Reading a file

Question 1

Opening a file

Answer 1

with open(example1, "r") as file1:
    FileContent = file1.read()
    print(FileContent)
This is line 1 
This is line 2
This is line 3

Question 2

Read first 4 characters

Answer 2

We don’t have to read the entire file, for example, we can read the first 4 characters by entering three as a parameter to the method .read():

# Read first four characters
​
with open(example1, "r") as file1:
    print(file1.read(4))
This

Question 3

Readline()

Answer 3

We can also pass an argument to readline() to specify the number of charecters we want to read. However, unlike read(), readline() can only read one line at most.

Question 4

Read () vs. readline()

Answer 4

with open(example1, “r”) as file1:
print(file1.readline(20)) # does not read past the end of line
print(file1.read(20)) # Returns the next 20 chars
​
This is line 1

This is line 2
This