I know that I should open a binary file using "rb" instead of "r" because Windows behaves differently for binary and non-binary files.
But I don't understand what exactly happens if I open a file the wrong way and why this distinction is even necessary. Other operating systems seem to do fine by treating both kinds of files the same.
解决方案
This mode is about conversion of line endings.
When reading in text mode, the platform's native line endings (\r\n on Windows) are converted to Python's Unix-style \n line endings. When writing in text mode, the reverse happens.
In binary mode, no such conversion is done.
Other platforms usually do fine without the conversion, because they store line endings natively as \n. (An exception is Mac OS, which used to use \r in the old days.) Code relying on this, however, is not portable.