BOM incorrectly inserted before writing, after seeking in text file

[MarkIngramUK]

BPO	22982
Nosy	@amauryfa, @pitrou
Files	append-test.py: Test case bom_seek_append.patch

^{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 2015-04-13.18:05:22.910>
created_at = <Date 2014-12-02.16:41:42.901>
labels = ['type-bug', 'expert-IO']
title = 'BOM incorrectly inserted before writing, after seeking in text file'
updated_at = <Date 2015-04-13.18:05:22.908>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/MarkIngramUK'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2015-04-13.18:05:22.908>
actor = 'pitrou'
assignee = 'none'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2015-04-13.18:05:22.910>
closer = 'pitrou'
components = ['IO']
creation = <Date 2014-12-02.16:41:42.901>
creator = 'MarkIngramUK'
dependencies = []
files = ['37345', '37378']
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 22982
keywords = ['patch']
message_count = 7.0
messages = ['232015', '232025', '232091', '232092', '232263', '240688', '240689']
nosy_count = 4.0
nosy_names = ['amaury.forgeotdarc', 'pitrou', 'python-dev', 'MarkIngramUK']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'fixed'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'behavior'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue22982'
versions = ['Python 3.4', 'Python 3.5']

[MarkIngramUK]

If you open a text file for append, but then perform any form of seeking, before attempting to write to the file, it will cause the BOM to be written before you text. See the attached file for an example.

If you run the test, take a look at the output file, and you'll notice the UTF16 BOM gets written out before each number.

I'm running a 2014 iMac with Yosemite.

[amauryfa]

bpo-5006 was supposed to take care of this, but it has a flaw IMO:
This statement https://hg.python.org/cpython/file/0744ceb5c0ed/Lib/_pyio.py#l2003 is missing an "and whence!=2".

[pitrou]

This is a limitation more than a bug. When you seek to the start of the file, the encoder is reset because Python thinks you are gonna to write there. If you remove the call to file.seek(0, io.SEEK_SET), things work fine.

@Amaury, whence can only be zero there:
https://hg.python.org/cpython/file/0744ceb5c0ed/Lib/_pyio.py#l1960

[MarkIngramUK]

It's more than a limitation, because if I call file.seek(0, io.SEEK_END) then the encoder is still reset, and will still write the BOM, even at the end of the file.

This also means that it's impossible to seek in a text file that you want to append to. I've had to work around this by opening the file as binary, manually writing the BOM, and writing the strings as encoded bytes.

[pitrou]

Here is a patch.

[python-dev]

New changeset 946740824eaf by Antoine Pitrou in branch '3.4':
Issue bpo-22982: Improve BOM handling when seeking to multiple positions of a writable text file.
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/946740824eaf

New changeset 3583e5191b96 by Antoine Pitrou in branch 'default':
Issue bpo-22982: Improve BOM handling when seeking to multiple positions of a writable text file.
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/3583e5191b96

[pitrou]

Fix is pushed. Thanks for the report!