def _text(location, encoding, universal_new_lines=True): """ Read file at `location` as a text file with the specified `encoding`. If `universal_new_lines` is True, update lines endings to be posix LF \n. Return a unicode string. Note: Universal newlines in the codecs package was removed in Python2.6 see http://bugs.python.org/issue691291 """ with codecs.open(location, 'r', encoding) as f: text = f.read() if universal_new_lines: text = u'\n'.join(text.splitlines(False)) return text