell() methods.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/f7e5abfb31ea

New changeset fcf4d547bed8 by Antoine Pitrou in branch '2.7':
Issue bpo-12922: fix the TextIOBase documentation to include a description of seek() and tell() methods.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/fcf4d547bed8

[vadmium]

Opened bpo-25190 about the enhancing StringIO side of this.