René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"Docs and docstrings for io.*.seek are inconsistent","articleBody":"# Documentation\r\n\r\nThe documentation on text handles is misleading, in particular for the `seek` method.\r\n\r\n# Steps to reproduce\r\n\r\n```\r\nhandle = open('/tmp/lines.txt')\r\nhelp(handle.seek)\r\n```\r\n\r\nThis produces the following documentation:\r\n```\r\nHelp on built-in function seek:\r\n\r\nseek(cookie, whence=0, /) method of _io.TextIOWrapper instance\r\n    Change stream position.\r\n    \r\n    Change the stream position to the given byte offset. The offset is\r\n    interpreted relative to the position indicated by whence.  Values\r\n    for whence are:\r\n    \r\n    * 0 -- start of stream (the default); offset should be zero or positive\r\n    * 1 -- current stream position; offset may be negative\r\n    * 2 -- end of stream; offset is usually negative\r\n    \r\n    Return the new absolute position.\r\n```\r\n\r\n# Issues\r\n\r\n* The documentation talks about a byte offset, but the interface mentions a cookie. \r\n* The constants defined in `os` module, like `os.SEEK_END` are not mentioned.\r\n* whence=2 with negative offset fails.\r\n\r\nGenerally, the behaviour is very inconsistent, seek relative to the end fail, seek relative to the start works, but might yield a situation when `read` fails. \r\n\r\n[Full investigation of the issue](https://wiesmann.codiferes.net/wordpress/archives/36371) \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003c!-- gh-linked-prs --\u003e\r\n### Linked PRs\r\n* gh-107899\r\n* gh-107933\r\n* gh-107935\r\n* gh-107936\r\n* gh-108086\r\n* gh-108087\r\n* gh-108099\r\n* gh-108100\r\n* gh-108108\r\n* gh-108136\r\n* gh-108137\r\n* gh-108262\r\n* gh-108264\r\n* gh-108265\r\n* gh-108268\r\n* gh-108547\r\n* gh-108548\r\n* gh-108655\r\n* gh-108656\r\n\u003c!-- /gh-linked-prs --\u003e","author":{"url":"https://github.com/MatthiasWiesmann","@type":"Person","name":"MatthiasWiesmann"},"datePublished":"2023-08-09T08:09:51.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":16},"url":"https://github.com/107801/cpython/issues/107801"}