Python Programming (BCC-

402)
UNIT – 4: Python File Operations
Content
• Open and Close File
• Reading Files
• Writing in Files
• Reading & Writing Files using With Statement
• Seek() and tell() methods
Open and Close
Files
 Opening a File
Before you can read or write a file, you have to open it using Python's built-in open() function. This function
creates a file object, which would be utilized to call other support methods associated with it.
Syntax
file object = open(file_name [, access_mode][, buffering])

Here are parameter details-

• file_name: The file_name argument is a string value that contains the name of the file that you want to
access.
• access_mode: The access_mode determines the mode in which the file has to be opened, i.e., read, write,
append, etc.
• A complete list of possible values is given below in the table. This is an optional parameter and the default
file access mode is read (r).
• buffering: If the buffering value is set to 0, no buffering takes place. If the buffering value is 1, line buffering is
performed while accessing a file. If you specify the buffering value as an integer greater than 1, then buffering
action is performed with the indicated buffer size. If negative, the buffer size is the system default (default
behavior).open()
The File Object Attributes :
• Once a file is opened and you have one file object, you can get various
information related to that file.
• Here is a list of all the attributes related to a file object-
Closing a File
The close() Method
• The close() method of a file object flushes any unwritten information and closes the file object, after which
no more writing can be done.
• Python automatically closes a file when the reference object of a file is reassigned to another file. It is a good
practice to use the close() method to close a file.
Syntax
fileObject.close();

Example: f=open(‘sample.txt’,’r+’)
print(f.name)
f.close()
print(‘file closed’)

Output: Sample.txt
File closed
Reading Files
read() Method
The read() method reads a string from an open file. It is important to note that Python strings can
have binary data apart from the text data.
Syntax
• fileObject.read([count]);
• Here, passed parameter is the number of bytes to be read from the opened file. This method
starts reading from the beginning of the file and if count is missing, then it tries to read as much
as possible, maybe until the end of file.
Example
Let us take a file foo.txt, w
# Open a file
fo = open("foo.txt", "r+") str = fo.read(10)
print ("Read String is : ", str)
# Close opened file fo.close() which we created above.
readline() Method
Python readline() method will return a line from the file when called.

Syntax: f=open(‘filename.txt’,’r’)
f.readline()

Example: f=open(‘filename.txt’,’r’)
line1 = f.readline()
print(line1)
f.close()
readlines() Method
readlines() method will return all the lines in a file in the format of a
list where each element is a line in the file.

Syntax: f=open(‘filename.txt’,’r’)
f.readlines()

Example: f=open(‘filename.txt’,’r’)
example1 = f.readlines()
print(example1)
f.close()
Use of for loop to read a file
f=open(‘C:\myfile.txt’)
For line in f:
print(line)
f.close()

In the above code ‘C:\myfile.txt’ is the file name with path.

Practice Questions
1. Write a Python Program to open a file named data.txt and print its
entire content.
2. Write a Python Program to read and print the 1st 10 characters of
the file sample.txt
3. Write a Python Program to count the number of lines in a file
notes.txt
4. Write a Python Program that read the last 5 lines of a text file.
5. Write a Python Program to open a file and display its content its
uppercase.
Writing In Files
write() Method
The write() function will write the content in the file
without adding any extra characters.

Syntax: filename.write(content)

Example: f=open(‘filename.txt’,’w’)
f.write(‘Hi there, this is the first line of file.\n’)
f.write(‘and another line.\n’)
f.close()
writelines() Method
The write() function will write the content in the file
without adding any extra characters.

Syntax: filename.writelines(list_name)

Example: lines=[‘hello world.\n’, ’This is another line.\n’]

f=open(‘filename.txt’,’w’)
f.writelines(lines)
f.close()
Practice Questions
1. Write a program to write multiple lines using multiple write() calls.
2. Write lines to a file and then read the content to verify.
3. Write a program that takes user input and saves it to a file using
write().
4. Write a program to append lines to an existing file using write().
5. Write a program to copy content from one file to another using
read() and write().
Reading and Writing Files
using With Statement
with statement
• with statement will automatically close the file after the nested block
of code.
• If an exception occurs before the end of block, it will close the file
before the exception is caught by an outer exception handler.
• The advantage of using with statement is that it is guaranteed to close
the file.
Read File using with statement
#read entire file as one string
with open(‘filename.txt’,’r’) as f:
data=f.read()

#iterate over lines of file

with open(‘filename.txt’,’r’) as f:
for line in f:
print(line, end=‘ ‘ )
Write in File using with
statement
#write()
with open(‘filename.txt’,’w’) as f:
f.write(‘Hi there, this is the first line of file.\n’)
f.write(‘and another line.\n’)

#writelines()
lines=[‘hello world.\n’, ’This is another line.\n’]
with open(‘filename.txt’,’w’) as f:
f.writelines(lines)
seek() and tell()
seek() method
The seek() function in Python is used to move the file cursor to the specified
location. When we read a file, the cursor starts at the beginning, but we can move
it to a specific position by passing an arbitrary integer (based on the length of the
content in the file) to the seek() function.
seek() method
Syntax: seek(offset, whence)

offset – Required parameter. Sets the cursor to the specified position and starts
reading after that position.
whence – Optional parameter. It is used to set the point of reference to start from
which place.
0 – Default. Sets the point of reference at the beginning of the file.
1 – Sets the point of reference at the current position of the file.
2 – Sets the point of reference at the end of the file.
seek() method
# Opening a file for reading
with open('sample.txt', 'r') as file:
# Setting the cursor at 62nd position
file.seek(62)
# Reading the content after the 62nd character
data = file.read()
• print(data)

We’ve moved the cursor to the 62nd position, which means that if we
read the file, we’ll begin reading after the 62nd character.
tell() method
tell() function returns the position where the cursor is set to begin
reading.
tell() method
# Opening a file in binary mode
with open('sample.txt', 'r') as file:
# Setting cursor at the 25th pos
from the end
file.seek(-25, 2)
# Using tell() function
pos = file.tell()
# Printing the position of the cursor
Output:
print(f'File cursor position: {pos}')
File cursor position:127
# Printing the content Content of file
data = file.read()
Practice Questions
1. Write a program to demonstrate moving the file pointer using
seek().
2. Write a program that uses tell() to print position before and after a
read().
3. Write a program to skip the first 5 characters and print the rest
using seek().
4. Write a program to use tell() to track reading position line by line.
5. Write a program to show the current file pointer position using
tell().