3/12/2024

Software Development Fundamentals

Week 14

Dr. Loubna Mekouar

Note:
• Some of the slides of the course are based on the material provided
by the College of Technological Information, Zayed University, UAE.
• The copyrighted material belongs to their respective owners.

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Introduction
• Before you read from or write to a file in Python, you need to create a
handle to that file.
• We may ask a handle to do:
• Read a line
• Read all lines in file
• Write a line
• Write multiple lines

• There are three stages:

• Open the file
• Read from /write to file
• Close the file

Reading the Complete File

• The function open creates a # open hello.txt to read from
handle to a file. Parameters are: handle = open ("hello.txt", "r")
• file name
• access mode # read all content of the file
• File name should include path if text = handle.read( )
files are not in the same folder # print variable text to screen
• Access mode is specified by a print( text )
letter: r = read, whereas w = write) # close file
handle.close( )

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Reading one Line

• The function readline reads one # open hello.txt to read from
line from an opened file handle = open("hello.txt", "r")
# read one line from the file
• If you call readline again, it will read line = handle.readline( )
the second line of the file and so on
# print line to screen
print( line )
# close file
handle.close( )

Reading All Lines as a List

You can use readlines( ) to read all # open hello.txt to read from
lines as a list of strings as: handle = open("hello.txt", "r")
# read all lines from the file
linesList = handle.readlines( )
linesList = handle.readlines( )
# print line to screen
print( linesList )
# close file
handle.close( )

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Reading Line by Line

# open hello.txt to read from
• You can use a loop to read all lines handle = open("hello.txt", "r")
of a file, one by one for line in handle:
# print line to screen
• Simplest way is to use a for in loop, print( line )
where in each iteration you access
one line # close hello.txt
handle.close( )

Writing a Line to a File

• To write to a file, you need to use # open hello.txt to read from
the open function and specify handle = open("hello.txt", "w")
access mode to be "w"
# write a line to the file
handle.write("I like Python!")
• If the file does not exist, Python will
create it for you # close hello.txt
handle.close( )
• If the file exists, Python will clear it
and start at the beginning

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Writing Multiple Lines Iteratively

• Use a loop to write multiple lines to linesList = [ ”Salam Students\n",
a file "I want you to practice
Python\n",
"Files operations are easy\n"]
handle = open( "hello.txt", "w" )
for line in linesList :
# write a line to the file
handle.write( line )
# close hello.txt
handle.close( )
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Writing Multiple Lines at once

• You can write multiple lines at lines = [ " Salam Students \n",
once using writelines function "I need to practice Python\n",
"Files operations are easy\n"]
• If the file does not exist, Python # open hello.txt to read from
will create it for you handle = open( "hello.txt", "w" )
# write lines to the file
• If the file exists, Python will clear handle.writelines( lines )
it and start at the beginning # close hello.txt
handle.close( )
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Appending a Line to a File

• To open a file and append lines to lines = [ "Salam Students \n",
it, the access mode should be "a" "I need to practice Python\n",
"Files operations are easy\n"]
• Python will add whatever lines # open hello.txt to read from
you write to the end of the file handle = open( "hello.txt", "a" )
# append lines to the file
handle.writelines( lines )
# close hello.txt
handle.close( )
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