file¶
File objects are implemented using C’s <stdio.h> package and can be created with the built-in file() and open() functions. File objects are also returned by some other built-in functions and methods, such as os.popen() and os.fdopen() and the makefile() method of socket objects. Temporary files can be created using the tempfile module, and high-level file operations such as copying, moving, and deleting files and directories can be achieved with the shutil module.
When a file operation fails for an I/O-related reason, the exception IOError is raised. This includes situations where the operation is not defined for some reason, like seek() on a tty device or writing a file opened for reading.
Files are viewed as a sequential stream of bytes. A file is terminated with an end of file marker (EOF). When a file is opened a file object is associated with it.
By default, there are three files initialized when the script execution starts - sys.stdin, sys.stdout and sys.stderr. They correspond to the interpreter’s standard input, output and error streams.
Methods¶
Reading¶
- read
- Returns specified amount of bytes from the file.
- readline
- Reads one entire line from the file.
- readlines
- Returns a list containing lines from the file.
- xreadlines
- Returns an iterator over the lines of the file.
- next
- Returns a next line from the file.
Writing¶
- write
- Writes a string to the file.
- writelines
- Writes a sequence of strings to the file.
- flush
- Flushes the write buffers of the file.
Properties¶
- name
- Returns the name of the file.
- mode
- Returns the I/O mode for the file.
- encoding
- Returns the encoding of the file.
- closed
- Returns a Boolean stating whether the file is closed.
- errors
- Returns the Unicode error handler used along with the encoding.
- newlines
- Return type of newlines encountered while reading the file.
- softspace
- Returns a Boolean that indicates whether a space character needs to be printed before another value when using the print statement.