[Python-au] Python os.linesep question

[Stephen George]

Hi,
Have a question about use of os.linesep, as it seems to not work as 
advertised, unless I am doing something wrong.

I've tried on windows, cygwin and linux.
I'm trying to write a text file and enforce '\r\n' for endofline from 
both windows and cygwin environment, currently cygwin  outputs '\n'

I'm under impression from [1] that I can change the value of os.linesep 
to 'enforce' my requirement
I'm under impression from [2] that i should NOT use os.linesep directly 
in my strings as a new line character
I'm under impression from [3]  and [2] that when the lines are in memory 
the endofline should aways be '\n' only.

The attached program shows my attempt at 'enforcing' os.linesep to a non 
native line ending, but the written files always only contain the native 
platforms endofline character.
What am I doing wrong?

Note: I have a working solution already where I force a change of new 
line by using sting replace method on my strings before writing them, I 
just don't understand why I can't get the 'advertised' feature to work?

- steve
======================
[1] from http://python.about.com/od/pythonstandardlibrary/ss/os-module-1.htm
*os.linesep:* The string used to indicate line breaks. On Unix-based 
systems (Unix, Linux, Mac OS X), this is '\n'. However, if you want to 
emulate a Windows system, you can change this to '\r\n' to represent the 
carriage return and newline feed strings used on Windows platforms.

[2] from http://docs.python.org/library/os.html#os.linesep
*os.linesep: *The string used to separate (or, rather, terminate) lines 
on the current platform. This may be a single character, such as '\n' 
for POSIX, or multiple characters, for example, '\r\n' for Windows. Do 
not use /os.linesep/ as a line terminator when writing files opened in 
text mode (the default); use a single '\n' instead, on all platforms.

[3] Discussion about Universal mode indicates any format of new line in 
a file will be translated to '\n' when it in memory
from http://docs.python.org/library/functions.html#open
Python is usually built with universal newline support; supplying 'U' 
opens the file as a text file, but lines may be terminated by any of the 
following: the Unix end-of-line convention '\n', the Macintosh 
convention '\r', or the Windows convention '\r\n'. All of these external 
representations are seen as '\n' by the Python program.
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