The file Reading/Writing process

title: Reading and writing files description: To read/write to a file in Python, you will want to use the with statement, which will close the file for you after you are done, managing the available resources for you.

The file Reading/Writing process

To read/write to a file in Python, you will want to use the with statement, which will close the file for you after you are done, managing the available resources for you.

Opening and reading files

The open function opens a file and return a corresponding file object.

>>> with open('C:\Users\your_home_folder\hi.txt') as hello_file:
...     hello_content = hello_file.read()
...
>>> hello_content
'Hello World!'

Alternatively, you can use the readlines() method to get a list of string values from the file, one string for each line of text:

>>> with open('sonnet29.txt') as sonnet_file:
...     sonnet_file.readlines()
...
',
',
', And

You can also iterate through the file line by line:

>>> with open('sonnet29.txt') as sonnet_file:
...     for line in sonnet_file:
...         print(line, end='')
...

Writing to files

>>> with open('bacon.txt', 'w') as bacon_file:
...     bacon_file.write('Hello world!
')
...

>>> with open('bacon.txt', 'a') as bacon_file:
...     bacon_file.write('Bacon is not a vegetable.')
...

>>> with open('bacon.txt') as bacon_file:
...     content = bacon_file.read()
...
>>> print(content)