Reading from a text file python

The file will remain open until you close the file using the close function. It is a must and best practice to perform this operation after reading the data from the file as it frees up the memory space acquired by that file. Otherwise, it may cause an unhandled exception. In the below example, we are reading the entire text file using the read method.

The file can be opened in the read mode or in a text mode to read the data, and it can be stored in the string variable. There are times where you need to read the specific bytes in a file. In that case, you can use the read function by specifying the bytes. The method will output only the specified bytes of characters in a file, as shown below. If you want to read a single line in a file, then you could achieve this using readline function.

You also use this method to retrieve specific bytes of characters in a line, similar to the read method. If you want to traverse the file line by line and output in any format, then you could use the while loop with the readline method as shown below. This is the most effective way to read the text file line by line in Python. The readlines method will read all the lines in the file and outputs in a list of strings , as shown below.

Later you can use the list to traverse and extract the specified content from the list. Report Error. Your message has been sent to W3Schools. W3Schools is optimized for learning and training.

Examples might be simplified to improve reading and learning. Tutorials, references, and examples are constantly reviewed to avoid errors, but we cannot warrant full correctness of all content. While using W3Schools, you agree to have read and accepted our terms of use , cookie and privacy policy. Python provides inbuilt functions for creating, writing and reading files. There are two types of files that can be handled in python, normal text files and binary files written in binary language, 0s and 1s.

Binary files: In this type of file, there is no terminator for a line and the data is stored after converting it into machine understandable binary language. In this article, we will be focusing on opening, closing, reading, and writing data in a text file.

File Access Modes Access modes govern the type of operations possible in the opened file. It refers to how the file will be used once its opened. These modes also define the location of the File Handle in the file. File handle is like a cursor, which defines from where the data has to be read or written in the file. There are 6 access modes in python. The handle is positioned at the beginning of the file.

This is also the default mode in which file is opened. For existing file, the data is truncated and over-written. Creates the file if the file does not exists. For existing file, data is truncated and over-written.

The file is created if it does not exist. The handle is positioned at the end of the file. The data being written will be inserted at the end, after the existing data.