Why codecs.open and not just plain old open(..., encoding='latin1')?

https://docs.python.org/3.8/library/codecs.html says that open is recommended: "While the builtin open() and the associated io module are the recommended approach for working with encoded text files, this module provides additional utility functions and classes that allow the use of a wider range of codecs when working with binary files."

Just how I did it last time I had this problem, probably because of Python 2.7 or something. I'll switch to open

Codecov Report

Merging #7314 into master will increase coverage by 0.02%.
The diff coverage is n/a.

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  Branches    12880    13136     +256     
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+ Hits        72577    73216     +639     
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- Partials     2827     2837      +10     

TBH I wouldn't define a new function just for setting this one arg (mode='r' is the default).

TBH I wouldn't define a new function just for setting this one arg (mode='r' is the default).

There is some uncertainty about whether or not latin-1 is actually correct, so it is a bit of future proofing in the sense that if we need to use chardet or something similar to figure out the encoding we can do it in hopefully one place instead of many. But even without it this seems like a six of one half dozen of the other situation...

tx @larsoner