About section "7.2.1. Methods of File Objects" of the tutorial:


1. Method read() is documented as follows:
reads some quantity of data and returns it as a string or bytes object.

Indeed read() returns a string in text mode and bytes in binary mode. For the sake of clarity, I suggest changing to:

reads some quantity of data and returns it as a string (in text mode) or bytes object (in binary mode).

This might seem long-winded but I believe it would help those moving from Python 2 to Python 3.


2. Method write() is documented as follows:

To write something other than a string, it needs to be converted to a string first

While this is correct in text mode, it is wrong in binary mode. May I suggest:

To write something other than a string (in text mode) or bytes object (in binary mode), it needs to be converted first

I also think that for better clarification, binary mode and text mode should be specified clearly for both methods read() and write(). 

For read(), I have changed it to:

' some quantity of data and returns it as a string (in text mode) or bytes object (in binary mode).'

For write(), I have changed it to:

' To write something other than a string (in text mode) or bytes object (in binary mode), it needs to be converted first to string or bytes object respectively. '

Please if someone could review it, as I have not submitted a patch related to docs before. And I am not sure, if I have made correct changes at right place.

Lines should be kept to about 80 chars.  Both chunks needs a newline added.  I think it okay to create short lines rather than re-wrapping the whole paragraph.

Wrapped the lines to 80 chars.

New changeset 5a2692911a43 by Ezio Melotti in branch '3.5':
#26001: mention in the tutorial that files in binary mode expect bytes, not str.
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/5a2692911a43

New changeset 4b434a4770a9 by Ezio Melotti in branch 'default':
#26001: merge with 3.5.
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/4b434a4770a9

Fixed, thanks Dimistri for the report, Upendra for the patch, Terry for the review, and Elena for the rewrapping!
I also rephrased the last sentence a bit to make it more readable.