Reading and Writing to text files in Python
Python provides inbuilt functions for creating, writing and reading files. There are two types of files that can be handled in python, normal text files and binary files (written in binary language,0s and 1s).
Text files: In this type of file, Each line of text is terminated with a special character called EOL (End of Line), which is the new line character ('\n') in python by default.
Binary files: In this type of file, there is no terminator for a line and the data is stored after converting it into machine understandable binary language.
In this article, we will be focusing on opening, closing, reading and writing data in a text file.
File Access Modes
Access modes govern the type of operations possible in the opened file. It refers to how the file will be used once its opened. These modes also define the location of the File Handle in the file. File handle is like a cursor, which defines from where the data has to be read or written in the file. There are 6 access modes in python.
Read Only ('r') : Open text file for reading. The handle is positioned at the beginning of the file. If the file does not exists, raises I/O error. This is also the default mode in which file is opened.
Read and Write ('r+') : Open the file for reading and writing. The handle is positioned at the beginning of the file. Raises I/O error if the file does not exists.
Write Only ('w') : Open the file for writing. For existing file, the data is truncated and over-written. The handle is positioned at the beginning of the file. Creates the file if the file does not exists.
Write and Read ('w+') : Open the file for reading and writing. For existing file, data is truncated and over-written. The handle is positioned at the beginning of the file.
Append Only ('a') : Open the file for writing. The file is created if it does not exist. The handle is positioned at the end of the file. The data being written will be inserted at the end, after the existing data.
Append and Read ('a+') : Open the file for reading and writing. The file is created if it does not exist. The handle is positioned at the end of the file. The data being written will be inserted at the end, after the existing data.
Opening a File
It is done using the open() function. No module is required to be imported for this function.
The file should exist in the same directory as the python program file else, full address of the file should be written on place of filename. Note: The r is placed before filename to prevent the characters in filename string to be treated as special character. For example, if there is \temp in the file address, then \t is treated as the tab character and error is raised of invalid address. The r makes the string raw, that is, it tells that the string is without any special characters. The r can be ignored if the file is in same directory and address is not being placed. Python
Here, file1 is created as object for MyFile1 and file2 as object for MyFile2
Closing a file
close() function closes the file and frees the memory space acquired by that file. It is used at the time when the file is no longer needed or if it is to be opened in a different file mode. File_object.close() Python
Writing to a file
There are two ways to write in a file.
write() : Inserts the string str1 in a single line in the text file.
writelines() : For a list of string elements, each string is inserted in the text file.Used to insert multiple strings at a single time.
Reading from a file
There are three ways to read data from a text file.
read() : Returns the read bytes in form of a string. Reads n bytes, if no n specified, reads the entire file.
readline() : Reads a line of the file and returns in form of a string.For specified n, reads at most n bytes. However, does not reads more than one line, even if n exceeds the length of the line.
readlines() : Reads all the lines and return them as each line a string element in a list.
Note: '\n' is treated as a special character of two bytes Python
Output:
Appending to a file
Python
Output:
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