How to avoid encoding parameter when opening file in Python3

Question

When I am working on a .txt file on a Windows device I must save as either: ANSI, Unicode, Unicode big endian, or UTF-8. When I run Python3 on an OSX device and try to import and read the .txt file, I have to do something along the lines of:

with open('ships.txt', 'r', encoding='utf-8') as f:
    for line in f.readlines():
        print(line)

Is there a particular format I should use to encode the .txt file on the Windows device to avoid adding the encoding parameter when opening the file in Python?

Answer 1

Call locale.getpreferredencoding(False) on your OSX device. That's the default encoding used for reading a file on that device. Save in that encoding on Windows and you won't need to specify the encoding on your OSX device.

But as the Zen of Python says, "Explicit is better than implicit." Since you know the encoding, why not specify it?