CMSC201

Computer Science I for Majors

Lecture 10 – File I/O
Prof. Katherine Gibson

Based on concepts from: http://mcsp.wartburg.edu/zelle/python/ppics2/code/ www.umbc.edu

 Last Class We Covered
• Using while loops
– Syntax
– Using them for interactive loops
• Two different ways to mutate a list
– append() and remove()
• Nested loops
• Two-dimensional lists (lists of lists)

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Any Questions from Last Time?

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 Today’s Objectives
• To learn about escape sequences
– Why we need them
– How to use them
• To be able to
– Open a file
– Read in its data

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Escape Sequences

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“Misbehaving” print() Function
• There are times when the print() function
doesn’t output exactly what we want

>>> print("I am 5 feet, 4 inches")

I am 5 feet, 4 inches
>>> print("I am 5'4"")
File "<stdin>", line 1
print("I am 5'4"")
^
SyntaxError: EOL while scanning string literal

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 Special Characters
• Just like Python has special keywords…
– for, int, True, etc.

• It also has special characters

– single quote ('), double quote ("), etc.

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 Backslash: Escape Sequences
• The backslash character (\) is used to
“escape” a special character in Python
– Tells Python not to treat it as special

• The backslash character goes in front of the

character we want to “escape”
>>> print("I am 5'4\"")
I am 5'4"

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 Using Escape Sequences
• There are three ways to solve the problem of
printing out our height using quotes
>>> print("I am 5'4\"")
I am 5'4"
>>> print('I am 5\'4"')
I am 5'4"
>>> print("I am 5\'4\"")
I am 5'4"

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 Using Escape Sequences
• There are three ways to solve the problem of
printing out our height using quotes
escape double quotes
>>> print("I am 5'4\"") (using " for the string)
I am 5'4“
escape single quotes
>>> print('I am 5\'4"') (using ' for the string)
I am 5'4"
>>> print("I am 5\'4\"") escape both single and
double quotes (works
I am 5'4" for both ' and ")

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 Common Escape Sequences
Escape Sequence Purpose
\' Print a single quote
\" Print a double quote
\\ Print a backslash
\t Print a tab
\n Print a new line (“enter”)
""" Allows multiple lines of text
""" is not really an escape sequence, but is useful for printing quotes

11 http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/ex10.html www.umbc.edu
 Escape Sequences Example
tabby_cat = "\tI'm tabbed in."
print(tabby_cat)
I'm tabbed in. \t adds a tab

persian_cat = "I'm split\non a line."

print(persian_cat)
I'm split \n adds a newline
on a line.

backslash_cat = "I'm \\ a \\ cat."

print(backslash_cat)
I'm \ a \ cat. \\ adds a single backslash

12 http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/ex10.html www.umbc.edu
 Escape Sequences Example
fat_cat = """
I'll do a list:
\t* Cat food
\t* Fishies
\t* Catnip\n\t* Grass
"""
print(fat_cat)

I'll do a list:
* Cat food
* Fishies
* Catnip
* Grass

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 Escape Sequences Example
fat_cat = """
I'll do a list:
\t* Cat food
\t* Fishies
\t* Catnip\n\t* Grass when using triple quotes
"""
("""), the times you hit
print(fat_cat)
“enter” inside the string
I'll do a list: will print as newlines
* Cat food
* Fishies
* Catnip
* Grass

14 http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/ex10.html www.umbc.edu
 Escape Sequences Example
fat_cat = """
I'll do a list:
\t* Cat food
\t puts in a tab
\t* Fishies
\t* Catnip\n\t* Grass
"""
\n adds a newline
>>> print(fat_cat)

I'll do a list:
* Cat food
* Fishies
* Catnip
* Grass

15 http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/ex10.html www.umbc.edu
How Python Handles Escape Sequences
• Escape sequences look like two characters to us
• Python treats them as a single character

>>> example1 = "dog\n"

>>> example2 = "\tcat"

0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3
d o g \n \t c a t
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File Input/Output

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 Why Use Files?
• Until now, the Python programs you've been
writing are pretty simple for input/output
– User types input at the keyboard
– Results (output) are displayed in the console
• This is fine for short and simple input…
– But what if we want to average 50 numbers,
and mess up when entering the 37th one?
– Start all over???

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 What is File I/O?
• One solution is to read the information in
from a file on your computer
– You could even write information to a file

• This process is called File I/O 

– "I/O" stands for "input/output“
– Python has built-in functions that make this easy

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 File I/O Example Usage
• “Read” in a file using a word processor
– File opened
– Contents read into memory (RAM)
– File closed
– IMPORTANT: Changes to the file are
made to the copy stored in memory,
not the original file on the disk

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 File I/O Example Usage
• “Write” a file using a word processor
– (Saving a word processing file)
– Original file on the disk is reopened in a
mode that will allow writing
• This actually erases the old contents!
– Copy the version of the document stored in
memory to the original file on disk
– File is closed

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 File Processing
• In order to do interesting things with files, we
need to be able to perform certain operations:
– Associate an external file with a program object
• Opening the file
– Manipulate the file object
• Reading from or writing to the file object
– Close the file
• Making sure the object and file match
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Syntax: Opening a File

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 Syntax for open() Function
myFile = open(FILE_NAME [, ACCESS_MODE][, BUFFERING])

FILE_NAME

• This argument is a string the contains the

name of the file you want to access
– "input.txt"
– "numbers.dat"
– "roster.txt"

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 Syntax for open() Function
myFile = open(FILE_NAME [, ACCESS_MODE][, BUFFERING])

ACCESS_MODE (optional argument)

• This argument is a string that determines

which of the modes the file is to be opened in
– "r" (open for reading)
– "w" (open for writing)
– "a" (open for appending)

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 Syntax for open() Function
myFile = open(FILE_NAME [, ACCESS_MODE][, BUFFERING])

BUFFERING (optional argument)

• This argument is an integer that specifies to

desired buffer size for the file we won’t be using
– 0 (unbuffered) buffering much (if
at all) in this class
– 1 (line buffered)
– >1 (buffer of approximately that size in bytes)

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 Examples of Using open()
• In general, we will use commands like:
testFile = open("scores.txt")
dataIn = open("old_stats.dat")
dataOut = open("stats.dat", "w")
• We will ignore the optional buffering argument
scores.txt
an example 2.5 8.1 7.6 3.2 3.2
input file 3.0 11.6 6.5 2.7 12.4
8.0 8.0 8.0 8.0 7.5
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File Processing: Reading

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 Using File Objects to Read Files
myFile = open("myStuff.txt")

• This line of code does three things:

1. Opens the file “myStuff.txt”
2. In the “reading” mode (which is the default)
3. Assigns the opened file to the variable myFile
• myFile is a variable of type file object
• Once the file is open, we can start reading it
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 Three Ways to Read a File
• There are three different ways to read in a file:

1. Read the whole file in as one big long string

myFile.read()
2. Read the file in one line at a time
myFile.readline()
3. Read the file in as a list of strings (each is one line)
myFile.readlines()

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 Entire Contents into One String
>>> info = open("hours.txt")
it’s literally one
>>> wholeThing = info.read()
giant string!
>>> wholeThing
'123 Susan 12.5 8.1 7.6 3.2\n456 Brad 4.0
11.6 6.5 2.7 12\n789 Jenn 8.0 8.0 8.0 8.0
7.5\n'

our input file

hours.txt
123 Susan 12.5 8.1 7.6 3.2
456 Brad 4.0 11.6 6.5 2.7 12
789 Jenn 8.0 8.0 8.0 8.0 7.5
31 https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse142/11au/python/06-files.ppt www.umbc.edu
 Entire Contents into One String
>>> info = open("hours.txt")
it’s literally one
>>> wholeThing = info.read()
giant string!
>>> wholeThing
'123 Susan 12.5 8.1 7.6 3.2\n456 Brad 4.0
11.6 6.5 2.7 12\n789 Jenn 8.0 8.0 8.0 8.0
7.5\n'

notice that escape sequence (\ our input file

n) is being printed, instead of hours.txt
the text starting on a new line 123 Susan 12.5 8.1 7.6 3.2
456 Brad 4.0 11.6 6.5 2.7 12
789 Jenn 8.0 8.0 8.0 8.0 7.5
32 https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse142/11au/python/06-files.ppt www.umbc.edu
 One Line at a Time
>>> info = open("hours.txt") there’s actually an
>>> lineOne = info.readline() easier way to do
>>> lineOne this… can you
guess what it is?
'123 Susan 12.5 8.1 7.6 3.2\n'
>>> lineTwo = info.readline() (we’ll show
'456 Brad 4.0 11.6 6.5 2.7 12\n' you soon)

our input file

hours.txt
123 Susan 12.5 8.1 7.6 3.2
456 Brad 4.0 11.6 6.5 2.7 12
789 Jenn 8.0 8.0 8.0 8.0 7.5
33 https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse142/11au/python/06-files.ppt www.umbc.edu
 As a List of Strings
>>> info = open("hours.txt")
>>> listOfLines = info.readlines()
>>> listOfLines
['123 Susan 12.5 8.1 7.6 3.2\n',
'456 Brad 4.0 11.6 6.5 2.7 12\n',
'789 Jenn 8.0 8.0 8.0 8.0 7.5\n']
our input file
hours.txt
123 Susan 12.5 8.1 7.6 3.2
456 Brad 4.0 11.6 6.5 2.7 12
789 Jenn 8.0 8.0 8.0 8.0 7.5
34 https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse142/11au/python/06-files.ppt www.umbc.edu
 Using for Loops to Read in Files
• Remember, for loops are great for iterating

• With a list, the for loop iterates over…

– Each element of the list (in order)
• Using a range(), the for loop iterates over…
– Each number generated by the range (in order)
• And with a file, the for loop iterates over…
– Each line of the file (in order)
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A Better Way to Read One Line at a Time
• Instead of reading them manually, use a
for loop to iterate through the file line by line

>>> info = open("hours.txt")

>>> for eachLine in info:
... print(eachLine)
...
123 Susan 12.5 8.1 7.6 3.2

456 Brad 4.0 11.6 6.5 2.7 12

789 Jenn 8.0 8.0 8.0 8.0 7.5

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A Better Way to Read One Line at a Time
• Instead of reading them manually, use a
for loop to iterate through the file line by line

>>> info = open("hours.txt")

>>> for eachLine in info: why are there all
... print(eachLine) these empty lines???
...
123 Susan 12.5 8.1 7.6 3.2 now that we’re
calling print(),
456 Brad 4.0 11.6 6.5 2.7 12 the \n is printing
out as a new line
789 Jenn 8.0 8.0 8.0 8.0 7.5

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Whitespace

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 Whitespace
• Whitespace is any “blank” character, that
represents space between other characters
• For example: tabs, newlines, and spaces
"\t" "\n" " "

• When we read in a file, we can get whitespace

– Sometimes, we don’t want to keep it

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Removing the Newline from the End
• To remove the escaped newline sequence (\n)
from a string we read in, we can use slicing

myString = myString[:-1]

0 1 2 3
d o g \n
-4 -3 -2 -1
myString
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Removing the Newline from the End
• To remove the escaped newline sequence (\n)
from a string we read in, we can use slicing

myString = myString[:-1]

don’t remove 0 1 2 3
anything from the
beginning d o g \n
-4 -3 -2 -1
just remove the very
last character myString
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 Removing Whitespace
• To remove all whitespace from the
start and end of a string, we can use strip()

spacedOut = spacedOut.strip()

\t c a t s \n
spacedOut
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 Removing Whitespace
• To remove all whitespace from the
start and end of a string, we can use strip()

spacedOut = spacedOut.strip()

\t c a t s \n
spacedOut
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 Removing Whitespace
• To remove all whitespace from the
start and end of a string, we can use strip()

spacedOut = spacedOut.strip()

notice that strip() does

not remove “interior” spacing

\t c a t s \n
spacedOut
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Miscellaneous (and Exercises!)

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 Getting a Filename from a User
• Instead of putting the filename straight in the
code, we can ask the user for the filename
• Save their response in a variable, and call the
open() function with it
# printfile.py
# Prints a file to the screen.

def main():
fname = input("Enter filename: ")
infile = open(fname, 'r')
data = infile.read()
print(data)

main()
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 Exercise: Jabberwocky
• Write a program that goes through a file and reports
the longest line in the file
Example Input File: caroll.txt
Beware the Jabberwock, my son,
the jaws that bite, the claws that catch,
Beware the JubJub bird and shun
the frumious bandersnatch.

Example Output:
>>> longest.py
longest line = 42 characters
the jaws that bite, the claws that catch,
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 Jabberwocky Solution
def main():
input = open("carroll.txt")
longest = ""
for line in input:
if len(line) > len(longest):
longest = line

print("Longest line =", len(longest))

print(longest)
main()

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 Announcements
• (Pre) Lab 5 has been released on Blackboard
– Future ones will be available the weekend prior

• Homework 4 is out
– Due by Tuesday (Oct 6th) at 8:59:59 PM

• Homework 1 re-grade and re-submit petitions

must be made to your TA before Friday @ 3 PM
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