{"id":12071,"date":"2020-10-28T02:52:06","date_gmt":"2020-10-28T09:52:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/careerkarma.com\/blog\/?p=12071"},"modified":"2023-12-01T04:03:27","modified_gmt":"2023-12-01T12:03:27","slug":"python-read-file","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/careerkarma.com\/blog\/python-read-file\/","title":{"rendered":"Python Read File: A Step-By-Step Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The open() function opens a file. You must use the “r” mode to read a file. The read(), readline(), readlines() functions return the contents of a file you have opened.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Python is a useful programming language to use if you want to process data. The language has several built-in functions that make it easy to read, write, and manipulate data or files.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s say that you have a list of employee names, and you want to check if a user\u2019s name is on that list. You could save the list of employee names as a file. Then, you could use Python to read that file and check if the employee\u2019s name is stored within that file.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this tutorial, we are going to explore the basics of reading files in Python. To start, we will discuss how to open and access a file. Then we will go on to explore how to read a file in Python.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Open File for Reading in Python<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first step to reading a file in Python is to open the file you want to read. You need to tell Python the name of the file you want to open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To read a file, you must first tell Python where that file resides. You can do so by specifying the path of the file and declaring it within a variable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s the syntax for opening a file in Python:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

filename = "\/users\/career_karma\/names.txt"\nnames_file = open(filename, 'r')<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Our code opens a file at the path we defined in the “filename” variable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The r<\/em> flag at the end of the open()<\/em> function tells Python that we only want to read our file. We could change this flag if we wanted to edit our file.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Python Read File<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Now that our file is open, we can read it through Python. There are three functions that we can use to read data from a file, which are as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n