Difference between open and codecs.open

[giampaolo]

BPO	17437
Nosy	@vstinner, @giampaolo, @ezio-melotti

^{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 = None
created_at = <Date 2013-03-16.10:58:59.820>
labels = ['3.8', '3.9', '3.10', 'docs']
title = 'Difference between open and codecs.open'
updated_at = <Date 2020-11-15.18:58:13.731>
user = 'https://github.com/giampaolo'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2020-11-15.18:58:13.731>
actor = 'iritkatriel'
assignee = 'docs@python'
closed = False
closed_date = None
closer = None
components = ['Documentation']
creation = <Date 2013-03-16.10:58:59.820>
creator = 'giampaolo.rodola'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 17437
keywords = []
message_count = 2.0
messages = ['184303', '184305']
nosy_count = 4.0
nosy_names = ['vstinner', 'giampaolo.rodola', 'ezio.melotti', 'docs@python']
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priority = 'normal'
resolution = None
stage = None
status = 'open'
superseder = None
type = None
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue17437'
versions = ['Python 3.8', 'Python 3.9', 'Python 3.10']

[giampaolo]

In Python 2 the distinction between open() and codes.open() was clear because 'encoding' and 'errors' args were provided by codecs.open only.
This is no longer the case in Python 3 since both args are provided also by open().

I'm probably missing something but regardless I think codecs.open doc [1] should be more clear as to when and why (say) codecs.open(file, encoding='utf8', errors='ignore') should be preferred over open(file, encoding='utf8', errors='ignore').

[1] http://docs.python.org/3/library/codecs.html#codecs.open

[vstinner]

See also the PEP-400. I proposed (in the alternative) to make codecs.open() somehow an alias to open() (and add codecs.open_stream() for "backward compatibility").