In Python, the built-in 'open' function serves as a gateway to interact with files on your system. Python provides a straightforward and easy-to-use interface for file handling operations like reading, writing, and appending.
Here's a brief rundown of the various file modes and operations in Python:
1. Modes:
When dealing with files, you can specify the mode in which you want to open the file:
- `r`: Read mode (default). If the file doesn't exist, it raises a 'FileNotFoundError'.
- `w`: Write mode. If the file already exists, its contents are removed (or "cut off"). If the file doesn't exist, a new one is made.
- `a`: Append mode. Data is added to the file's end without removing its current content. If the file isn't there, a new one is set up.
- `b`: Binary mode. Useful for non-text files like images or executables.
- `t`: Text mode (default). Text files are processed in a way that maps specific end-of-line sequences to a single newline character (\n).
1. File Functions:
- `open()`: Opens a file in the specified mode.
- `close()`: Closes the file. It's important to always close files after operations to free up system resources.
- `read()`: Reads the entire content of the file.
- `readline()`: Reads the next line from the file.
- `write()`: Writes a string to the file.
- `writelines()`: Writes a list of strings to the file.
Example:
# Writing to a file using the write mode 'w'
f = open('myfile.txt', 'w')
f.write("Python makes file handling easy!")
f.close()
# Reading from a file using the read mode 'r'
f = open('myfile.txt', 'r')
file_content = f.read()
print(file_content) # Outputs: Python makes file handling easy!
f.close()
In the code above, the 'write()' function is used to write a string to a file, and the 'read()' function is used to read the content of a file.
