diff --git a/numpy/lib/npyio.py b/numpy/lib/npyio.py
index 9fbacaa226c6..e73d6fa39c52 100644
--- a/numpy/lib/npyio.py
+++ b/numpy/lib/npyio.py
@@ -1202,7 +1202,7 @@ def genfromtxt(fname, dtype=float, comments='#', delimiter=None,
     # Initialize the filehandle, the LineSplitter and the NameValidator
     own_fhd = False
     if isinstance(fname, basestring):
-        fhd = np.lib._datasource.open(fname, 'U')
+        fhd = np.lib._datasource.open(fname, 'Ub')
         own_fhd = True
     elif not hasattr(fname, 'read'):
         raise TypeError("The input should be a string or a filehandle. "\
diff --git a/numpy/lib/tests/test_io.py b/numpy/lib/tests/test_io.py
index 5001f6bac3f8..96e92c7763e7 100644
--- a/numpy/lib/tests/test_io.py
+++ b/numpy/lib/tests/test_io.py
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 import numpy as np
 import numpy.ma as ma
-from numpy.ma.testutils import *
+from numpy.ma.testutils import (TestCase, assert_equal, assert_array_equal,
+    assert_raises, run_module_suite)
 from numpy.testing import assert_warns
 
 import sys
@@ -1248,6 +1249,24 @@ def test_recfromcsv(self):
         self.assertTrue(isinstance(test, np.recarray))
         assert_equal(test, control)
 
+    def test_gft_filename(self):
+        # Test that we can load data from a filename as well as a file object
+        data = '0 1 2\n3 4 5'
+        exp_res = np.arange(6).reshape((2,3))
+        assert_array_equal(np.genfromtxt(StringIO(data)), exp_res)
+        f, name = mkstemp()
+        # Thanks to another windows brokeness, we can't use
+        # NamedTemporaryFile: a file created from this function cannot be
+        # reopened by another open call. So we first put the string
+        # of the test reference array, write it to a securely opened file,
+        # which is then read from by the loadtxt function
+        try:
+            os.write(f, asbytes(data))
+            assert_array_equal(np.genfromtxt(name), exp_res)
+        finally:
+            os.close(f)
+            os.unlink(name)
+
 
 def test_gzip_load():
     a = np.random.random((5, 5))