Line reading chokes on 0x1A

Question

I have the following file:

abcde
kwakwa
<0x1A>
line3
linllll

Where <0x1A> represents a byte with the hex value of

Answer 1

0x1A is Ctrl-Z, and DOS historically used that as an end-of-file marker. For example, try using a command prompt, and "type"ing your file. It will only display the content up the Ctrl-Z.

Python uses the Windows CRT function _wfopen, which implements the "Ctrl-Z is EOF" semantics.