html_url,issue_url,id,node_id,user,user_label,created_at,updated_at,author_association,body,reactions,issue,issue_label,performed_via_github_app
https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-utils/issues/448#issuecomment-1297703307,https://api.github.com/repos/simonw/sqlite-utils/issues/448,1297703307,IC_kwDOCGYnMM5NWWGL,167893,mcarpenter,2022-10-31T21:23:51Z,2022-10-31T21:27:32Z,CONTRIBUTOR,"The Windows aspect is a red herring: OP's sample above produces the same error on Linux. (Though I don't know what's going on with the CI).

The same error can also be obtained by passing an `io` from a file opened in non-binary mode (`'r'` as opposed to `'rb'`) to `rows_from_file()`. This is how I got here.

The fix for my case is easy: open the file in mode `'rb'`. The analagous fix for OP's problem also works: use `BytesIO` in place of `StringIO`.

Minimal test case (derived from [utils.py](https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-utils/blob/main/sqlite_utils/utils.py#L304)):

``` python
import io
from typing import cast

#fp = io.StringIO(""id,name\n1,Cleo"") # error
fp = io.BytesIO(bytes(""id,name\n1,Cleo"", encoding='utf-8')) # okay
reader = io.BufferedReader(cast(io.RawIOBase, fp))
reader.peek(1) # exception thrown here
```
I see the signature of `rows_from_file()` correctly has `fp: BinaryIO` but I guess you'd need either a runtime type check for that (not all `io`s have `mode()`), or to catch the `AttributeError` on `peek()` to produce a better error for users. Neither option is ideal.

Some thoughts on testing binary-ness of `io`s in this SO question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44584829/how-to-determine-if-file-is-opened-in-binary-or-text-mode","{""total_count"": 2, ""+1"": 2, ""-1"": 0, ""laugh"": 0, ""hooray"": 0, ""confused"": 0, ""heart"": 0, ""rocket"": 0, ""eyes"": 0}",1279144769,Reading rows from a file => AttributeError: '_io.StringIO' object has no attribute 'readinto',