How to Read a File in Python

Working with the file system is a common operation in programming languages.

For one reason or another, you'll want to know how to read files from the file system.

In this post, we'll learn how to read a file from the file system using Python.

Reading a file

To start reading a file, you'll want to use the built-in open() function.

This function takes in the path to the file you want to read and the mode that you want to open the file in.

Since we are reading a file, we'll want to open it in 'r' mode.

Let's see an example of reading a file:

PYTHON
path = 'text.txt'

file = open(path, 'r')

From here, you now have an open file that you can interact with.

You can read the entire file in to a single variable using the read() function.

PYTHON
path = 'text.txt'

file = open(path, 'r')

text = file.read()

print(text)

You can also read the file line by line if you combine it with a while loop.

PYTHON
path = 'text.txt'

file = open(path, 'r')

while True:
    line = file.readline()

    if not line:
        break

    print(line)

After you are done using the file, don't forget to close the file to release it back to the operating system.

PYTHON
file.close()

Conclusion

In this post, we learned how to read a file from the file system using Python.

You can either read the entire file in to a single variable or you can read the file line by line.

Thanks for reading and happy coding!

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