Handling vs newlines in python on Mac vs Windows

Question

I have a python script that gave different output when run on a Windows machine and when run on a Mac. On digging deeper, I discovered that it was because when Python read in line breaks on the Mac (from a file), it read in , while somehow in Windows the disappears.

Thus, if I change every in the script to , it works fine on the Mac. But if I do that, it stops working on the Windows PC.

Is there an easy way to fix this problem?

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4599936/handling-r-n-vs-n-newlines-in-python-on-mac-vs-windows

Answer 1

'U' mode:

Python 2:

I guess it may depend on what you're reading from, but the built-in open() function takes a 'mode' parameter, and if you pass 'U' for the mode, Python 2 will take care of the newlines in a cross-platform way transparently. It requires that Python be built with universal newline support, but test it out!

https://docs.python.org/2/library/functions.html#open

Python 3:

In Python 3, the 'U' mode is the default behaviour, as the docs explain:

There is an additional mode character permitted, 'U', which no longer has any effect, and is considered deprecated. It previously enabled universal newlines in text mode, which became the default behaviour in Python 3.0. Refer to the documentation of the newline parameter for further details.

https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html#open